National Squash League finishes second season with ‘a completely different take’ on the game
Philadelphia teams earned the men's and women's titles at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center in University City. The league features team matches on the clock.
It’s not often that a squash player comes out of retirement to play again. But then, nothing about the National Squash League is typical.
Born just two years ago, with matches primarily played at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center in University City, the NSL prides itself on being different from a usual squash match. It is the first professional team-based squash league and features three-on-three team matches.
Two Philadelphia teams closed out the league’s second season with championships at the Specter Center. The Lightning swept the Lake Erie Beacons, 4-0, to win the men’s title on Sunday, while the Freedom outlasted the District Inferno in a 2-2 shootout victory for the women’s crown.
Instead of the standard game to 11, the NSL splits the match into three periods. The first two periods last 20 minutes and are worth one point each, and the final one is 30 minutes long and worth two points.
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“The first thing we wanted to do was have it be timed,” said Fernando Valdizan, the league’s cofounder and commissioner. “You want to see those buzzer-beaters. You want to see those last-second [scenarios], everything on the line for the last point. … When you have traditional sports, if you see a match that’s kind of out of reach, it’s not fun to watch the end.
“We wanted to come up with a format where even if a team is dominant in the beginning, the other team could still come back in the last one. … The strategy is completely different. You’ll see some teams throw a period and they’re like, ‘We’ll save it for the third.’”
If a match is tied at the end of the third period, it goes to a five-minute overtime. Additionally, the NSL has power plays — with a twist on the hockey version. Whenever a team decides to use its power play, it becomes the only team that can score points and serve during that span, which adds a hint of strategy to the game.
“We just started adding elements from different sports, and that’s how we came up with the substitution power-play clock format,” Valdizan said. “It’s never going to replace squash, and that’s not what the intent is. It’s just to be a completely different take on it and it’s a different experience.”
The NSL has grown in its two years. During the inaugural season, there were just six teams. Now there are nine men’s teams and four women’s squads. Each team is made up of four players: three starters and one reserve.
On the women’s side, the Philadelphia Freedom features Olivia Weaver, a Germantown Friends grad and the world’s fourth-ranked player who could be representing the United States in the 2028 Olympics when squash makes its debut. Weaver may not be the only player from the NSL to make it into the Olympics, as Mostafa Asal, a member of the Greenwich Panthers and the world’s top-ranked men’s player, will be a heavy favorite to win the gold medal in 2028.
“Everyone’s behind it,” Valdizan said of the Olympic opportunity. “I think that’s the great thing about it. The [Professional Squash Association], the NSL, we’re all in this together, and US Squash as well. Our goal at this point is to work together to make squash as visible and just keep growing the audience so that when the Olympics does happen, people actually know what it is and can enjoy it.”
On the men’s side, the Philadelphia Lightning are led by former Penn standout Andrew Douglas, a four-time All-American who won the U.S. national championship in 2023. Douglas retired from the Professional Squash Association and was in his first year of law school at New York University when the NSL held its first draft in 2024. One conversation from the Lightning’s co-owner, B.G. Lemmon, landed him back in Philadelphia.
“I was sitting there in the fifth round, and I told him, ‘Hey if you’re available, I might take you. Are you OK with that?’” Lemmon said. “He’s like, ‘Yeah I’m fine. I’ll still be in good shape. Let’s do it.’
“Everyone criticized me in the squash world a little bit, actually. They were like, what is B.G. thinking? What are the Lightning doing? Sure enough, it [ticked] off Andrew. We used him for our first match against the New York Knights, and he had the match-winning point and he arguably had the match-winning shift where we were down four and he battled back to get us up one.”