When Coach Celia Pashley arrived at Westminster at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, her goal was to get Westminster their squash glory back, and she immediately hit the ground running. The Westminster Squash team was a legend, having won multiple championships for both genders. However, they had lost multiple top-spot players during back-to-back years, causing them to lose some of their glory. Coach Pashley realized after her first year coaching the JV and Varsity Girls and Boys teams that the solution to bringing Westminster back on top was to create a Middle School team. She believed that creating a Middle School team would give 7th and 8th graders the opportunity to improve their squash skills before high school. 

Pashley’s ambitions spring from long dedication to the sport. She is a former top-65 in the world and is married to a former top-100 squash player, Coach Tom Pashley. They have a son, Hayden Pashley, who has also started playing squash. Together, they are the ultimate squash family. Coach Celia Pashley started playing squash at eight years old, and she has been coaching squash for twelve years. “I started in clubs for three years, and since I have been coaching in school.” Pashley decided to start coaching squash because she “wanted to give back to the sport that has given [her] so much.” Even though her professional career has slowly slowed down, she is still an active member of Atlanta’s Squash Community, constantly participating in fun tournaments and activities around the state.

 Coach Pashley decided to create a Middle School team last year, but the Middle School team did not involve tryouts or competitions. This year, she hoped to get enough people for tryouts where she could make a cut team that would compete in multiple tournaments. Her expectations for the Middle School team were low, but in came 27 hopefuls for tryouts competing for 14 spots. As a result, the Middle School squash team will be playing multiple matches, and the top 6 will travel to Philadelphia for Middle School Nationals. “I still think we are in the learning process,” states Pashley. She thinks that after tryouts, the Middle School team still has a lot to learn about competing, playing as a team, and playing their best. 

Unlike other cut teams, the Middle school squash team happens to be co-ed. Coach Pashley realized, after forming last year’s Middle School practice team, that the squash team was made up of many boys but simply not enough girls to create two separate teams. She hopes that after a few years, Middle Schoolers will have enough girls to create separate teams. For this year, she wanted to create the strongest squash team she could, and realized that the best way to reach this goal was to have a co-ed team “I wanted to start with having the strongest team with the strongest players first right away,” she says. 

Pashley is doing everything in her power to put Westminster back on top. She made a middle school team to help the upper schoolers and is in the process of creating a lower school team to help train them before middle school. Is Coach Pashely the kind of person who can bring Westminster back on top? “I really want to . . . give back to the sport that has given me so much.”