Olivia Blatchford: Leading the way

The U.S. junior squash team goes into the Junior World Championships later this month with hopes for its first-ever medal, and 16-year-old Olivia Blatchford is leading the way.

Blatchford will be the No. 1 player for Team USA at the Junior World Championships beginning today in Chennai, India, and also will compete in the individual competition.

"It would be great to do something new and be able to come back with a medal in the World teams (competition)," Blatchford said from her home in Wilton, Conn. "That'd be great."

Blatchford could be the next big thing in American squash, and she couldn't be coming at a better time. Squash is in the midst of a hard push to get included on the 2016 Olympic program, something it just barely missed out on for the 2012 Olympics in London.

And if squash makes it into the 2016 Games, Blatchford would be 23.

"It would be perfect for me if squash got in," Blatchford said.

Squash is pretty much the priority for Blatchford, who takes her high school classes online so she can travel and focus on training. She won the prestigious British Open Girls Under-15 competition three years ago-unofficially making her the best U-15 player in the world at the time-and hasn't lost focus since.

Instead of waking up before the sun and heading to the local high school with her sister, Blatchford sleeps in until 9 a.m. and spends the day training and doing schoolwork. On weekends-or sometimes longer-she is busy traveling to various Women's International Squash Players Association tournaments.

She doesn't miss the early mornings and teen drama of high school one bit.

"A lot of people, when they hear 'independent study' or 'home schooling,' they say, 'Don't you miss the interaction?' " Blatchford said. "But with the WISPA training I'm doing and the traveling, you don't really miss the school."

And it's not like she doesn't have interaction with her peers. Her best friend is from Wilton, and she has enough squash friends around the world to declare: "If I went anywhere in the world I'd probably have a place to stay."

That might be a bit of a stretch, but not by much. In her young life Blatchford has been playing global competition everywhere from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and she even spent a year at Ackworth School in England.

"I (can be) stuck just about anywhere in England and I have a friend," she said.

With her early success and unique lifestyle, you'd think it would be easy for Blatchford to get caught up in her mission. But that's not true at all, said Jack Wyant, the coach for the USA Juniors.

"She's a good kid,'' Wyant said. "I think what I would highlight with her is in addition to being the best, or among the best juniors in the world, I would say that she has a good head on her shoulders. It's easy for top athletes in any sport to get a big head, and she has always been grounded and has had a good sense of herself and what's important."

So it's no surprise that Blatchford is dedicated to playing professional squash while also pursuing a college degree.

"Since I was a little girl I wanted to play on the WISPA tour," Blatchford said. "I am very serious also about going to college and furthering my education. I love school actually and I would love to play on the pro tour and see where that takes me."

At the moment, she is focused on the Junior World Championships. The four-person American team also includes No. 2 Amanda Sobhy, No. 3 Julie Cerullo and alternate Yarden Odinak. Two of the three teammates need to win their matches to win a round in the team competition.

"We have an amazing chance," Blatchford said. "We could be in the semifinals, we could find ourselves in the finals. We have a really strong team right now. Some of the teams have a really good No. 1, but it kind of edges out when you get to their No. 2 and 3, and we have a really strong No. 2 and 3."

Egypt is considered the overwhelming favorite going into the competition, but the members of Team USA believe they can beat any team and are optimistic about bringing a medal back home for the first time ever.

The team also has the advantage of great camaraderie from years of playing together. Blatchford and Cerullo even played at the same club when Blatchford lived in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"We all have known each other for a while," Cerullo said. "Many of us have been playing each other since Under-13s or Under-11s."

Blatchford was 5 when she first picked up a squash racquet. She was watching her dad compete in a tournament and instantly was "mesmerized" by the sport.  By the time she was 11, it was apparent that she had what it takes to succeed.

"She has been a special player for pretty much her whole life, but it's around that age that she really got going," Wyant said. "It had nothing to do with me. I don't want to claim any credit. Somebody like her, the best thing you can do as a coach is stay out of her way because she is really a special talent, she knows what she is doing.''

Often, Wyant said, top juniors can achieve high rankings based on their athleticism. But Wyant said that what makes Blatchford stand out is that she is "tactically'' strong, too.

"She knows what to do with the ball in virtually every situation on the court,'' he said.

Blatchford could finish in the top 10 individually this summer and Team USA could potentially bring home that first-ever medal, but if not, there's always next time. Blatchford and Sobhy still will be juniors at the 2011 Junior World Championships.

"It's very rare that you see somebody her age that understands the game as well as she does,'' Wyant said. "Most people would be as tactically strong as her in their late 20s or 30s."

And who knows, she might even play in the 2016 Olympics. But she's not getting ahead of herself. Right now she just can't wait to get to India.

"I'm quite keen to go and play there and I think I have a good chance to do well," she said.

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Chrös McDougall is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of the United States Olympic Committee or any National Governing Bodies.