Hey, it’s Samantha here again and I wanted to talk to you guys about my college, Bates. Some of you may or may not know that when I went away last fall to Bates I wasn’t going alone. I knew a lot of people who were going to be there. The squash coach at Bates is Pat Cosquer who used to work for StreetSquash. I also had with me Rakey Drammeh and Diosmiry Rodriguez, other StreetSquashers. There were also students from other urban squash programs there. Patrick Williams and Jose Rivera were already at Bates and joining me for my freshmen year in addition to the other StreetSquashers were Rodney Galvao and Ashley Brooks. They are all from the program in Boston called Squashbusters. So it was safe to say that my freshmen year was set up to be a lot of fun and it was.

Since I left for boarding school and repeated my sophomore year there I became class 2010 and not 2009. So I wasn’t really close friends with Rakey and Diosmiry, but after this year I can say that we become close friends. I got to know them and they found out that I wasn’t this quiet person that they once perceived me as. One of my most fun memories from freshman year was the 80’s dance and I spent the whole night with Diosmiry, Rakey, Rodney and Ashley among other people. We got to dress up like we were from the 80’s and dance to 80’s music.

At Bates I also play squash and I had Rakey and Ashley with me on the squash team. My first year at college squash was exciting. This year was our travel year so we were away for most of the season. We usually spent all day at the squash courts and our nights at hotels having fun with all of our other teammates. Every weekend we would play about 5 matches so it was a challenging and tiring experience, but great nonetheless.

This year at Bates was one of the best years of my life. Wish me luck for Sophomore year!

(From left to right: Diosmiry Rodriguez ’10, Kristian Muldoon, Samantha Matos ’10, Rodney Galvao, and Rakey Drammeh ’10)