It was the year of the penguins.
They looked left.
They looked right.
They looked cool in their black zoot suits, even as over two hundred women from fifty squash teams danced and sang and celebrated all around them.

It was a glorious New England
autumn weekend.
Beginning with balmy soft air.
Then blowing and swirling red, gold, and yellow through breathtaking blue.
Ending with zipped up jackets and shivery sunshine.

It was cars crawling slowly from Storrow Drive and Harvard Square.
A Charlie card for the T was faster.
Or even a row up the Charles.
Fastest was a drive down the wall
and a lunge from the T.

It was women with white hair and gray hair and yellow, black, and brown – and none.
Red shirts with maple leaves. Blue ones with stars.
White ones with lightening flashing on the fronts.
It was three days of fun and frustration and friends and winning and losing and sweating and stretching
and then,
it was over.

Bags were stuffed with damp shirts, well-used rackets, a bright yellow towel.
Muscles in thighs and backs and shoulders began to whine,
and did for days.
One more walk down the tennis hall – shhhhh
Then out the door to the jigsaw jammed parking lot.
Boston is lovely, but its drivers are – nevermind
you are back on the road to points south, north, and west.

Until we head east
next autumn
for Howe Cup
in Connecticut.

————————–
-For information on Women’s Squash events including Howe Cup, stay tuned to the US Squash Women’s Group on Facebook & US Squash

And here are a few NYSquash team & misc. moments during Howe Cup 2015 at Harvard Murr Center