Squash Practice March 10, 2008

The origins of squash are in the ancient game of real tennis. In the twelfth century in France boys and girls played ball games in the narrow streets of their villages. They slapped balls along the awnings or roofs that lined the street or into shop and door openings. Rules depended on local geography. In time these street games migrated up to cloistered monasteries. Every Lenten season young brothers strung a fishing net across the middle of their courtyards and patted a ball back and forth with their gloved hands. The balls - a patch of leather with dog hair sewn inside, later cloth stuffed with soil, sawdust, sand or moss-bruised and cut hands. Monks added webbing to the gloves and then extended their hand by picking up a stumpy stick, a branch of a tree, a shepherd's crook. At the end of the fifteenth century the Dutch invented the racquet.

10$ for non-members