GROWING THE GAME: Lefika Ragonste, right, coaches a junior player. Ragonste, a former Trinity College standout, recently started the New Jersey Squash Club in Lawrenceville, offering a number of playing options, both on a daily pay-to-play basis and for membership.

By Bill Alden

Lefika Ragonste has been into expanding the reach of squash since he was a grade schooler.

As a 10-year-old, he started playing squash in his native Botswana. By the time he was a teenager, he had won junior titles in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

After high school, he played in Canada and England. In 1998, he came to the U.S. to attend Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. and join its powerhouse squash program.

Ragonste helped the Bantams win four College Squash Association (CSA) national titles and served as the captain for the squad.

During his college career, he started to dabble in coaching. Upon graduation he moved to Baltimore and began working with juniors, guiding several to national titles. He also helped get a squash club up and running and later opened his own club.

Now, he has come to the Princeton area and has opened the New Jersey Squash Club at 11 Princess Road in Lawrenceville to provide the public an opportunity to play the game and hopefully get more people to fall in love with the sport.

“The goal is to cater to the needs of all of the clientele and the community,” said Ragonste, 42, the club’s head coach and director, reflecting on the new enterprise which offers the chance for people to walk up and have matches on a pay-to-play basis without being members.

“It is for the adults, for the juniors, for everybody. That is the goal.”

Ragonste, for his part, fell in love with the game of squash as a teenager.

“I  stated playing seriously as a junior,” said Ragonste 

“I had the opportunity to play tournaments and travel around the local areas like South Africa and Zimbabwe. I won the junior open of Zimbabwe. I was national champion of Botswana.”

For Ragonste, his time at Trinity was a time for growth on and off the court.

“I had spent a lot of time playing squash so I spent a lot of time developing new friends,” said Ragonste.

“It was a great experience, it gave you a different perspective of life because all you were focused on before was becoming a professional player. My life had been training in the morning, eating right, and resting, and then going back to training.”

Another great part of the Trinity experience was soaking up lessons from legendary coach Paul Assaiante, who has guided the Bantams to 16 CSA national titles.

“He was such a great motivator and was great at keeping us grounded and giving us a lot of direction,” said Ragonste.

“His biggest asset was helping us grow up. He was almost a dad to us. He was a mentor, somebody you looked up to. In terms of squash coaching, he spent more time keeping us motivated, keeping us as a team, understanding that we come from a sport where we are individuals and he is putting us together to understand the teamwork.”

With his deep understanding of the game, Ragonste thrived as coach in the Baltimore area upon graduation from Trinity,  helping players winning 15 national titles and enjoying success running his club.

“I went off and opened my own club, I had three squash courts,” said Ragonste.

“I created a different model because where I grew up, there was access for everybody. I had these dreams; I wanted more and more people to play, so let me have a public club where you don’t necessarily have to be a member to play. I came up with a pay-to-play system. It took a while to get going, but some people really like it, and eventually what happened is we turned around and they realized being a member is really cheaper, so they become members.

Ragonste ultimately decided to bring that model to Central Jersey with the counsel of longtime Princeton University women’s squash head coach Gail Ramsay.

“Gail had been talking to me and said people don’t really have a place to play around here and it would be a great thing,” said Ragonste.

“I talked to her a lot about it. People can’t play at Jadwin, people can’t play at Lawrenceville. I saw an opportunity because of the demographics here and the people who live here. I thought it was a good idea to start one here.”

After securing the Princess Road location and waiting for permits, NJ Squash opened for business in March, offering a number of playing options, both on a daily pay-to-play basis and for membership, which are detailed at njsquashclub.com.

“We have four squash courts,” said Ragonste, whose staff includes three other coaches with pro playing experience. “We have lessons, clinics, we have match play, we have round robin, and we want to create a league.”

The club appears to creating a buzz as the early response from the community has been positive.

“It has been really, really wonderful, we have had a lot of people come in,” said Ragonste, noting that 60 signed up to play in the first month or so with 30 becoming members. “It is amazing, people are just happy to have a place to play. We have public school kids playing;  they never had a place to play.”