Princeton University Athletics
Home Court: Duncan Joyce and Family Keep Squash Prep at Home
April 08, 2020 | Men's Squash
What do you do to stay sharp in your sport when you've got to stay home? The squash-playing Joyce brothers have figured it out.
The four brothers of the Joyce family in #Philadelphia built their own basement makeshift #Squash court so they can #StayHome and help #FlattenTheNick What a rally! ???? pic.twitter.com/dVKhxvmcHY
— US SQUASH (@USSQUASH) March 27, 2020
In the time before our world went indoors and online, the four Joyce brothers had a convenient place to work on the sport that two of them have played in college and two more are set to play next academic year, at least once we're all able to head back to campuses in the way we knew not too long ago. Merion Cricket Club, where Princeton junior Duncan found the desire for the game that fueled his path to Jadwin Gym, is about 67 regulation-length squash courts away from his family's Haverford, Pa., home. It's about as close as Joyce was on campus to Princeton's home courts in Jadwin. Can't get much more convenient than that.
Except, in a time when the convenience of routine has given way to safety, we've all had to find different ways to do the things we usually do. Some have found out that "zoom" now happens on your computer and not just the left lane of the highway. "FaceTime" still means face-to-face, just with two screens and miles in between. Exercise is now a jog around the block or using what you have at home, like your home squash court, instead of going to your usual gym.
Home squash court?
Yes, for the Joyce family, some ingenuity and a trip to the hardware store has yielded their own basement squash court, a mini version of what they'd find at Merion Cricket Club or Jadwin Gym.
"It’s made out of about six sheets of plywood," Duncan Joyce said. "It’s about maybe a third of the size of a normal court, so it doesn’t really give us the same function as training on a normal-sized court. In different ways, it’s still allowing us to keep up with training. It’s good for quick reflexes like racquet skills work, stuff like that."
Joyce said it's a larger version of the kind of makeshift ways he and his brothers have played over the years without making their way to their local club.
"Back when I was in middle school, when we would get bored, sometimes my brothers and I would just take the back of our ping-pong table, flip it over onto the wall and play squash against it," Joyce said. "Over the years, that just progressed and progressed, and then we started adding and putting the court in different places that we thought would work better, and then now that we just got quarantined for a while, we were like, hey, let’s try to amp this up a bit and make it something even more like a real court. So, the idea had been there, but the execution really happened over this quarantine."
Joyce said that he, like a lot of kids, tried out a bunch of different sports before figuring out that one had his interest more than others.
"Philly is a huge hub for squash, especially my area," Joyce said. "I just started having squash and tennis lessons every week (at Merion), fell in love with squash, dropped tennis and the other sports I played like soccer and lacrosse and just focused on squash when I hit high school and started playing tournaments nationally."
The program took a significant step forward in Joyce's junior season this winter, with Joyce playing between fifth and sixth. For the first time since 2013, Princeton won a match in the Collegiate Squash Association's Potter Cup, the top draw at the multi-draw national tournament, defeating fifth-ranked Rochester in the quarterfinals on the way to finishing fourth in the country. It was a result the Tigers achieved with just two seniors in the nine-player lineup.
"I think the team overall was happy with the way we finished," Joyce said. "Our reaction after the season was happiness that we were able to maintain our No. 4 spot throughout the year and prove it at nationals. That was something that (head coach) Sean (Wilkinson) talked about a lot, was not becoming complacent and not feeling like being (ranked) No. 4 was good enough, that we needed to prove it, and I think we all felt that we did that."
With so much of the lineup able to be back next year, Joyce included, the opportunity is there for Princeton to build on its 2020 finish. There's also the chance for Joyce, his teammates and fellow members of the Class of 2021 to prepare for life after Princeton. For Joyce, the plan is to go forward with an internship this summer in New York with an eye toward his post-Princeton career.
"One glass-half-full way of looking at this situation we’re in is that now I’m home and I have a little more time on my hands to study for job interviews in the fall where I intend to apply to a few different management consulting firms," Joyce, a student in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, said. "To get ready for those, you need to read Case in Point and go through hundreds of cases to study for the case interviews, so I have time to do that now."
That is, indeed, a way to find something that has been gained when it's easy to point out what's been lost. Social connection has moved online even more than it had just a month ago, and participating in classes has changed for now from a raised hand to a box lighting up around a thumbnail of a student's image on a screen.
And, in the Joyce house, for now, squash has moved from the glassed-in, hardwood courts of Merion and Jadwin to those built out of plywood, necessity, and a love for the sport.
