The Birth of Team 2234 The Birth of Team 2234 - Episcopal Academy

Athletics
A History of Excellence By James Zug
Episcopal Squash celebrated its first national championship this spring, but
decades of dedication and commitment to excellence helped pave the way.
As Episcopal Squash looks ahead, it’s helpful to reflect on a storied past.
On Monday, November 10th
1930 one of the world’s
greatest high school squash
programs began.
It occurred at the dedication of the Jefferson
Shiel Squash Courts, a modest
building of just two hardball courts and a
simple balcony gallery. For The Episcopal
Academy it marked the end of a remarkable
run. In September 1921, the school
had moved from Locust Street to its 14-
acre estate in Merion, and the prospects
then were a bit dim: just two buildings
on the campus—a French Provincialstyle
stone house and a garage—and a
city ash dump lay across the street. Nine
years later, however, a gymnasium, a chapel,
two neighboring houses, new fields,
and seven tennis courts had sprouted up
and enrollment had more than doubled.
Yet, the school was incomplete. Greville
Haslam, head of school since 1921,
had come to Episcopal
from a
squash hotbed,
St. Paul’s School,
which had built
the first squash
courts in the United
States in 1884.
By the late 1920s,
the game of squash
Jefferson Sheil, the
father of Episcopal
Squash.
was flourishing
in the U.S., and
dozens of clubs
and colleges were
building courts
and hosting tournaments. Most of all, it
was rivalry. Although no Inter-Academic
League school had its own squash courts,
Haverford School had announced plans
in April 1929 to build a new gym with
three squash courts.
In early 1930, Haslam persuaded William
Harman, whose son, William, Jr.,
was a junior at Episcopal, to pay, anonymously,
for a squash facility on the
Robinson property on Latches Lane.
Work began that summer and by October
the little stand-alone squash house
was finished.
“The courts are unusually well ventilated,
perfectly lighted, solidly constructed
and have an ample gallery space. They
are the par of any in this country,” wrote
Donald Kennedy, a Lower School teacher
and administrator at the time. “It is a
game which requires a keen eye, an alert
mind and a ready body. There is something
about the game which has the
same fascinating appeal as golf. Its devotees
are seized with a thrill when crisp,
fall weather heralds the opening of the
squash season.”
There was a big celebration at the dedication
of the courts that autumn day
nearly 77 years ago. Haslam and Lambert
Whetstone, the assistant head,
addressed a large crowd, Kennedy outlined
the history of the game and then
joined three leading local players—Joe
Keefe, Bud Walsh, and future national
champion Neil Sullivan—in a series
of exhibition matches. Shiel naturally
did the official honors. The master math
teacher had been at Episcopal since 1882
(and would clock in 63 years of service
before departing in 1945). Shiel was not
a squash player, but a huge fan of athletics—he
had coached the baseball team
for decades—and was seen as someone
who was unafraid of change. The courts
“joins one of Episcopal’s oldest joys with
its youngest sports,” Frank Strobhar ’31,
wrote, “He has never allowed the routine
of the school day to overpower his
belief in the ever-present adventure of
school life.” Shiel ceremoniously ripped
away the cloth that barred the front door
and then deliberately stepped on a slab
of wet concrete, leaving, as one Academy
Scholium writer noted, “two footprints
that now have hardened and will remain
for years.”
Interest Explodes
The courts were immediately filled.
Nearly 50 boys took squash as their required
winter sport and within months
the students were clamoring, as they
would evermore, for more courts. Kennedy,
as varsity coach, launched a school
tournament, named the B. Brannen
Reath, III Memorial Cup, which Clothier
Jones won over Wakelee Swartz (Big
Bill Tilden’s cousin) in four close games.
The one match that first year was
against Haverford. Despite the fact
they did not have courts (their new gym
opened in the spring of 1931), Haverford
crushed Episcopal 6-0 without loss
of a game. The reason was a key factor
in Episcopal’s future dominance: the
Haverford students played squash at the
various country clubs across the Main
Line—Cynwyd, Philly Country, and
above all, Merion Cricket. As the years
went by, both Haverford and Episcopal
boys usually first learned the game at
their parents’ club and very often would
practice twice a day, once at school and
then later at the club.
This was a critical factor because after
Kennedy left in 1932 to run Camp Kieve,
not a single coach at Episcopal was
actually a squash player until the late
1960s. These dedicated teachers organized
practice, ran the ladder challenge
matches, scheduled and drove the team
to matches, and often supplied key emotional
support. But they left it to the
professionals at the area clubs to teach
the mechanics of the game.
Despite this fact, the schedule bloomed
as the 1930s wore on. Episcopal began
playing college teams, usually the freshman
or junior varsity team, and perennial
opponents like Penn and Princeton provided
stern lessons. One year the Tabula
wrote that the Churchmen “seemed awed
1946 Squash Team. Back row (l to r): Murphy, C. Smith, Dixon, Crawford,
Maxwell, J. Walton. Front row (l to r): Mateer, Ringe, Hentz.
by the sophisticated manners” of the
Princeton players.
The Inter-Ac was officially formed for
squash in 1934 and in the early years,
Haverford was dominant. After one
6-0 drubbing, the Scholium reported
that “Episcopal seemed afraid to take
chances and in trying to be steady made
their games too soft. It was perhaps this
pretense at steadiness which gave the
spectators the impression that the games
were even.”
By 1940, squash was wildly popular.
Because of demand, only sophomores,
juniors, and seniors were allowed to take
it as a winter sport and then only for 40
minutes per week. Architects drew up
blueprints for an additional three singles
and one doubles court, to be tacked on to
the back of the Shiel courts. It took two
years and a scaling back of plans, but in
1942, Episcopal had two more courts.
The First Golden Age
Two years later, after an interim season
with Middle School teacher Stuyvesant
Barry as coach, Episcopal squash entered
its first golden age under the guidance of
Fitz Dixon ’42. The legendary Episcopal
man led the Churchmen to their first Inter-Ac
titles, grabbing eight in a row and
winning 58 straight prep school matches.
Dixon was not a squash player, so he recruited
Wally Johnson, the former squash
and tennis coach at Penn, to help train
the boys twice a week. Dixon formalized
the team’s schedule, hosting a preseason
practice week during the Christmas holidays
and taking an annual train trip
The 1970 Undefeated Squash Team
to southern New England to play prep
schools, Yale, and Trinity. He also started
the tradition of traveling to Annapolis
to play the Naval Academy.
Dixon was a visionary leader. Once, he
saw a boy playing well in the Philly Districts,
the only open junior tournament
in the country at the time. In the gallery,
he asked the boy’s father how long he
had been playing. Two months was the
reply. Would the boy like to go to Episcopal,
Dixon then asked. The father said
he would, but he could not afford the tuition.
Within weeks Dixon had arranged
for a scholarship (he was then director of
admission) and the following September
the boy enrolled at Episcopal. The boy
was Diehl Mateer ’46. Mateer played
number one on the team and lead them
to their first undefeated season and Inter-Ac
title (see photo above). He then
went on to become one of the greatest
American squash players in history, winning
two national intercollegiate titles,
three national singles titles, 11 national
doubles titles, and two North American
Opens.
Other standouts from the Dixon era
include John Hentz ’48 who captured
four national doubles titles with Mateer
as a partner; Jimmy Whitmoyer ’49
who won a national doubles title; Roger
Campbell ’51 who won two national intercollegiate
titles; Bill Barhite ’53 who
later coached at Vassar and ran the intercollegiate
squash association; and
Bill Sykes ’54, who was a five-year letter
winner.
That success continued into the late
1950s and early 1960s with players like
the McMullin brothers, David ’55 and
Hunter ’58; Jim Zug ’58, who won the
national junior title and two national
doubles titles; Maurice Heckscher ’60,
who won two national doubles titles and
numerous pro tournament titles; and Bill
Morris ’61 who won the national junior
title one year, beating Heckscher in the finals,
and then lost in the finals the year
after.
The Second Golden Age
The second golden age of Episcopal
squash came in the 1960s and early
1970s. Episcopal won the Inter-Ac every
year from 1966 through 1975. Twice,
in 1970 and 1972, they were undefeated.
The school completely renovated the
courts in the summer of 1965, giving
them their first facelift in a quarter century,
and they again repainted walls and
added new lights (discarding the old Chinese
lantern fixtures) in 1978.
Bringing a fresh approach to the program
were three coaches with strong,
competitive willpower and dazzling oncourt
talent. Tom Poor, a top amateur
player in both singles and doubles, came
to teach at Episcopal in 1965 and took
over the then struggling squash team.
He started the immediately prestigious
EA Invitational tournament for local
schools (each got to send four players)
and hosted the 1967 national juniors
tournament. Unwilling to accept the lack
of court time, he made the team jump
rope when the courts were full, come
to practice in September, and stay late
into the night. He formed a faculty team
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