Amanda Sobhy exclusive: “I draw upon life’s setbacks to fuel me when squash matches get hard”
The USA squash star tells Olympics.com how recovering from an eating disorder and two ruptured Achilles tendons gave her an unbreakable mindset, and why she could make more history at the LA 2028 Olympics.
Squash
Amanda Sobhy didn’t grow up hoping to follow in the footsteps of famous U.S. squash players. As an outlier sport on the nation’s vast radar, there simply were none.
Instead, her hero was tennis legend Serena Williams.
“She was just so powerful and fierce, and power was my thing as well,” Sobhy told Olympics.com at the 2024 World Teams Championships in Hong Kong, being shown live on Olympics.com.
“And she just did her thing. She was an intense competitor and that was something I really aspired to be.”
Adopting this mentality, Sobhy became the USA’s first squash world junior champion in 2010.
After turning professional, she made more history as the first U.S. player to reach the top five of the Professional Squash Association (PSA) rankings, in 2021.
Amanda Sobhy reaches for a ball while on international duty with Team USA.
Sobhy did, however, have a squash mentor closer to home.
Her father represented the national team of Egypt, a country where squash enjoys status as a major sport. The North African nation has produced a seemingly never-ending conveyor belt of squash champions over the past three decades.
It wasn’t long before Sobhy started playing and excelled.
Despite learning her trade in country clubs in the U.S., Sobhy’s Egyptian roots meant she wasn’t intimidated by their players’ reputations.
“Our father would take us over to Egypt every summer for five weeks and I grew up playing against the Egyptians at one of the original sporting clubs called Heliopolis, which is where men’s world number one Ali Farag and former champion Ramy Ashour played. So I grew up watching them practise,” she continued.
“I am Egyptian by blood and I'm an Egyptian citizen too so I understand the style of play. My style is a little bit of a hybrid of both the Egyptian style and the structured Western style.”
Disaster strikes twice for Amanda Sobhy
This unique style combined with a strong self-belief saw Sobhy enjoy a meteoric rise in squash’s women's world rankings.
In 2017, she was playing the best squash of her career when she was dealt a devastating blow.
Playing at a tournament in Colombia, she ruptured the Achilles tendon in her left leg.
After 10 months of gruelling rehabilitation, she returned, intent on making up for lost time. A fourth U.S. National title followed later that year and a career-high world ranking of three.
Sobhy continued this great form over the next few seasons and arrived at the 2023 Hong Kong Open in confident mood before disaster struck again.
After pushing off the back wall to retrieve a ball in her first match, she ruptured the Achilles tendon in her right leg.
“I knew right away what it was. And the shock of it is probably the toughest part to wrap my head around. I never expected such a serious injury to happen again in my career,” Sobhy admitted.
“My initial thoughts were: What did I do to deserve this? Why is this happening to me? I'm a good person. I work hard.”
After taking some time to process her latest setback, Sobhy knew that the only way to get through this was to change her outlook.
Self-pity and anger were replaced by a resolve to return as an even better squash player.
“I was able to flip the script and look at it as a positive. I didn't get to do the rehab as well as I would have liked the first time around, and now I have the opportunity to do it again. So I would come back better,” she said.
“I can always find meaning out of any negative situation. I decided to take whatever positives I could out of this experience and not let it destroy my career. I wanted to prove to myself that I could come back not once, but I can do it twice.
“It was easier in a sense the second time because I knew what to expect and I could take the lessons learned from the first time around and apply it to this rehab process. But at the same time, it was harder mentally because I knew how gruelling and long that rehab process is. But I'm just very proud of myself for coming back and how I tackled that journey.”
A testament to her hard work lies in the good form she has enjoyed since her latest return to the court in September this year.
Physically, she is in peak condition, but importantly, the 31-year-old feels that overcoming these tribulations has strengthened her mental resilience.
“The toolbox of experiences I can call upon whenever I'm having a tough time is huge. There is nothing tougher than what I've just been through,” she said.
“It's just forced me to trust myself so much more. No matter what life throws at me now, I know I can get through it. It's made me so much stronger in the process. It's made me learn to trust myself way more, so when I’m in a difficult point in a match and feel fatigued, I can draw upon the things I went through in the last year with my injury and use that strength to fuel me.”
Overcoming a secret eating disorder
Sobhy’s toolbox also includes coming through a 10-year off-court tribulation.
In November 2021 the squash star revealed that she had been battling an eating disorder that started when she went to study at Harvard University as an athlete-scholar.
“I was the U.S. number one and college number one. There were a lot of expectations on me to be undefeated, to not lose a match and even to not lose a game. I was playing for the team, and also as an amateur on the pro tour to maintain my ranking while studying and trying to have a social life,” she explained.
“I just didn't know how to manage or cope with the expectations and the pressure that was put on me as an 18-year-old. So I turned to food. It was always my comfort. Regardless of the emotion, I would just turn to food and I would binge to the point where I just felt sick to my stomach and then I would purge.
“Then you have the feelings, the shame, the guilt, the disgust that’s associated with that. You're stuck in this toxic cycle. Then I would over-exercise and under-eat until the next binge happened."
“No one knew, including my parents and everyone closest to me because on paper everything looked good. I had good grades and I won 62 games of squash in a row. It looked like I could do it all” - Amanda Sobhy to Olympics.com
Opening up was the first step towards recovery. Sobhy had started working with a mental coach for her squash and decided to tell her about her battle with food.
She then hired a dietician to ensure she would maintain a healthier relationship with food and decided to share her story in the hope that it could help others.
“I felt like I wanted to take back the last little bit of power from it. I knew that I probably wasn't the only one struggling. If I could share my story and help others in the process, then it would be worth it, no matter how scary it was to reveal this massive secret that I'd been hiding,” she said.
“It was a hugely cathartic release for me, but honestly, I didn't realise the magnitude of how the story's reach would touch people around the world and how many people resonated with it. It was probably one of the prouder moments in my career, even though it was a very difficult journey.”
Rise of squash in the USA
Sobhy’s success, despite the challenges she has faced on and off the court, has made her even more of a figurehead for squash in the USA.
In 2022, she helped the USA's women to their first World Teams Championships final in Cairo. This historic moment added to the growing popularity of the sport at home.
The U.S. Junior Open tripled in participation between 2006-2021 and is now the largest junior squash tournament in the world, while the U.S. High School Championships now feature over 1500 players from around the country.
“Squash is a huge gateway into Ivy League colleges and now we have the U.S. National Centre too. So it's no longer just college. We can go pro and support all the players under one roof unlike when I started and had to find my own team. That has incentivised this next generation of players,” Harvard graduate Soby said.
“College squash is like the minor leagues for the professional tour now which I think is phenomenal.”
USA's Sabrina Sobhy, Amanda Sobhy, Olivia Blatchford, and Olivia Weaver celebrate after winning the 2022 World Teams Championships silver
USA’s excitement for squash Olympic debut at LA2028
With the sport due to make its Olympic debut at LA 2028 and with the lure of winning a gold medal on home soil, playing numbers in the USA are set to keep climbing.
Sobhy will be 35 when the Games come to her home nation and is determined to make the team for Los Angeles and keep creating history.
“It will be huge. For me personally, with everything I've been through and my story and my injury, I don't know if there are any Olympians that made it to the Olympics after coming back from two Achilles ruptures,” she said.
Should she make it, thousands more youngsters in the U.S. will get to see their nation’s best-ever player in action.
A shining example of how hard work and perseverance through tough times can result in world-leading success.
There will never again be a squash player in the U.S. who can say they didn’t have an American role model to look up to.
“Having a comeback story like mine and to be able to podium would be truly fantastic. I'll be at the tail end of my career, but anything's possible. It has motivated me to keep pushing and keep playing. Having it in the States is the cherry on top for squash in the U.S.”