Dateline January 22, 2025 — Earlier this week Narelle Krizek announced that she has decided to retire from the SDA Tour. She thereby ended an outstanding pro doubles career during which she won eight U.S. National Open Championships (four each in Women’s and Mixed Doubles) and three World Doubles crowns, exhibiting in the process a degree of longevity that can be best expressed by the fact that her last U.S. National Doubles/World Doubles title (the 2022 Women’s event) occurred a full 16 years after her first.

At the 2006 World Doubles in Toronto, she demonstrated her doubles versatility by first winning the Mixed Doubles title while playing the right wall with Preston Quick before then moving over to the left wall and teaming up with Steph Hewitt to win the Women’s Doubles tournament just a few days later (Quick also pulled off a both-walls “double” when he won the men’s event playing the right wall with Chris Deratnay). That pair of World Doubles championships in 2006 jump-started a run during which Krizek won a U.S. National Doubles or World Doubles title in nine of the 12 years from 2006-17 inclusive: she won the 2007 U.S. Mixed with Paul Price (along with the Canadian Doubles with Hewitt), the 2008 U.S. Mixed with Dave Rosen, the 2010 U.S. with Suzie Pierrepont, the 2011 U.S. with her sister Tarsh McElhinny, the 2012 U.S. Mixed with Manek Mathur, the 2013 World Mixed with Price, the 2014 U.S. with Hewitt and the 2017 U.S. Mixed with Ed Garno. In later years she and Pierrepont won the 2022 U.S. Women’s Doubles (in a five-game final over the Elani Landman and her twin sister Lume) and the 2024 U.S. Century Mixed Doubles with Garno.

Even more important than Krizek’s on-court accomplishments has been her off-court contributions during the past more than two decades. These have ranged from her years as a teaching pro at the Merion Cricket Club and the Loomis Chaffee School during the late 1990’s, to her time at the Baltimore Country Club and the Field Club of Greenwich during the first decade of the 2000’s, to her later work at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, where she and her husband Rob created Good Nick Squash, a comprehensive program in which they administered and coordinated personalized lessons, clinics, camps, leagues, off-court training and coaching at tournaments. During the first half of the 2020’s, Krizek moved her base of operations to the Arlen Specter Center, where she worked with the Center’s Executive Director Ned Edwards in her capacity as Director of Women & Girls US Squash and Associate of Advancement until July 2024.

However, perhaps Krizek’s most significant achievement of all occurred when she founded the Women’s Doubles Squash Association (WDSA) in Autumn 2007 as a women’s counterpart to the men’s International Squash Doubles Association (ISDA) pro doubles tour. She single-handedly ran the WDSA for eight years — winning plenty of its tournaments along the way, including the 2009, 2014 and 2015 Turner Cup (the most lucrative stop on the WDSA tour) with Pierrepont and a number of others with Pierrepont, Hewitt, McElhinny, and the 2008 Briggs Cup with Demer Holleran, adding up to 26 pro titles in all — and played a major role in the current pro hardball doubles environment, in which both the men’s and women’s tours operate under the Squash Doubles Association banner. Her last SDA appearance occurred less than four months ago in early October, when at age 44 she and Hewitt advanced to the semis of the Maryland Club Open.

Krizek’s immediate focus going forward will be on her two sons Will, a freshman on Dickenson College’s squash team, and Blake, a 10th-grader whose extra-curricular activities are tennis and the guitar. Her husband Rob is also undergoing a career change, having recently left Lawrenceville after 15 years to take on the position of Director of Sales for Pro Sport Court/Padel Plus selling padel, pickle ball and squash courts in North America.

Narelle Krizek has been an exceptional player, teaching pro, coach and ambassador for squash for more than a quarter-century, and the SDA wishes her only the very best as she moves on to the next chapter in her life.

Rob Dinerman

Previous articleMFS Boston Pro Am: Honoring Tradition and Showcasing Excellence
Next articleNorth American Open Concludes in Style