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

Athletics
One of the finest squash programs in the country will have matching
facilities when Episcopal opens in Newtown Square in September of 2008.
Ten Episcopal families have each contributed $100,000 to name a squash
court on the new campus. In addition, two families have each contributed
$50,000 to name a squash gallery seating area. An upcoming issue of the
Campaign Newsletter will recognize these donors, as well as Jim Zug’s ’58
efforts leading the fundraising.
that played against the boys and brought
in Mohibullah Khan, one of the world
champion Khan pros, to talk to and play
games against the students.
In 1970, Poor left Episcopal and Darwin
Kingsley stepped in for the next five
seasons. The head of the Middle School,
Kingsley was an avid doubles player and
president of the U.S. Squash Association
at the time. He took the varsity to the national
five-man team competition, where
they reached the finals beating highly
fancied adult teams. The only blip was
in late February 1974 when the team lost
its second match to Penn Charter 3-4
(after beating them 6-1). Kingsley had
announced his departure (to become the
first executive director of the U.S. Squash
Association) and things began to unravel.
“Disheartened by their loss to Penn Charter,”
the Tabula reported, “many players
on the team seemed to play mainly for
themselves. Much of the past structure of
the team fell into oblivion.”
Mateer Returns
To help revive the program, Diehl Mateer
returned to his alma mater to coach
the team in the late 1970s. They won the
Inter-Ac his first season, with a team of
eight seniors in the top 10, but then the
talent soon dried up and Haverford came
back into ascendance. “I loved coaching
the team,” Mateer said, “especially
with my son Jeffrey on the squad, and
it wasn’t bad for my own game, keeping
me in shape for doubles, as I got to get
out and hit with the top players.”
There was no national championship
for high schools until 2004, but Episcopal
easily claimed the unofficial title. It
had an unblemished record in the toughest
interscholastic league in the country
(usually playing evens or odds in the
matches) and it won at the Nichols
School Invitational in Buffalo and later
the Choate Invitational.
This era boasted an incredible number
of top players, many coming from the
same family. There were the Page brothers:
Ray ’66; Palmer ’68, who went on
to win the national intercollegiates and
then become executive director of the
U.S. squash association; David ’71; and
Tom ’77, who won the national singles
title, two national doubles titles, was
a top pro on the hardball singles tour
and won numerous pro doubles tournaments.
There were the Mateers, Gil ’73,
who won the national juniors and four
national doubles titles and Jeffrey ’79.
There were the Havens: Tim ’64, Peter
’72, and John ’75. There were the Bottgers,
David ’70 and John ’72, who won a
national doubles title. In addition, there
was Joe Swain ’71, who got to the semis
of the national singles while at Episcopal
and won an unprecedented three straight
school titles; George Bell ’75, who went
on to be a columnist for Squash News
in the 1980s; Bob Callahan ’73 who is
now the legendary coach at Princeton;
and John Nimick ’77, a lifer, who went
29-1 in his varsity career in prep school
maters and then won a national intercollegiate
title, a national singles title, and
went onto a successful pro hardball career
(including two North American
Open titles) before becoming the executive
director of the pro softball tour and
then a pro tournament event director.
But there were some unsung heroes
down at the lower part of the ladder that
played as important roles as the famed
stars above. One was Clayton Platt ’73,
who gutted out a tough win with the team
match tied at 4-4 to beat a favored Penn
junior varsity. And much of the success
of the program stemmed from the junior
varsity and Middle School coaches, especially
Chip Hollinger, who led the 7th
and 8th grade team for 30 years. Above
all, there was a feeling of good will; the
most coveted annual prize for the team
was the Wayne C. Astley Award “for
ability, courtesy, and sportsmanship.”
The Girls Arrive
While the boys’ team went into another
decline (Haverford won the Inter-Ac
every year from 1978 through 1993),
Episcopal found itself with a new wrinkle
in the age-old issue of court time: girls.
As the co-educational process brought
girls into the upper grades, girls started
wanting to play. In the mid-1980s,
a couple of enterprising 7th grade girls
played on the boys Middle School team.
One girl, Alix Golaski, was cut from the
team in 8th grade and, in 1985, after a
miserable year spent sitting on the basketball
team bench, she and a few friends
formed a girls squash club. Bill Whelan,
who coached the boys’ team from 1980-
83, served as their coach; practice was in
the morning before school.
In 1988, the team received varsity
status with Betsy Lippincott, an English
teacher, as coach; they used two
old courts at the Green Briar Country
Club, an apartment complex that used
to house the Overbrook Country Club.
“It’s a great thing at that age when you
have a new team and adults take you seriously,”
said Golaski ’88.
Like the boys a half-century earlier,
the first teams struggled. Christina Jones
coached for one year and then Donna
Heckscher, Maurice’s wife and mother
of Kellen ’97, took over and built up the
program for four years until it was on
the cusp of defeating the local girls juggernaut
Agnes Irwin. The Tabula noted
her “supportive attitude and interesting
practices.” In 1996, John Spofford ’74, a
Lower School teacher at Episcopal, took
over the team and suddenly undefeated
seasons began cascading down. The success
that year was astounding: the team
won 250 individual games and lost just
12. Among the standouts were the Hall
girls, Colby ’98 and Louisa ’00, who
won three straight national junior titles
while at Episcopal; Andrea McNeely ’98;
and Sarah West ’99.
In 2000, Holly Barnes took over and
continued the skein of victories. In 2004-
05, the coach was Demer Holleran. If
Episcopal was lucky to have Diehl Mateer,
one of the greatest American players
ever as coach, then it was equally so with
Holleran, who had won more than two
dozen national singles and doubles titles.
Cam Hopkins then coached for one year
and then this past winter, Dawn Grey
took over.
In February 2007, for the first time ever,
an Episcopal team was able to unequivocally
lay claim to a national squash title
when the Episcopal girls blasted their
way to a surprising first place finish at
the national high school championships
in New Haven (see page 14). Recent
standouts include the Riley sisters, Casey
’00 and Brooksie ’03, and Logan Greer
’07, who just won the national junior title
in March 2007.
MASA Formed; Reclaiming
the Inter-Ac Title
It took the girls’ team 19 years to
go from a rookie program to national
champions, and it took the boys the
same amount of time to regain the Inter-
Ac title. But those seemingly dark years
were not so bleak. Tim Kent, the classics
teacher who captained the team at
Hamilton, took over in 1984 and helped
strengthen the program. There were
strong players like Bill Marvin ’88, who
played number one for three seasons,
Sam Halpert ’89, Scott Hammond ’92,
and Andrew Purcell ’93. After arguments
about ladders, Kent and Hill School
coach Wendell Chestnut formed the Mid-
Atlantic Squash Association (MASA), a
league that included all Inter-Ac teams
plus Hill, Lawrenceville, and Shipley.
MASA helped broaden squash in the
Philadelphia-area, especially with its festive
season-ending tournament at Penn.
Kent encouraged the last renovation of
the courts in 1990 and helped finesse the
troublesome transition from hardball
to softball squash, with the split season
of 1993 and the full shift to softball in
1994. He also demanded that court time
be equally split between girls and boys,
so that the girls program would have a
chance to prosper.
The big moment for the boys program
was its return to Inter-Ac glory on February
1, 1994 in front of 100 screaming
fans in the Shiel courts. Episcopal topped
Haverford 4-3. The boys also claimed a
mythical national title when it won at
the Taft Interscholastic Tournament that
same year. The team also won Taft in
1995 and went undefeated, like the girls,
in 1996. Those teams were led by Dave
McNeely ’96, who won three straight
national junior titles and captured one
national singles title while in college; the
Sebring brothers, Harrison ’94 and Marshall
’97; and Addison West ’97.
John Spofford, who had assisted the
team for years, took over from Tim Kent
in 1999 and the team, although not as
dominant, continued to produce great
players. Most noteworthy were Trevor
McGuinness ’06, who won the national
junior title and Todd Harrity ’09, who
became one of the youngest national junior
titlists when he won the tournament
in March 2007.
Continuing the Legacy
How do you judge a program? In the
96 years of combined varsity play, Episcopal
has been the epitome of excellence.
Three undefeated seasons; 24 league
titles for the boys and nine for girls. National
junior champions: six boys and
two girls. Future national singles champions:
five, so far. Episcopal has played
everyone: 25 different high schools and
16 different colleges.
With both Todd Harrity and Logan
Greer as current national junior champions,
it is the first time in U.S. squash
history that both the best boy and best
girl in the country play at the same
school. But no one should be surprised.
Episcopal is a school that values history.
Every time they step onto the court,
they walk, literally, in the footsteps of
Jeff Shiel. n
James Zug is the
author of Squash: A
History of the Game
(Scribner, 2003) and
a senior writer at
Squash Magazine.
He is the son of Jim
Zug ’58.
18 Connections spring 2007 19