Meet MAC’s Squash Club Champion

By Charles Smith, Squash Committee

Adam Perkiomaki recently won the MAC Squash Club Championship. A Portland native, Perkiomaki played on the U.S. Squash Junior National Team and was an All-American squash player at Rochester University in New York. After college, he played in highlevel international squash tournaments and was assistant coach at Rochester University when their squash team made it to the national championship final match.

Here, he shares his squash origin story, his journey as a competitive player, and how coaching puts a new perspective on the sport.

Winged M: How did you get started with squash?

Adam Perkiomaki: My dad (Jukka Perkiomaki) started playing squash later in his 40s. When I was 3 or 4, he would bring me down to the MAC when he was playing with his buddies. Back then, they had these old, heavy wooden squash doors. He’d throw the ball and racquet in the court and close the door. The handle was too high for me to reach, and the door was too heavy to open, so I’d end up just hitting the ball for like an hour while he played with his buddies. Then my dad would come in and play with me.

When I was about 5 or 6, I started doing junior squash clinics with the MAC squash pro Khalid Mir. He was just great with juniors. I was lucky enough to have about three or four other kids my age at a similar skill level. It helped to have a similar age, similar interest kind of cohort to keep us all coming back to squash.

WM: What was your junior training?

AP: It was basically just junior clinics two times a week. We would all play games and matches against one another. I think the way Khalid got us hooked and kept us coming back was [to challenge us with milkshakes]. At the end of junior clinic, he would say, ‘If you can beat me to nine points, I’ll buy you a milkshake.’ We would wait for the end of the clinic to try to beat him. It would always get to like eight points right at the end, and then he’d beat us, so we’d never get the milkshake, and we just kept coming back for years. And I think the milkshakes might have kept me playing from age 5 to 10.

WM: When did you play your first junior tournament?

AP: I played my first junior tournament in New York City when I was 10 years old. My dad went with me, and there were a few older juniors from the MAC. I think [national champion and MAC squash pro] Julian Illingworth actually was playing in the under-19 or under-17 age group in that tournament.

I ended up winning my age bracket. Before that tournament, I had never played any kids from the East Coast or from other parts of the country. I had no idea if I was competitive or if I was good. After that, I just wanted to keep playing more tournaments. So that kind of hooked me.

WM: How did you end up playing college squash at the University of Rochester?

AP: While a junior at Lincoln High School, I qualified for the U.S. Squash Junior National Team. The coach at that point was Martin Heath. He was fourth in the world and was going head-to-head with Peter Nickel, Jonathan Power, and Karim Darwish in their primes. I was kind of starstruck being on the team with him as the head coach. I got to travel to Switzerland with the U.S. team, and Martin and had a great time connecting and bonding with the team there.

At that point, Martin was also the head squash coach at the University of Rochester. With Martin as head coach, Rochester had jumped from being ranked in the top 40 college squash teams — basically a club team — and were on the brink of a top 10 national ranking. It just so happened that a really close friend on the U.S. team, Matt Dominic, committed early to Rochester. So that kind of helped push me in that direction. A great coach and one of my best friends growing up from the East Coast were at Rochester. So I ended up being recruited by Martin at Rochester and put my letter of intent there.

WM: Where was the squash program at Rochester when you got there?

AP: When I entered as a freshman, we had finished the previous season at 11. Then, my freshman year, we got our highest-ever finish. We finished third at nationals; we had a massive upset win in the semifinal against Yale. At this point, besides Trinity College, it was Ivy League schools that were dominating the top 10, so it was kind of cool to see this wave of underdog-type schools that were recruiting internationally and took a different approach to the game. My roommate, Matt Dominic, and I were the only two Americans on the Rochester team. It was a very international team.

WM: Was the approach of recruiting internationally a novelty at that point?

AP: At that point, yes. Trinity College had been recruiting internationally and was adding to their list of national championships. But Martin — through his name recognition and reputation — was able to pull heavily from all over the world. The international aspect of the squash team was one of the coolest parts of getting to go to school in Rochester. We had a couple guys from South America — Peru and Colombia — and there was a guy from Guyana, a couple guys from England, another one from Switzerland, and a guy from India. Having that melting pot of people in Rochester, New York, of all places and bonding over squash was amazing.

WM: Junior squash is an individual sport. Help me understand how you responded to playing on a squash team in college?

AP: Junior squash is really individual, and you put a lot of pressure on yourself to perform for your individual results and personal ranking. But once you get to college, you’re part of the bigger team, so your result is part of the team result. That shifts your motivation. When I got on the court in college, I began to have more intrinsic motivation to play and to train and try to get the results for the team rather than just for my own personal ranking. Being part of a greater whole is really motivational and creates strong bonds on the team. The more you push yourself, the better it is for the whole team and yourself. Team squash is the best of both worlds in that sense.

WM: You finished at Rochester in 2013. What happened with squash after college?

AP: At that point, I really wanted to play professionally. I was playing amazing squash, but I was kind of torn whether to go into the working world or chase this feeling and keep this squash dream alive.

My plan to continue with squash involved the Finnish military. I have dual citizenship with Finland. There’s mandatory service in the Finnish military. My plan was to apply to Finland’s sports military school so I could actually play squash for the Finnish military and do my basic training at the same time. And it just so happened that same year there were three Finnish nationals that applied for the three available spots in the squash sports academy within the military, so I got bumped out by one spot.

Then I thought, all right, I’ve got to do something real. I came back to Portland and worked at Nike for a year while I was still playing in some local satellite or PSA squash events. I was lucky enough to play in the World Championships up in Seattle when it was hosted there in 2015. I also got to play in a U.S. Open qualifying event. I was trying to still train, but I realized at that point I either had to be all in and give it my best and go for it fully professionally or not. It’s so tough to balance work life and full-time squash training.

I was planning just to stop squash all together and really commit to the corporate working world, but then I got a call from Martin Heath. He was looking for an assistant coach at Rochester. It was a great deal at the time because the position included a break on tuition at the Rochester University graduate school of your choice. So now, I could be an assistant coach and still play with and train with high-level players. I could still play some tournaments and also push my career aspirations of going to business school at the same time. So I spent two years at Rochester coaching and pursuing my business degree. During that time, Rochester achieved its highest rating, finishing second in the nation in 2016.

WM: How was your transition into coaching?

AP: Coaching is way harder than playing. Experiencing it from the flip side — from behind the glass — was miles more difficult than it was actually being a player. As a coach, you can say words and give motivation, but you don’t have control of the outcome.

When I was coaching, Rochester reached the finals of the national championships. This was the last match of many guys’ careers because they’re going to go off to enter the working world after this. You’ve basically been training for this your whole life. It’s a momentous occasion. And we lost in the last match in the final game to Yale. That was the most insane excitement and heartbreak that I’ve ever experienced in sport. But it’s an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. But yeah, coaching totally gave me a different perspective on the game.

WM: Did you continue playing squash after your coaching stint at Rochester?

AP: I actually took the whole pandemic off. I didn’t play at all for about two years during that time. I played consistently from age 5 until age 30, and I’d never taken more than a couple months off before the pandemic hit.

WM: You won the 2023 MAC Squash Club Championship. How many days a week are you playing squash now?

AP: I try to get down to the MAC at least a couple nights a week. There are some great juniors players here that I’ve been trying to get hits with. I’ve been playing some doubles with my dad and my sister, Kaija, so that keeps me coming down. Also, I am coaching on the weekends over at the Lloyd Athletic Club, which has been really fun. So I am usually on the court a couple days on the weekends.