Narelle Tippett Krizek Calls Time On Her SDA Career by Rob Dinerman Dateline February 2, 2025---
Late last month 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 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 squash community wishes her only the very best as she moves on
to the next chapter in her life.