In preseason, Harvard coach Satinder Bajwa commented on Hall’s improved quickness.

“She’s probably twice as fast, and her movement around the court is excellent,” Bajwa said. “Her crispness on the ball is better. She’s been working.”

But Hall wasn’t always so light on her feet, and her journey to squash prominence didn’t start out quite the way she imagined her athletic career would go.

Sister Sister

“First I wanted to be a ballerina, but I was way too fat,” Hall said. “They were literally like, ‘This is not the sport for you, honey.’”

Unfazed, Hall’s next goal was worldclass swimming, but that stalled at an early age, too.

“I couldn’t get myself to dive off the little blocks,” Hall said. “I would just jump off the side and everyone else would dive, so I just sucked at that.”

But then, one of the most powerful forces in competition introduced her to squash: sibling rivalry.

“My sister [Colby ’02] picked up squash, and she started playing tournaments,” Hall explained. “And because it’s squash and no one plays squash when you’re eight and you’re playing in under-9 tournaments, obviously you’re going to do well. So she started doing really well and bringing home all these trophies, and my parents were giving her all this attention. So it really all comes from jealousy.”

Hall went to her first tournament and didn’t win a single point. She went to her father crying and told him she was going to quit.

“My dad just said, ‘When you fall off the horse, you get back on,’” Hall said. “Also at the time, I was playing with this little plastic junior racket. So I was like, ‘It’s the plastic.’ And my dad bought me a transition racket for in between junior rackets and normal rackets, and I thought I was a superstar.”

Hall pulled out a win at her next tournament and the superstar career had truly begun. She would eventually follow her sister to Harvard, where Colby was the co-captain with Margaret Elias ’02.

Hall had a history with Elias as well, since they were fierce rivals in junior squash.

“We would have these marathon matches, and she had the worst temper,” Hall said of Elias. “At one point she threw her racket, and if I hadn’t ducked, it would have hit me in the head. The USSRA made her write me an official apology note.”

Hall confesses to having a bit of a temper herself; she actually has permanent vein damage in her right leg from hitting herself with her racket during matches.