Thank you to the parents and alumni who attended our annual event in their honor! We greatly appreciate you taking the time out of your day for our augmented event, and gathered a lot of great advice to help us keep our supporters engaged while maintaining public health protocols. For those who couldn’t attend, we have included our notes from the event below and welcome any feedback you may have on how to keep our supporters updated throughout the season with our progress.
Due to the pandemic, our operating costs for running the team are lower than in years past; our annual budget estimates that the cost per player for the season has dropped from $1,500 to $800. However, we are pushing forward with our fundraising to finance a team trip in the Summer/Fall of 2021 to get professional level training experience in preparation for the 2021/22 season, and our goal is to raise a surplus of $2,500 for this trip. If you are able to, please considering giving to the team by going to this link, or by going to the Donate tab to learn more about funding the team.
In the next few weeks, we will be starting a modified practice schedule in accordance with public health guidelines, and hope to post videos from these sessions to showcase the new and returning members of the team to all of you. Given the virtual nature of the alumni event and our postponed practice start date, we were not able to share our newfound talent from our 6 new freshmen, but we hope to utilize social media and our new website to give you all a taste of whats to come this season. Go Huskies!
Virtual Alumni Event Notes:
- We have added 6 new freshmen, each with 3+ years of playing experience to the team. After graduating no seniors last year, this addition grants us added depth to our roster and will help us reclaim the title of #1 club team in the nation. We also have one graduating senior this season, our co-captain Karan “KK” Kishorepuria; KK has consistently brought his insane work ethic everyday and challenged the members of the team for the last 4 years, and his leadership will be greatly missed next season.
- We also welcome the addition of our new coach! Nku Patrick will be joining both the men’s and women’s team as the head of coaching; a former Caribbean U19 champion from Trinidad and Tobago and player for Trinity College, Nku brings a resume of excellence to our growing team with expertise in conditioning and technique. As a 2-time national champion with the Bantams and a 2-time most improved player, we hope his past success indicates new silverware to come our way.
- This season will obviously look different to years prior, but with recent approval from the Northeastern administration we hope to start team practices as soon as next week (10/26). Matches will hopefully begin in January, and to keep our supporters engaged we are considering several ways to broadcast the results: Facebook and Instagram livestreams of matches, real-time Twitter updates of scoring changes, and ClubLocker integration at our home courts to update the scores by point for every single match. This is where we are looking for help! If you have any suggestions for how to stay engaged virtually this season, please comment on this post or email us at menssquash@northeastern.edu.
- Currently, we are planning to begin matches in January, with competitions against BC, BU, and MIT currently scheduled. With the turbulent nature of scheduling over the last few months, the schedule is still up-in-the-air for the most part, but a more finalized schedule should be posted in late November. With any fundraising surplus generated this season, we hope to plan a trip to the mid-Atlantic and/or the West Coast to face teams ranked 20-30th in the nation.
- With our updated website, we hope to utilize it to upload match-play clips and utilize the web traffic to draw sponsors to our organization. These sponsorships deals will help us finance the team year-over-year, and allow us to focus fundraising efforts towards a club endowment fund.
- We are setting up our apparel store with all new items! The branding requirements for Northeastern University club sports changed, allowing us to have branded apparel with “Northeastern Squash”. Our team store should be open by November 1st and will close November 15th to allow your items to arrive by the holiday season! Be on the lookout for social media and blog posts in the next few weeks with more information about the items, pricing, and where to order.
- We are moving our alumni networking platform from Facebook to LinkedIn, which will allow players and alumni to add the team to their profile, as well as stay up to date with parents and alumni events or updates without requiring a Facebook account. We will continue to post short clips and match updates to Facebook, but the majority of informational posts will happen on our LinkedIn page, Northeastern Men’s Squash.
Recent Comments