Cowan served top award for squash leadership

Veteran Johannesburg squash player and coach, Lesley Cowan, was honoured with the Ina Ackermann Memorial Award by Squash South Africa on 29 June for enthusiastically promoting the interests of women’s squash.

The 61-year-old Cowan, a director of Egoli Youth Empowerment, a development programme that uses squash to change children’s lives, received this prestigious award at a prize giving at the Johannesburg Country Club following the annual squash convention.

The award, which recognises a woman of any age in any province, was also awarded to Cowan for her assistance in the general well-being of squash in Johannesburg, willingness to undertake duties and assume responsibility, integrity, and leadership, and displays of outstanding sportsmanship both on and off the court.

The significance of receiving an award named after the late Ina Ackermann (1950-1993) wasn’t lost on Cowan, a tax practitioner. Ackermann was a top-class squash player and enthusiastic runner who obtained her law degree in 1972, a time when female law students were relatively rare, and became one of the first women to be appointed permanently in the faculty of law at the University of Cape Town.

Cowan does a lot for Egoli Youth Empowerment, “but my love is being at the grassroots, coaching the girls every Saturday morning”, she says. Up to 30 girls train under her tutelage at the University of Johannesburg’s Ellis Park campus every week. She’s always greeted with smiling faces and hugs.

Cowan, who also coaches at the Gazankulu squash courts in Soweto, has played in the Joburg Squash Ladies League since 1983. She plays mostly in team events in interprovincial tournaments, her team winning a few of them over the years.

She spends at least two hours a day involved with the management of Egoli and the many projects it runs weekly. It runs squash, netball, and racket ball for many inner-city schools. “We also incorporate chess into the mix,” says Cowan, a Northview High School alumnus.

Seeing players maturing, overcoming the many obstacles they face daily, inspires Cowan to dedicate her time to the organisation. “They do it with a smile on their face and so much resilience. We’re changing lives one at a time. Through our organisations, children have received bursaries to schools and universities.”

Cowan’s most memorable moment with Egoli came one Saturday morning, when she was coaching a large group of girls. “One girl was being deliberately obstructive,” Cowan recalls. “Whatever I told her to do, she did the opposite. So, I asked the class what time it was, as I had to be home by 20:00 that night, and I wouldn’t leave until she could hit the ball and play a rally. Everyone laughed, and within 10 minutes, her whole energy changed, she hit the ball beautifully, with no more destructive behaviour.

“She told one of the girls a few weeks later that I was the first person who never gave up on her. She came to squash for a few months, a happy co-operative girl, but unfortunately, her family moved so we never saw her again. It’s a concrete example that without knowing it, passion and commitment do change lives.”

At least three times a week, Cowan can be found playing singles and doubles squash or racket ball. “I’ve met hundreds of people through squash,” she says. “I was never a top player, but I do represent Johannesburg in interprovincial tournaments annually. The bottom line is that at my age, I’m still playing a good game of squash.”

The “sports crazy” Cowan has never shied away from trying any sport, and gave squash a go at a time when it was becoming popular, with squash centres being built everywhere. “The reason I’ve made this my lifelong sport is that it offers so much in a short period. Forty-five minutes of hard squash is worth hours of any other sport.”

Reflecting on how squash has changed in South Africa during her time with the sport, Cowan says the game took a beating during the COVID-19 pandemic and with the introduction of padel and pickleball. “On the contrary, squash in the inner city and Soweto is booming, with more and more children wanting to take up the sport and excelling at it. If you go to the junior tournaments, you will see many of our players competing and doing well. While squash in Joburg isn’t as popular as before, besides Egoli Squash, it’s growing and thriving in all other provinces.”

Nine Egoli players were selected to represent Johannesburg at school interprovincial level, Cowan says. In addition to Egoli’s high-performance programme, “We have an education-support programme kindly sponsored every afternoon at our offices at the Johannesburg stadium. We send our players on different courses.”

Egoli students have graduated in subjects like law, and are also involved in coaching squash at schools and squash centres. “On a day-to-day basis, we provide a safe space and a community where our players can thrive,” she says.

“Egoli has an unbelievable management team who either work for no remuneration or just a small stipend,” Cowan says. “The founder of the programme, Glenn Lazarus, is the force behind the drive to expand our reach to empower more disempowered youth. We’ve grown so much in the short time we have been in existence, so we need to keep on growing, thereby empowering more people who in turn empower others.”