Values

Values guide action and form the core of a team’s philosophy and culture.  Smith Squash is unique amongst other college squash teams and Smith Varsity teams in the way that it views sport and competition. Here are the team’s values:

Commitment

Excellence

Self-Direction

Diversity

Longterm

Fun

Some of the things we believe differently:

• Winning is not important – giving 100% is.
• Fairplay is more important than winning.
• We reject the standard athletic culture of hierarchy, hazing, coach as dictator
• We prefer to develop players rather than recruiting them (although everyone is always welcome:)

Some of the values will be explained more fully below.

Commitment. As a member of the Smith Varsity Team you are expected to provide the same level of commitment to the team as the thousands of intercollegiate athletes across the country. That means being 100% available for all practices and competitions. Most teams at Smith practice for 2.5 hours a day for 19 weeks during the academic year (it is required that you be given 1 day of a week).

As student-athletes, you are not required to miss classes for practice – but you are expected to make up any missed time on your own in consultation with your coach.

It is generally accepted practice that student-athletes will miss class if they have to because of a team competition. Fortunately we have arranged our schedule so that most of our competition are on the weekends: Monday Dec. 10 and Thurs. Feb. 7 being the exceptions – matches against our local opponents Amhers & MHC respectively. If there are any conflicts you must brig these to the attention of yor professor at the start of the semester. Note: We will be playing in our final competition of the year on Friday, Feb. 22nd in NJ – you must make yourself available for this date, and therefore must communicate this conflict to your professors if you have any classes on this day.

In recognition of the occasional difficulty in balancing academics and athletics commitments we do allow team members to “miss” one practice a week provided that they fully attend the remaining four practices. As much notice as possible must be given to Tim to facilitate practice planning.

Finally, student athletes are expected to put their team as their second highest priority during the season. Meetings with professors, study groups, visits from families and friends, job fairs, interviews, etc. must all be schedule around and not during practice. This requires effort but can be done with preparation and thoughtfulness.