What pride to see our youngsters so assured in a week Nassar got what he was due

It was a tense weekend for the team, but they sailed through and finished top of the European qualifying heat.

This is due to a lot of hard work off and on the court and all in the team should be suitably proud of themselves.

Given the location of the World Cup, Liverpool, I am sure that they will be able to muster up a good travelling support to for the event. Before that, of course, there is a little matter of the Commonwealth Games in Australia in April this year! I also had a good start to the week when I visited Notre Dame High School in Glasgow to join the 1st and 3rd year pupils as they watched our latest offering in the #GirlsDoSport series, #GirlsDoSquash.

Scottish Squash have been delivering sessions to 3rd year pupils as part of their drive to encourage more women to play squash.

Lisa Aitken, Scotland’s No.1 female player, joined us on the day and took questions from the gathering.

I was blown away by the questions asked by the Notre Dame High School pupils, and to be honest we could have been there all day. If only I could get a response like that after a presentation!

It is so good to see young girls having the confidence to try sport, to ask questions and to support each other and also that the teachers themselves have taken time to listen to them and deliver a programme of sport that they all wanted to be part of.

This is in direct contrast to what has been happening over in the US, where no-one listened and we now hear, on a daily basis, the level of destruction that one man has caused and the impact on the wider community. Larry Nassar is a name I won’t forget, the havoc and pain that he has brought to families, the latest count being over 109, through sexual abuse, is horribly heartbreaking.

Nassar is a 54-year-old former USA Gymnastics national team doctor, who had the respect and trust of most of the people around him since he begun his position as medical co-ordinator from 1996.

In fact, there is one story of a young women who was continually abused by Nassar and told her parents, who viewed him as a friend of the family, about it on several occasions.

Her father refused to believe her. When the truth finally came out, the young women’s father couldn’t stand the pain so much he felt at not believing his daughter, that he committed suicide. There are no words for this.

Another sinister twist is that former Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney reported her abuse by Nassar and was paid by USA Gymnastics to keep quiet about this.

She now has a confidentiality agreement in place, which prevents her from speaking out, however she did submit a written statement.

Someone eventually did listen, the judge.

And Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced him to 175 years and said, in no uncertain terms: “I am signing your death warrant.”

How can we safeguard our young athletes from the predators who are out there such as Larry Nassar?

The first thing we have to do is listen, not necessarily to what is being said, but perhaps what is not being said.

Take time to absorb the feeling around a team, are they all happy, are they confident, at ease with each other and the coach?

Look for the signs and then offer a listening ear. We must learn at all times from situations such as this and ensure that they are never repeated. The fall-out from this doesn’t stop at one person. The impact is on families, friends and communities and we simply cannot go back and make it better.

While in Scotland we have PVG checks in place, they cannot be the eyes and ears of the sporting community as they are only as good as the information allows them to be.

This is an extreme case and there were several opportunities to deal with it before it escalated to the level it is now.

One case is one too many, so eyes and ears open, better to be called a nosey parker, than to ignore the signs and let another child be abused.