Margot Prow may not be an entirely familiar name to those who only follow the upper echelons of the PSA World Tour — but her relative inconspicuousness could be set to change drastically as squash's Olympic debut edges closer.
Prow is a 24-year-old left-hander who grew up in North London and represented England as a junior. She won the British Junior Championship at Under-17 and was runner-up in the European Junior Open.
But Prow was actually born in Barbados, as her English parents had moved to the Caribbean island for work in the late 1990s. She retained her Bajan passport and after her squash career began to blossom by 2022, she switched allegiance to the island of her birth (a decision influenced by the great Aussie-turned-Scot John White).
In October the following year came the shock news that squash was to make its long-cherished Olympic debut. Then in February 2026, the qualification process for LA28 was announced.
As anyone who's read them will know, the LA28 qualification criteria take some digesting, but buried near the bottom is something called the Universality Place. This is where Prow's Bajan roots become particularly meaningful.
The Universality Place is designed to increase the diversity of participating nations. At LA28, one spot out of the 16 in each draw (one men's, one women's) is assigned to a Universality place, with the recipients decided by the IOC's Tripartite Commission after considering all applications.
An important factor in the Commission's decision is that the player chosen should represent a nation that has had an average of eight or fewer athletes across all sports at the last two Olympic Games (in this case, Paris 2024 and Tokyo 2020). That player must also be in the top 75 of the PSA world rankings on the cut-off date 22 May 2028.
If that decision were made today, the only eligible female player would be Margot Prow.
Barbados had four athletes in Paris and eight in Tokyo, giving it an average of six. At the time of writing (August 2026), Prow is world no.72. So as things stand, she's on course to be an Olympian.
"I have seen my name mentioned once or twice in that potential spot, and it makes me grin from ear to ear!" she tells Squash Player. "It's kind of crazy that I could potentially be that player.
"It is super exciting, but I also know that to secure it a little bit more, in the next year and a half I need to keep working really hard on my PSA ranking and make sure I get up as high as possible."
There is a unmistakable giddiness in Prow's voice as she discusses this tantalising prospect, but she is also aware of the importance of knuckling down and staying focused in the interim 21 months before anything is decided for sure.
"Now that I know this is potentially a way to break through to my dream, it's a matter of not making it the reason I wake up every day," she says.
"It's just about building up my game to the level where I want it to be — not just wanting it to be a way of qualifying, but simply being the best squash player I can be."
After earning a squash scholarship, Prow went to Drexel University in Philadelphia in 2020 and studied Research Psychology. It was there she met head coach John White, whose own positive experience of changing national allegiance as a player influenced her decision to switch to Barbados.
"It was John who I got the best advice from," she recalls. "We weighed up the pros and cons of going from England to a tiny Caribbean island with less than a handful of players.
"To me, the main difference was to explore the world and be part of a national team that I knew who would support me throughout my career. I also knew I could have a positive impact on Bajan squash."
At Drexel, she saw team-mates jet off to represent their countries' senior teams in international competitions such as the Pan-American Championships. She recalls: "I wanted to experience as much as I possibly can as young squash player, see the world and play against as many different styles of player as possible.
"Throughout my childhood, I kept my Bajan passport as a 'just in case' kind of thing and it's turned out to be one of my best decisions! They [Barbados squash] are so supportive and want me to learn and grow."
Undoubtedly Prow's finest moment so far representing Barbados came just a few weeks ago, when she won gold in the singles and team event (alongside Meagan Best and Amanda Haywood)at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Santo Domingo was the 100th anniversary of the Games and squash had just been reintroduced after being taken out of the programme four years previously. Prow's two victories were Barbados' only gold medals out of their 142 athletes competing at the Games.
"It was an incredible experience," she reflects. "Being part of a Games is so different to a squash championships. The whole Olympic team is there with you.
"I wasn't necessarily worried about trying to get a win for myself, but just knowing how impactful it could be for my country. I got a nice shoutout from the Prime Minister, which was really cool!
"PSA events are always a huge milestone in where I want to be as a professional, but winning golds and playing for your country, even if it's only once or twice a year, it's a different feeling of pride."
Only a couple of weeks later, Prow and Team Barbados were donning the national jerseys again at the Pan American Championships in Ascencion, Paraguay. Their fifth place in the team event sealed qualification for the Pan-American Games in Lima next year — one of the five Continental Games in which the singles gold medallists will earn a ticket to LA28.
Although overcoming the likes of Olivia Weaver, Amanda Sobhy and Marina Stefanoni in Lima will be a tall order, Prow is aiming to be part of the conversation when it comes to players qualifying for LA28 via world rankings on the cut-off date of 22 May 2028.
To do that, she will probably need to move up to around the world top 40 — but she expresses some frustration that her Bajan nationality often contributes to being denied wildcard places at PSA World Tour events, and missing the opportunity to earn more ranking points.
"For players in the 60-80 ranking, it is extremely tricky to break into the Bronze and Silver events," she explains. "We often sit at the top of the reserve list.
"Wildcards are usually the way in and the key to breaking up the ranks. However, being from such a small nation, it feels impossible to get the ‘local’ spot, and it’s often given to a much lower ranked, or junior player.
"One wildcard spot at this stage in my career could be the difference between becoming an Olympian or a spectator."
Since graduating from Drexel in summer 2023, Prow has been based at MSquash in Norwalk, Connecticut, where Shaun Moxham and Katline Cauwels have established one of America's most cutting-edge academies.
Using her psychology specialism, Prow supports the top-ranked juniors on and off court, as well as receiving the expert tutelage of Moxham as a full-time pro.
"I'm a very visual person and I love to write things down, check my milestones and set myself goals," she reveals. "After studying psychology I know the more you write, talk about it and envision it, the more likely you are to achieve it.
"My big goal for the next season is to break the top 50. That's on my vision board. It's something I wrote down when I was a senior at Drexel, that I wanted to be a top-50 player when I'm three years into my career.
"Alongside that, I want to just travel to more places in the world and immerse myself in different competitions. Up to now, I've played in fairly local tournaments, but this season is the time to take a little leap and push that little bit further."
Prow's wanderlust is set to take her to many previously undiscovered lands — and, who knows, potentially to the sun-kissed hills of California in two summers' time.
