Traditionally in a squash facility, competitive activity is organised through a club ladder or ranking board, with new members starting at the bottom and aiming to ascend by challenging others. In these rudimentary systems, mismatches are common, with unbalanced and unsatisfying matches.
SquashLevels, the sport's industry-leading ranking platform, addresses this issue. It is now used by over 30,000 players across 25 countries, with new nations joining up regularly.
Tournament organizers, whether casual groups or international federations, can register for free, with all match outcomes contributing to the database, now boasting over 5.5 million recorded matches. A specialized algorithm translates these results into rankings - and this accurate, evidence-based assessment of every player's level enhances the competitive experience for all players.
Many internal club, inter-club, regional, national and international league and competition results are now entered on SquashLevels as a matter of course, automatically feeding into a ranking system which is subdivided into world, national, county (regional) and club. This means every registered player has not only a de facto 'world ranking' but also an accurate gauge of their standard compared to their peers.
Jethro Binns, Co-Founder of SquashLevels said: “Over the last few years, we have been proving the SquashLevels algorithm works effectively and we’re proud to be chosen by over 30,000 regular users while being officially endorsed by the World Squash Federation and the Professional Squash Association."
For squash venues wanting to increase player engagement, SquashLevels can be an incredibly useful tool. It allows coaches at any level to match up players at an appropriate level, or use their respective rankings to calculate handicaps. Coaches can get creative and use SquashLevels to devise different competition formats which get players hooked and coming back for more.
We recently explained how head coach Jonathan Gallacher uses SquashLevels within his Tournament Tuesday format in Vienna. Another example is Daventry Squash Club in Northamptonshire, England, which uses SquashLevels as the basis for its Project 2000.
On SquashLevels, every subscriber has a profile page which gives them access to their full ranking history and results archive as well as head-to-head statistics and even results predictions. Registered users also have the opportunity to build their own personal communities with players in their club, local area or worldwide.
SquashLevels also links in with online coaching hub SquashSkills with a series of bespoke squash and fitness challenges matched to their own level.
The popularity and recognition of SquashLevels is exploding. It has now been adopted in (amongst others) England, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, the Netherlands and most recently India - where historical results data has been back-filled into the system. Further countries are to follow very soon.
It is no exaggeration to say that many squash players are obsessed with SquashLevels. Not only does it give players a feeling of connection with the global squash community, it can act as a key motivator to practice and play more in order to improve their level, set targets (e.g. climbing above their friends in the rankings) and analyse their personal stats.
SquashLevels was invented in 2008 by software developer Richard Bickers. He played in the Avon county leagues in south-west England and designed an algorithm to replace a previous outdated online system for its rankings.
His system gradually grew in popularity until he joined with Jethro Binns' SquashSkills platform in 2019 which revolutionised the look and feel of the website, added an app, and marketed the idea commercially. Rather unfortunately, they re-launched two weeks before the start of the pandemic, but that gave them two and a half years to build up a social network and since then, SquashLevels has gone from strength to strength.
Jethro said: "It's been amazing to see how SquashLevels has taken off since Covid. I always saw the potential in Richard's algorithm so it's great to see it being adopted and recognised as the global standard.
"Whilst people might lament the system when they've got a dodgy knee and they see their ranking plummeting, we firmly believe this is something of huge benefit to the sport worldwide. We're looking forward to further evolution and growth in the years to come."
Comments