Tahiti Squash

I'm not sure what either Patrick Morelle or I was planning for when I landed into Fa'a'a International Airport in Tahiti, French Polynesia last Monday night.  

Four weeks ago in Boston I ran into a squash friend who said she had once played in Fiji, which led me to Googling "squash Oceania" that night, which, a month later in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, led me to Patrick.

These Tahitians have figured it out. View from the dinner table

Patrick is the first President of the newly minted Tahitian Squash Federation that he helped form. He doesn't really speak English and I don't speak French, but he loves squash and with the help of his wife Rebecca, arranged my visit to the island to train and compete in local matches at his club in preparation for my three pro events later this month in New Zealand.

Just in case you missed the La Depeche sports section on Thursday 

And so Tuesday morning I found myself waking up underneath a misquito net in Papeete as an adopted member of the Morelle family and the small but passionate squash community in Tahiti.

I learned early on day one that I held the unique distinction of being the first American to play at the club. During every training session, each member of the club would come over to shake hands, each giving me their best "HELLO MIKE!" greeting in English. 

Every day brought more "HELLO MIKE!" greetings, impromptu group lessons and taped video sessions, and matches against the best players in Oceania- all in 100 degree heat inside a facility without A/C (yikes).

Dinner for 30 of the crew at the local spot, L'Apizzeria

I lived with a school teacher and the newspaper editor. I taught backhands to the airline pilot, shared beers with the Italian restaurant owner. I was invited to join two different birthday dinners, helped hold down the regular table at L'Apizzeria, serrenaded neighbors with a terrible karaoke rendition of the Backstreet Boys, shared the backseat with the two youngest children during lazy Saturday morning drives. For the past week I've been a lucky fly on the wall of a squash-playing, French speaking family in Tahiti.

After my last match on the island tonight, I was given the microphone to address the standing room-only crowd that had gathered for it. Through a translator, I tried to thank them for everything. Among the crowd, I saw the pilot and the restaurant owner and the newspaper editor smiling back. 

Final match on the island against my roomate and friend, Nicolas Barbeau of France. 

A very special prize to anyone who can name the third flag in this photo (besides the US and France). 

 Until next time, French Polynesia

My new neighbor

Around this time five years ago, I sat alone in an Austrian hostel, full on good schnitzel but  empty on ideas of what to do next. I had left my nonstop, action-packed world of being a college junior to spend a term working in Switzerland on my own, and which was a big leap of independence for me. I had even upped the ante for myself a step further by flying out two weeks before my internship in Zurich was to start, with vague ideas of playing squash in Eastern Europe. This was as adventurous as it got for me.

All those ideas sounded good on paper, but as I sat with my bags in the hostel lobby, the reality of being alone without a plan started to sink in. As I putzed around on the public computers in the hostel lobby, hoping that Facebook would give me an answer of what to do, Kim Taylor and Rachel Capizzi sat down next to me.

Kim and Rachel were New Zealand natives both teaching at an international school in Germany, and had just begun their Easter vacation that night in Vienna. They were headed to Slovakia the next day and then through Hungary en route ultimately to Romania to see a friend in Brasov. 

I was in desperation mode and saw my opening about thirty seconds into the pleasantries that that started with something like, "hey cool computer screen what's your name are you on Facebook I'm from America can we be friends?" I stepped it up a notch with the Hail Mary and casually suggested we combine travel itineraries (mine was nonexistant, so it wasn't going to be hard).  

Kim and Rachel took a chance on me (worth noting that "Taken" was still a couple years away from being released in theaters) and the next two weeks would become the highlight of my term abroad, and of my junior year, for that matter. When we ended in Bucharest, Romania, I found a Communist-era court in the basement of a hotel and after a few games, was asked by the gym manager to stay and coach the local squash community for a few more weeks.

My answer stuck with me for the years since that day- I had to say no, given my program in Zurich starting the next day and my big "junior summer" internship on Wall Street coming up after that. But I told myself then I would find a time later on to put myself in a position where I could say yes to coaching in Bucharest, or just saying yes to whatever random thing it was that came up. 

I'm finally in a position to say yes to coaching in Bucharest, and when I moved to Auckland the other day, I reached out to Kim to say thanks. I vaguely remembered she was back in New Zealand, but we hadn't been in touch since 2009 so I wasn't sure.

The kicker of the story is that when we connected, we learned that Kim is indeed back in New Zealand, and lives in the same city, Auckland, that I'm based out of this month. Within Auckland, Kim lives in the same neighborhood, One Tree Hill, as me. As it turns out, Kim lives down the street (literally) from my current homestay.

My new neighbor came by and showed me around the city tonight. I thanked her again for letting me tag along when we met at the computer terminals in Vienna five years ago. 

Staying on the court

Yesterday I received an e-mail from my dad, a few hours before my flight to New Zealand. I was packing up my life into a 25" roller suitcase when I opened it.

"Remember- just stay on court as long as possible!"

It was a fitting piece of advice- and the same advice he's given me since I fell in love with playing squash as a teenager in California. I was late to the sport and had some real catching up to do, so the idea of finding a way to stay on court as long as humanly possible was a more pragmatic goal to shoot for when wins were few and far between.

By showing up and staying on court, I've surpassed my own wildest expectations with the sport. Even more exciting has been the number of "collisions" it's created with people and places and opportunities that have changed my young adult life.

Following Dartmouth, I didn't want those collisions to end. Before I graduated I had joked with my dad about the final frontier- playing on the pro squash tour around the world- and when I moved to Boston in the fall of 2011, I set out to see if I could make it happen.

Three years later, I'm not going to be a world champion, but I'm good enough to give the tour a try. And by now I have spent months training and talking and dreaming of giving it a try. And so at this point, I am more comfortable taking the jump and flying on a one way ticket to New Zealand because the alternative - spending the rest of my life wondering what it would have been like to see this adventure through - sounds unbearable.

Last week I was an associate an investment firm. Today I'm a full time pro squash player, ranked #289 in the world and in constant need of a couch to crash on. My life's belongings are in two bags, my American phone line has been suspended, and I am now an expert with the ins and outs of global catastrophic health insurance plans. 

I grew up with structure - high school then college, summer internships and corporate programs. It took a long time to get to this point, and I am very lucky for the group of sponsors, friends, family, and coworkers back home who provided the enduring support and encouragement for me to try this. 

As we begin our descent in Auckland, I think about my dad's email and his message I know well by now: stay on the court as long as possible. It's what inspired me to explore this adventure and what makes me so excited for the collisions that will come from it going forward. 

Setting sail from SFO, 5/28/14