Ava Lin is a squash phenom. She’s a member of the United States Junior National Team, won the Sportsmanship Award at the US Squash Junior Awards Night, participates in tournaments all around the world, and co-created Parker’s Squash Club. Her reputation precedes her, but it is time to learn more about Ava.
The Lin family has a long history of playing squash. After moving from Taiwan when he was 13, Ava’s father went to boarding school in Illinois and Massachusetts and picked up squash as a way to pass the time and have fun. Similarly, her brother Hudson began to play squash along with a variety of other sports. Quick to follow along, Ava decided she wanted to play. She explained that she thought “whatever he’s doing, I want to do that too.” With that, at age 6, her love for the sport began, and she hasn’t stopped playing.
Squash tournaments take Ava Lin all over the world, and the schedule is extremely intricate and elaborate. “My season is from September to March,” Lin said, “September tournaments are on the East Coast, October is in Philadelphia, November is West Coast, December is the U.S. Open, so I’m back in Philadelphia.” Flying to all these different competitions takes time, and Ava often misses a lot of school. To keep up with her work, Ava finds herself “in-between matches and training at the hotel lobby studying,” along with “all the girls on the team [who] were also going through the same thing.”
Recently, Ava was the first Chicagoan to participate in The Windy City Open, a platinum-level professional tournament after receiving a wild card bid. This February, Lin played Ho Tze-Lok (also known as Tomato Ho), a professional squash player from Hong Kong ranked 27th in the world, at the University Club of Chicago. In an article about the match, the PSA World Tour wrote “The 16-year-old was able to put Ho through her paces in the first and third games” in which Ava narrowly lost, going 7-11 in the first set and 5-11 in the last. Remembering the match, Lin said, “I had grown up watching the tournament because they host it every year, so it was cool to play against all the pros.”
To share her love of squash with Parker, Ava co-created Parker’s very own Squash Club which practices just like a real squash team. Students who had not played or heard of squash before were able to learn and practice the sport through drills and scrimmages led by coaches at Lakeshore. Sophomore Ben Israel joined the club last year. “Even though I joined the squash team a few weeks late, Ava and her coach still welcomed me to the team and helped me really understand squash,” Israel said. This welcoming and inclusive environment has helped the growth of the club and expanded the popularity of the sport Ava loves.
