Jack Hudson and Brendan Simpkins
GAWLER Squash Club could disband after losing its second court to South Gawler Football Club.
The squash club was informed last week of South’s intention to take court two at the Gawler Squash Centre at Evanston, losing its use as of Monday.
Previously the squash club had use of three courts, but lost court three to the football club about five years ago.
Court three has since been converted into a warm-up space for the football club.
Losing court two would leave the squash club with access to just one court, a situation that it says is not viable.
Gawler Squash Club’s Simon Curnow said it would be a “loss of a community asset” if the club had to close. “It’s all wrong,” Mr Curnow said. “For a social competition, it’s not even worth (holding it) for that. I think eventually they will take the last court.
“As soon as (the third) court was taken, that’s when the competition went.
“It’s another community asset wasted away.”
South Gawler Football Club president Daniel Kiryk said the club had obtained control of the second court in 2019 and now required it.
“We took over a second squash court at our AGM in 2019,” Mr Kiryk said.
“We’re just finalising that takeover. The squash courts will have court one and the football club will take over court two.
“The squash club is an affiliate of the South Gawler Football Club, so it was tabled at the AGM by the members and voted unanimously. The squash club currently doesn’t have a single member.”
Mr Kiryk said South Gawler recently had a meeting with himself, “the president, the vice-president of the football club, two members of (Gawler) Council and two representatives from the squash club and this was the outcome”.
“It was done correctly through the books with council involved,” Mr Kiryk said.
“At that meeting, it was posed how many members the squash club has and it’s basically a social group that does not have a single (paid) member.”
South Gawler’s junior programs are some of the biggest in the Barossa, Light & Gawler Football Association and with COVID-19 restrictions, Mr Kiryk said the upgrade was a necessity.
“We’re trying to support over 200 footballers at a venue that is bursting at the seams,” he said.
“We’ve got a massively underutilised facility there, and hence the reason we’ve had to go this way and try and takeover some additional space to support our 200 plus footballers.
“With under-9s, 11s, 13s, 15s, 17s, B-grade, A-grade, women’s football and they’ve got a massively underused facility there with not a single member.
“We’re in a really ageing facility that isn’t up to standard to support what it needs to support. We need to do internally what we can to get by, and this is a step in the right direction, so we can at least try and support that.
“Especially with COVID, we just can’t comply with current COVID restrictions with our size of our change rooms and etc, we cannot comply.
“This has also been a bit of a driver in having to go down this path and essentially take back what is ours. It was done officially at the 2019 AGM, it is our court.
“It was just handled wrong by the committee and I wasn’t the president at the time. The committee at the time handled it poorly, I think, in communication errors and issues and we acknowledge that and apologised for that at that meeting.”
Squash games are played at the centre from 6pm to 9pm from Monday through to Thursday. Monday nights are fully booked, leaving just three nights of operation for players to book.
Already the centre is no longer able to hold squash tournaments, having lost access to the third court.
In February last year, the squash club arrived to find a hole smashed into the wall of court three.
Mr Curnow said it cost about $100,000 to build a squash court.
The facility is also in need of an upgrade, with some lights hanging by a thread from the ceiling, others not in working order, and no working toilets.