Shabana Khan Receives Brauns Award at U.S. Open
We'd like to extend our congratulations to Shabana Khan on receiving the 2016 Brauns Award at the U.S. Open. This award recognizes an individual with an outstanding contribution to the administration of Squash. Shabana has had an incredible influence on the sport, and in particular, in our region over many decades. This culminated with the World Squash Championships coming to Bellevue last year, which really was an incredible achievement. And she already has her sights on the future, with four big Junior tournaments coming to the region, along with another PSA event next year. Congratulations Shabana!
Full excerpt from US Squash website below. Their article is available here:
https://www.ussquash.com/2016-brauns-award-given-to-shabana-khan-at-u-s-open/
Shabana Khan was honored tonight with the 2016 W. Stewart Brauns, Jr. Award for major administrative contributions to the game of squash. Dent Wilkins, the senior vice president of operations at US Squash, presented Khan with the award on the ASB GlassCourt.
An outstanding player, Khan reached twenty-three in the world and won the National Singles title in 2001. She played for Team USA in three world team championships, as well as in the Pan American Games.
Khan has run pro tournaments in Seattle for decades and has been the lead person behind the only two open world championships ever held in the U.S.: in 1999 she helped produce the Women’s World Championship and last year she ran the Men’s World Championships.
This season under Khan’s leadership, PRO Squash Club in Bellevue is organizing an unprecedented skein of events: they are hosting four junior tournaments—bronze, silver, gold and JCT—as well as a college showcase; and next spring they are hosting a $200,000, sixteen-man pro tournament, possibly the most lucrative event in tour history.
The Brauns is named after a longtime dedicated leader of US Squash, Stew Brauns, who was a tournament director, head referee, committee chair and a founder of the World Squash Federation. It is apt to give the Brauns Award to Shabana considering Brauns’ passion for professional squash—he was the tournament director for the U.S. Open in the 1950s. US Squash has annually given out the Brauns Award since the 1980s. Previous winners include Jahangir Khan, Will Carlin, Beth Rasin, Danielle Maur, Treddy Ketcham and last year’s honoree, Larry Sconzo.
Source: US Squash