How the Khan Family Built American Squash from Bellevue

“What the Andretti family is to auto racing, the local Khan family is to squash. There have been seven Khans ranked No. 1 in the world.”

It's a strong claim and the Seattle Times made it without hedging. Most of the time when a sport has a "first family," they're a famous one or two, a parent who played and a kid who turned pro. The Khans are something different. Three generations. Seven World No. 1 rankings. National titles, Pan American gold, a Hall of Fame induction in 2024, and the first Men's World Squash Championship ever held on U.S. soil, staged right here in Bellevue.

If you've ever wondered why a small city east of Seattle ended up with one of the deepest junior squash scenes in the country, this is the answer.

1968: Yusuf Khan arrives in Seattle

Yusuf Khan was a 10-time All-India squash champion when he arrived in Seattle in 1968. He took the head pro position at the Seattle Tennis Club, and over the next several decades he became, more or less single-handedly, the founding figure of Pacific Northwest squash. He later founded the Seattle Athletic Club and trained generations of Northwest players. He remained a presence in the squash community until his passing in 2018.

The point worth pausing on: in 1968, squash in the Pacific Northwest essentially didn't exist as a developed sport. Yusuf didn't inherit a community. He built one. Every junior player in this region today, every kid showing up to a Community Clinic at PRO Club, is downstream of that decision.

The next generation: a national dynasty

Yusuf's children carried the sport forward at the highest competitive levels. Two of them. Shabana Khan and Latasha Khan, became Women's National Squash Champions and dominated the U.S. women's circuit through the 1990s and 2000s, often meeting each other in national finals.

• Shabana Khan, former Women's National Squash Champion and professional player. Now Founder & CEO of YSK Events, the visionary behind both the 2015 World Championship and the organization's pivot toward youth development.
• Latasha Khan, former Women's National Champion who reached World No. 18, won two Pan American Games gold medals in 2003, and was inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame in 2024.
• Murad Khan, professional player turned operations leader. Now President of YSK Events, responsible for major events including the Yusuf Khan Invitational, and for building bridges between Pacific Northwest tech (Microsoft, Google) and the sport.
• Azam Khan. Head Coach at PRO Club Bellevue and Director at YSK Events, focused on coaching excellence and player development across Washington State.

Across the family, seven Khans have held a World No. 1 ranking. That's a sentence that's almost impossible to write about another family in any sport.

2015: The first U.S.-soil Men's World Championship

In 2015, Shabana Khan organized the Men's World Squash Championship in Bellevue, the first time the world's most prestigious individual squash tournament had ever been staged in the United States. It was a structurally significant moment for the sport in this country: U.S. squash had long been a serious participant in international competition, but it had never been a host of the headline event. The 2015 Worlds changed that.

The tournament also signaled what the family was about to do next. Hosting a world championship is a thing professional sport does. The Khans pulled it off, and then immediately turned the operational and reputational capital they'd built into something that didn't yet exist: a youth development engine.

2013 to today: from professional events to youth development

YSK Events was founded in 2013, formally established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with a deceptively simple mission: harness the power of squash to build focus, resilience, and opportunity for young people across the Pacific Northwest. After 2015, the organization quietly but decisively shifted its center of gravity toward that mission. Professional showcases didn't go away, but the strategic priority became kids.

That pivot now expresses itself in six programs:

• Squash Forward, the flagship development program, integrating social-emotional learning with competitive squash. Recruiting from Title I schools across Bellevue and Seattle.
• Community Clinics, free introductory clinics for ages 5 to 18, with scholarship-funded access for underserved families.
• Squash + Academics, athletic training paired with academic enrichment, college prep, and 1-on-1 mentorship.
• Competitive Training, high-performance coaching for tournament-ready athletes, US Squash sanctioned.
• Squash Art Initiative, a culture program where youth explore identity and resilience through art and squash, featuring original works by Sharif Khan.
• LA28 Pathway, the Olympic development track, identifying and developing PNW juniors for the 2028 Games and beyond.

2024: a Hall of Fame induction

In 2024, Latasha Khan was inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame. The induction was a recognition of her playing career, but it landed at a moment that mattered for the family's broader project: the next generation of Khan-coached kids were already on the courts at PRO Club Bellevue, and the Hall of Fame ceremony underlined that the same family producing the coaches was also producing the lineage those coaches were drawing on.

What's next

The next chapter of the story is the one being written right now. LA28 is the headline event, but the long-arc bet is bigger: that with the right coaching, the right facilities, and the right access for kids who otherwise wouldn't touch this sport, the Pacific Northwest can produce a generation of squash players who carry the Khan family's standard forward, and that the sport itself, in the United States, finally enters its developed era.

If you want your kid to be part of that, the door is open. Email hello@yskevents.com or come to a Community Clinic. We don't gatekeep talent. We try to find it.