By Rob Dinerman
A two-time Haverford College squash captain despite having never played the sport before her freshman year and later an active and extraordinarily well-regarded volunteer coach at StreetSquash, Randee Johnson is a compelling example of what an impactful and positive role one’s leadership skills and personality can have upon the entire culture of a squash program, whether in college or afterward.
Johnson also embodies the remarkable effect caprice can exert on someone’s life experience. She had never played squash – or any other organized team sport – during her prep-school years at Loomis-Chaffee, a prep school in Windsor, CT (near Hartford), where her only connection to varsity sports was as the manager of the boy’s basketball team. When she discovered she needed to earn one more athletic credit in the spring of her senior year, Johnson took a cardio class in the school gymnasium, during part of which, she and two friends took turns hitting squash balls haphazardly with borrowed racquets on otherwise empty courts and invented their own games (since none of them knew the rules of squash). At the end of that academic year, as a graduation gift, one of those friends gave each of the other two a squash racquet, not intending to encourage either of them to keep playing but just as a memento of the enjoyable times they had spent together that spring.
The following autumn (of 2009), Johnson took the racquet with her to Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia, and after seeing a notice on a bulletin board that there was a women’s squash team needing more players, she decided to put the racquet to use. She spent most of that winter learning the game from assistant coach Sue Lawrence, a former (from 1983-96) Caribbean champion who would win the 2012 World Masters 50-and-over squash championship and whose presence and leadership as an accomplished black female squash player caused Johnson to regard her as an inspirational figure and role model. Though she played in just a few dual-meet matches when the team (which had a thin roster) needed her to fill its nine-person lineup, Johnson was enthralled with the sport. She continued to play throughout the spring and autumn, by which time Niki Clement, a two-time second-team All-American at Bowdoin College during the mid-2000’s, had arrived at Haverford to begin her first year as the Head Coach of both the men’s and women’s squash teams.
Johnson immediately bonded with Clement, and the pair formed a relationship that both described in the same way – as “incredibly special” – even when interviewed separately more than a dozen years later. The coach and player each led the team in different ways during Johnson’s final three college years, with Clement somehow managing to simultaneously be both an authority figure (as every coach should be) and a close friend, while Johnson, who was elected captain for both her junior and senior years, recruited team members every autumn, ran a series of fall clinics where she paired beginners with experienced team members, led the team warm-ups to ensure everyone was ready when formal team practice began and contributed in a host of additional ways to the team’s culture, enthusiasm level and morale.
Perhaps Johnson’s most salient characteristic, according to Coach Clement, was how “Randee put what was best for a teammate or the team ahead of herself, without hesitation and all the time.” Fittingly and revealingly, when asked more than a decade after her senior year to identify what she viewed as the highlight moment of her college squash career, Johnson responded not by recalling an especially satisfying personal victory but by noting how proud she felt when, in the final team competition of her senior year, one of her teammates (a freshman named Sarah Madigan, who had never played squash before Johnson recruited her a few months earlier) won the clinching fifth match in Haverford’s 6-3 triumph over Tufts University in the final round of the 2013 E Division tournament.
Johnson views her time on Haverford’s squash team as the overall highlight of her college experience. Shortly after graduating and moving to New York in Autumn 2013 to study for a Masters in Math Education at City College of New York (CCNY), she became a volunteer coach at StreetSquash, fortuitously located nearby. While finishing her Masters degree and embarking on a nine-year career as a teacher and tutor of upper-middle-school mathematics, Johnson spent three years coaching at Street Squash at least three times per week, playing practice games there and representing the club in the NY Squash women’s league, something she continues to do right to the present day.
Coach Clement achieved success with her teams at Haverford by getting them to love being “grinders” who earn their points by getting good depth with their drives and displaying a level of fitness and stamina, both physical and mental, that is superior to that of their opponents. At StreetSquash, Johnson was known for instilling in her students a similar value set, namely the importance of “leaving it all on the court, giving every effort, both while preparing beforehand for the match and then during the actual competition, so that after it ends, whatever the outcome, you can walk away without having any regrets or misgivings.”
Joanne Schickerling, the current Director of StreetSquash, and Coach Clement both describe Johnson’s impact on their respective programs in terms that are so similar as to be virtually verbatim: they characterize her as being passionate about people, uniquely skilled at bringing disparate personalities together, able to make everyone feel valued and welcome and capable of fostering a sense of togetherness that in a major way contributes to a positive team-first attitude.
Johnson is intent on maintaining those priorities as she embarks on a new career as a Data Product Owner at GoHealth Urgent Care while also launching her own small business, The Ariana Collective, which sells handmade candles, 3D printed earrings and other crafts. Despite those twin demands, she remains as emotionally committed to squash as ever (calling it “the driving force in my life”) and as motivated as ever to give back to the game that has brought her so much enjoyment and fulfillment for the past 16 years and counting.
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Rob Dinerman has written 18 books about squash, five of which are Histories of the sport at various top-tier colleges, including A Century Of Champions: 100 Years Of College Squash, 1923-2023, which was released in March 2024. His most recent book, Racquets At Rest: Remembering 40 Lives That Shaped The Game Of Squash In America, was released in February 2025.
