IT was a case of winning once, winning twice for Amelia Martin who claimed the Australian National Squash Title in mid-February.
The result was even sweeter coming as it did against her sister-in-law Melissa Martin who she beat 11-7, 11-7, 11-7 at Carrara, on the Gold Coast.
At 36, Martin is a veteran of the sport having first won the women’s title 15 years ago.
“I was very surprised to win,” she said from Tonic Squash and Gym, the Dromana business she took over five years ago. “I’d been training hard and it all just came together.”
Martin started playing squash as a nine-year-old before attending the Australian Institute of Sport at 17 and later establishing herself in The Netherlands and the US where she could concentrate on her sport for 13 years.
Rising to number 26 in squash in the world she had success at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006 and again in India in 2010.
“After competing in Delhi I came home and had a child – Jackson, who attends Red Hill Consolidated – and then got back into training.”
Martin says she is “waiting for squash to become big again” after a slow decline in interest in the sport throughout the 1980s and 90s.
First published in the Southern Peninsula News – 25 February 2020
