PSA honours int’l squash coach Mujahid

LAHORE: Punjab Squash Association (PSA) honoured its former junior coach Mujahid Hussain here on Monday. Mujhaid remained coach of the PSA for over three years and helped the body in producing quality squash players.

Presently Mujahid is working as a junior coach in Blackball Squash Club Cairo, Egypt. He is the first Pakistani junior squash coach, who got this position in Egypt, which is now the squash hub and have number of world squash champions. On his return to homeland during his vacations, he visited the Punjab Squash Complex, where Senior Vice President Tariq Farooq Rana awarded him with the trophy for his services in coaching here in Punjab squash and international squash circuit.

Under his coaching, many good young players from Punjab played superb squash and earned laurels for the province at national and international level. One of big names produce by him is Israr Ahmed, who is former number one junior squash player. Israr has great honour of winning British Junior Under-15 Championships in 2012 while in the same event, his another student Kashif Asif finished runner-up in under-13 category.

Sharing his successful squash coaching story, Mujahid said: “Squash is my bread and butter. I am working hard to be a good coach while I am also working with foreign players and academies. I know I was not a big player but I worked really hard for my coaching and completed my Asian Squash Coaching Course Level-I and Level-II successfully, which brought great improvement in my coaching. “I have good opportunities of coaching around the globe. First, I served my own country in the field of coaching many years and then I moved to Malaysia as a head coach for junior programme, where I trained hundreds of Malaysian kids for two years till December 2014. In 2015, I got a good opportunity in Bahrain as a national junior squash coach, where I worked for three and half years and my team won Gulf Junior Squash Championship for the first time. The Bahrain Squash Federation honored me with an award on that time.

“I left Bahrain in June 2018 for my personal reasons at home. I got a good opportunity in Pakistan where I trained Pakistan number one player Tayyab Aslam, who won two big events under my coaching, which is a great honour for me. Meanwhile, I was contacted by Blackball Squash Club Cairo, Egypt, which is now a land of squash world champions and coaching there is a great honour for me as well as for the country.