Angela Smith

Who is Angela Smith?

Angela Smith is a retired professional English squash player: Smith was one of the world's top ranked squash players from 1979 to 1990. Smith was also the first female squash player to turn professional and widely recognized for changing the face of women's squash by doing so.

Her first overseas position was as squash coach at the prestigious Vertical Club in Manhattan, New York, where she rubbed shoulders with the world's sporting greats such as Vitas Gerulaitis, the tennis pro at the club. Her contract there was said to be the most lucrative of its kind in the sport at that time. There she coached many famous personalities of the time such as Jackie Kennedy, the widow of the US president. Following her successful period in the States and her significant input into the Women's Sport Foundation of America, Smith took up an even greater challenge in Nassau, Bahamas where she took squash from the realms of an expat sport to one embraced by locals. She was instrumental in Shell sponsoring the squash programme and several of the juniors that Smith coached later went on to play on the world circuit themselves.