League System Trial

For nearly 10 years, we have used a squash league system called in-zone to managed the leagues and create the tables you see on the Maidenhead Squash website. We do periodically review the software to see if there is a better or more user-friendly alternative and believe we may have found a system that is worth looking at which is from www.squash-levels.com.

Squash Levels Player Rankings

Squash Levels is a website which is familiar to a number of players in our league - especially those who play for one of our teams in the Berkshire Squash League.

Squash Levels is a site which ranks all squash players in the world based on match results. As the Berkshire Squash League results are fed into this system, quite a few of our players have a Squash Level which you can see here >>

It has proven to be a popular website for some of our players to assess how good an opponent may be and also to provide a measure of how well you have played and whether your game is improving (or deteriorating!). You can read more about how the ranking system works on their website here >>

Squash Levels Box System Trial

Squash Levels have created a box league system which is similar to our own (and will be still free to use for all players) but which automatically feeds match results into their player ranking system (described above). This means that every player in our league will have a squash level which you can use to assess how you have played in a particular match and see if you are improving ( or ignore as you see fit!)

In addition there are a number of system features that we hope this new system will help improve upon such as:

1. Easier for players to log in and contact other players and enter scores.

2. Easier to administer when rolling over the league every 6 weeks (eg adding new players and managing promotions and relegations).

3. Mobile friendly to make it easier to use on mobile devices.

4. Easier to manage injured players.

The Squash Levels system also provides some additional features which may be of benefit such as allowing you to enter the actual scores for each game (but not mandatory) and to give bonus points to players who play all their games.

So whilst there is the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and that many players may like to stick with what they know, we feel that the Squash Level system is worth a closer look. We have also been in touch with a few other clubs who use the system and their response has been unanimously very positive.

So we are going to run a 1 league/ 6 week test on their system to see how it works and whether we like it enough to swap our main league system over to it. This will be run completely separately to the current main league and will be used by players effectively playing friendlies and entering them into the system.

Get Involved

To make this a successful test, we want as many players as involved as possible regardless of which division you are in or your playing ability - the more the merrier.

At the time of writing we have 13 players who have volunteered to participate which is enough to run the trial. However, if you are curious, want to have your say on whether we adopt the new system and want to play more squash then let us know by leaving a comment below or contacting us through the Contact Us page.

Players will need to play at least 3 games on this new system in addition to your normal Maidenhead league games, so please only volunteer if you can spare the time to play the games.

If you would like to have your say on this new system then please get involved and let us know by Friday 17th August - all players who have registered their interest by then will be included in the trial league and we will be in touch with further information at that point. We will look to start the trial league at the same time as the new main league starts on the 26th August.

Equally, if you cannot be involved in the trial but have ideas on what could be better or improved upon then let us know and we will add it to the list of features we will evaluate when testing the new system.

If you have any queries or concerns then please let us know,