Derek joined the committee in 1986 and has been there ever since except for five years, giving 30 years' service. Between 1987-88 Derek was men's captain, president from 1989-90 and 2006-2009. He was treasurer from 1991–92 then 1995-98 and has held that position since 2008 (20 years.)
"Between 2007/8 we built a deck on the end of the building facing the rugby fields and changed all the windows in the building to aluminium. Jo Hirst was secretary at the time and was very instrumental in securing grants for both projects. When the Multi-Sports building was completed, we upgraded the building to match with a new coat of paint.
"We're involved with the Bush Multi-Sport complex, but we own our own building. Andrea Herbert was president between 2013-15 when we heated all the outside walls of the court, through local company Sedco Engineering.
"The courts always suffered from bad condensation problems due to them being on the southeast side of the building. A water membrane runs around the outside of the walls, which is all covered inside a wall-timber framework and is operated by a Diakin heat pump system.
"You can dial it up to whatever temperature you want just as you would a heat pump. There are no condensation problems with our courts anymore. Heat pumps were also put throughout the complex as well and this has transformed both the courts and complex.
"We're very proud of our squash courts - for a small town it's a really good complex when compared to others', it's one of the better complexes.
"In the late 80s-late 90s most squash clubs memberships were sliding off their peaks (ours was 300 closed membership in its day) and we hit a bottom of around 60 members. Our current membership is around 105, which is very strong on today's [general level of] memberships, when you factor in the size of Pahiatua to other areas.
"Over the years we've worked really hard, to create a warm, friendly club which in turn has resulted in a strong club membership. This is due to the hard work of the past and current committees.
"When I was club captain back in the late 80s we used to run tournaments all weekend, (starting on a Thursday night, with 64 players in total, and they would finish late on a Sunday afternoon and there was always a big social night on the Saturday, with some very bad squash played on the Sunday morning. Today they still start on Thursday nights but finish on Saturday nights, with around 44 players.
"We are very proud of the fact that the club is debt-free and has reserves in the bank for a rainy day, as it were. It's a credit to all the hard work of past and current committee members."
One important aspect to any club is the social aspect and this aspect of the club is strong and friendly, which is a credit to all its members.
Tararua Squash Club members will be celebrating the 50th jubilee of Tararua Squash Rackets Club (Pahiatua) Inc. in November this year.
