by James Zug, US Squash Official Historian

 

 

Class of 2000

 

Charles M. P. Brinton (1919-)

National Champion 1941, 1942, 1946, 1947

National Doubles Champion 1946, 1948

The top player in the 1940s, Charlie Brinton was an early pupil of Bill White at Merion Cricket Club. His junior and senior years at Princeton he won both the intercollegiates and the nationals, as well as leading a team of Stan Pearson Jr., Hastings Griffen and Cal McCracken to the Ivy League title. After the war, he won two more nationals and the inaugural Harry Cowles in 1947. Partnering with Don Strachan in 1946 and Stan Pearson Jr. in 1948, Brinton took two dou­bles titles. For many observers there was no finer stylist in the history of squash than Charlie Brinton.

 

Elizabeth Howe Constable (1924- )

National Champion 1950, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959

The dominant squash player of the 1950s, Betty Constable was a central force behind the growth of women's squash in the U.S. Her mother won the nationals three times and her twin sister twice, and the Howe Cup competitions were named in honor of the three women. A lefthander with sizable power, Constable learned the game at the New Haven Lawn Club and won her first tournament match having never seen another woman play before. Besides her five national titles, she took three veterans (over 40) titles, three veteran dou­bles titles, with Peggy Carrott, and played in three Wolfe-Noel competitions (helping win America's only victory ever in Great Britain, in doubles in Edinburgh in 1950). From 1970-1991 Constable coached the Princeton women's squash team, leading them to twelve intercollegiate Howe Cups, and mentoring three intercollegiate champions, Wendy Zakarko, Nancy Gengler and Demer Holleran.

 

Germain Green Glidden (1913-1999)

National Champion 1936, 1937, 1938

National Doubles Champion 1952

Germain Glidden, the last great Harvard champion coached by Harry Cowles, was a record-breaking player. An illustrious player while in college, the southpaw won the intercollegiates in 1935 and 1936, as well as the nationals his senior year. He retired after his third consecutive victory in 1938, but returned to take three consecutive veterans (over 40) titles in 1954-56. A founder of the classic Harry Cowles tournament at the Harvard Club in New York, Glidden managed to reach the finals in 1949. He won the national doubles with Dick Remsen in 1952, as well as two Canadian national doubles titles with Harvard classmate Tanny Sargent.

 

Anne Page Homer (1909-19xx)

National Champion 1936, 1937, 1939, 1947

National Doubles Champion 1933, 1936

The first dominant woman player in the U.S., Anne Page played at Merion Cricket Club. A four-time All-American in field hockey, she was the first secre­tary of the USSRA's women association and a contributor to squash magazines. Page, a hard-hitting, competitive player, represented the U.S. in six Wolfe-Noel Cups and reached the quarterfinals of the English nationals in 1934 and 1936. In doubles, she won the first women's nationals with Sarah Madeira and later won again with Agnes Lamme.

 

Hashim Khan (1916- )

U.S. Open Champion 1956, 1957, 1963

U.S. Professional Champion 1963, 1964

One of the most celebrated men in the world of squash, Hashim Khan had a profound and lasting effect on the game in America. Born in Peshawar into the Pathan clan, Khan journeyed to London at age thirty-five to play and win his first of seven British Opens. In 1954 he came to play in the inaugural U.S. Open, an event that brought an enormous amount of publicity to the game. In 1962 he moved permanently to the U.S. and a large number of his offspring and relatives followed suit. He won professional veterans ten times and the 75+ singles in 1995. Hashim Khan was a significant factor in opening up American squash to the world.

 

Hunter Lott Jr. (1914-2005)

National Champion 1949

National Doubles Champion 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1949, 1950, 1953

Hunter Lott was considered the greatest right-wall doubles players of the twentieth century. Armed with a ferocious forehand, Lott took eight titles, five with Bill Slack before the war and three after with a young Diehl Mateer. In 1949 he managed to take the national singles by perfecting a backhand double boast. In tournament play he won one Gold Racquets Invitational and three Atlantic City Invitationals. A longtime supporter of the Penn squash team and a mentor to generations of Merion Cricket Club youths, Lott was honored in 1974 with the naming of a new local junior tournament after him.

 

Barbara Maltby (1948- )

National Champion 1980, 1981

National Doubles Champion 1978,1987, 1988, 1989, 1990

National Mixed Doubles Champion 1988

North American Open Champion 1976, 1977

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970, Barbara Maltby was taught squash by the redoubtable Norm Brammall at the Cynwyd Club.  Maltby was the first American woman to put an emphasis on training and fitness, and her palpable passion for squash helped revolutionize the game. For six straight years she held the number one ranking in the U.S., and after losing in the finals of the nationals five times, she managed to break through with two straight titles in the early 1980's. An early participant in the nascent women's professional tour, she represented the U.S. twice in international competitions and won two (softball) North American Opens in Toronto.  In doubles Maltby won five titles with Jane Stauffer, Joyce Davenport and Jody Law and the mixed doubles once with Mike Pierce.  Seven knee surgeries eventually led to her retirement, but not before Barbara Maltby had ushered in a new era of physically fit, competitive women's squash.

 

G. Diehl Mateer Jr. (1927- )

National Champion 1954, 1956, 1960

National Doubles Champion 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, 1958, 1959, 1961,1962, 1965, 1966

U.S. Open Champion 1955, 1959

Diehl Mateer, with his unmatched eleven national titles, was the greatest doubles player the game had ever seen. With his classic Philadelphia backhand and indomitable determination, he was unstoppable on the left wall. He won his first doubles title as a senior at Haverford College with Hunter Lott, and went on to win titles with Cal McCracken, Dick Squires, John Hentz and Ralph Howe. He lost nine times in the finals, including twice with his son Gil (his boys Gil and Drew took five doubles titles in all, once together in 1986). On the singles court, Mateer was equally formidable. He took two intercollegiate titles, won six Harry Cowles, six Gold Racquets, five Atlantic City Invitationals, and was the only amateur to win the U.S. Open twice.

 

Alicia McConnell (1962- )

National Champion 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988

National Doubles Champion 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000

World Junior Champion 1980

World Doubles Champion 1994, 1996, 1998

Inarguably one of the greatest American players ever, Alicia McConnell made women's squash her fiefdom in the 1980s. Learning the game under Carol Weymuller at the Height's Casino in Brooklyn, McConnell won two under 17 nationals and three national juniors. In one remarkable month in the winter of 1982 she blitzed the country: she won the juniors, intercollegiates and the nationals and still took classes at Penn. She won two more intercollegiates and six more nationals before retiring. Easily the most storied U.S. player ever, McConnell won the World Juniors in 1980 in Sweden, represented the U.S. at five World Team championships, won a bronze medal at the 1995 Pan-American Games, and reached number fifteen in the world rankings in 1988.

 

Victor Niederhoffer (1943- )

National Champion 1966, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975

National Doubles Champion 1968, 1973, 1974

North American Open 1975

One of the hardest working and intense players ever, Vic Niederhoffer was per­haps most famous for being the only player to interrupt Sharif Khan's thirteen-year run as North American Open champion, in a stirring match in Mexico City in 1975. Born and raised in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Niederhoffer was taught the game as a freshman at Harvard by Jack Barnaby. He won the intercollegiates in 1964 and two years later his first nationals. After a five year hiatus from the nationals, he came back and became the first man to win four nation­als in four consecutive years. He won the national doubles three times, with Vic Elmaleh, Jim Zug Sr. and Colin Adair. Niederhoffer, at one stretch, prac­ticed or played a match on 3,500 consecutive days without exception.

 

Stanley Webster Pearson, Sr. (1890-1950)

National Champion 1915, 1916, 1917, 1921, 1922, 1923

Along with Charles Read of London, Stan Pearson was the first great world champion of squash. He played at Germantown Cricket Club and the Racquet Club and was invincible. From 1915 through 1923, Pearson never lost a single match - in tournament, intra-club, league or inter-city play - save for the finals of the nationals in 1920. Besides winning the nationals six times, Pearson won the inaugural veterans (over 40) nationals in 1935. He taught the game to the great Germantown Cricket players of the 1930s, including national champions Neil Sullivan, Roy Coffin, Don Strachan and his son Stan Jr.

 

Henri Raoul Marie Salaun (1926- )

National Champion 1955, 1957, 1958, 1961

U.S. Open Champion 1954

Born in Brest on the Brittany coast, Henri Salaun came to the U.S. in 1940. Learning squash at Deerfield, Salaun played at Wesleyan where he was also a two-time All-American in soccer. A quick, competitive player, he won four nationals and lost a further five times in the finals, including at fourteen-all in the fifth to Eddie Hahn in 1951. In 1954 he took the inaugural U.S. Open, beat­ing British Open champion Hashim Kahn three-love, and also won the Canadian nationals and the Canadian Open as well as three Harry Cowles. Moving into the age groups, Salaun won an unprecedented twenty-six hardball titles: he won the veterans (over 40) six times, the masters (over 50) five straight years, the 55+ three times, 60+ four times, 65+ four times and the 70+ four times.

 

Gretchen Vosters Spruance (1947- )

National Champion 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1978

National Doubles Champion 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977

National Mixed Doubles Champion 1970, 1971

The leading player of the 1970s, Gretchen Spruance came from the Wilmington Country Club. Her mother, Bunny Vosters, was a major doubles players with eleven national titles, and her sister, Nina Moyer, won two nationals. After losing to her sister in the finals in 1972, Spruance never lost again in the nation­als, taking five titles. On the doubles court, she teamed with her mother to win five titles, and with Kit Spahr to win two mixed titles.

 

Mark Talbott (1960- )

North American Open Champion 1983, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992

North American Doubles Champion 1984, 1997, 1998, 1999

World Doubles Champion 1998

The most dominant American player in history, Mark Talbott rewrote the record books. As a junior he won the under 16s twice and the national juniors twice. After he joined the World Professional Squash Association hardball tour in 1980, Talbott won an unthinkable 180 tournaments. With unusual sportsman­ship and enduring mental toughness, Talbott won seven WPSA championships, five Canadian Opens, fourteen straight Windy City Opens and six Boston Opens, including his historic 18-16 in the fifth game victory over world cham­pion Jahinger Khan in 1985. He was WPSA's player of the year ten times and reigned as the number one player on the tour from 1983 until 1994. He captained the U.S. team in the 1995 Pan-American Games, earning a bronze medal in the individuals and represented the U.S. five times at the World Team cham­pionships. He won twenty-five doubles titles, including the North American doubles with Peter Briggs and Gary Waite and teamed with Waite to win the World Doubles in 1998. Since 1991 he was the director of the Talbott Squash Academy, the national training center for US Squash, he twice led the U.S. junior team to the World Juniors and in 1998 was named the coach of the Yale women's team.

 

Margaret Varner (1927- )

National Champion 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963

A racquet sports maestro, Margaret Varner picked up squash at age thirty-one after winning the badminton world championship in 1956 and reaching the finals of the ladies doubles at Wimbledon two years later. Training with Norman Bramble at the Cynwyd Club, she lost in the finals of the nationals her first season and took the title the next four years in a row. A native of Texas, Varner was a member of the U.S. team in the Wolfe-Noel competitions in 1959 and 1963, a part of the winning Philadelphia team in the Howe Cup in 1959-1963 and a finalist in the national doubles in 1961.

 

 

Class of 2001

 

John M. Barnaby II (1909-2001)

Without question the greatest collegiate teacher of squash of the twentieth century, Jack Barnaby left a legacy of national championships and champions at Harvard that will surely never be equaled. Harvard class of 1932 and number two on Harvard's national championship team his senior year, he was the Harvard tennis coach and assistant squash coach when legendary men's squash coach Harry Cowles abruptly resigned in midseason in 1937. When Barnaby retired in 1976 after thirty-six seasons he was the winningest coach in Harvard history, with a record of 349-95, sixteen Ivy League titles and seventeen national titles. A list of his Cantabrigians intercollegiate champions is a list of legends: Germain Glidden, Kim Canavarro, Henry Foster, Charlie Ufford, Ben Heckscher, Victor Niederhoffer, Anil Nayer, Larry Terrell and Peter Briggs. He came out of retirement to coach the Harvard women's team from 1979-82, leading them to two Howe Cups and a 28-4 record. (He also coached the Harvard men's tennis team for thirty-seven years, compiling a 371-158-3 record and fourteen New England titles). Author of numerous articles and books on squash and tennis, Barnaby published in 1979 Winning Squash Racquets, considered to be the final word on hardball squash; and for many years he contributed a bi-monthly column in Squash News of sparkling remi­niscences on squash history. In 1971 he was awarded the President's Cup, the game's highest award. With his deep sensitivity to individual temperaments and style, his commanding gentleness and wisdom and his loyalty to the college game, Jack Barnaby did more than perhaps anyone else to proselytize squash among young people.

 

William T. Ketcham, Jr. (1919-2006)

One of the longest, most loyal and most influential leaders in the American squash scene, Bill Ketcham�known as Treddy�has stamped his heart and soul on almost every important tournament and player in the U.S. Raised at the Rockaway Hunt Club, Ketcham was a class of 1941 at Yale and awarded the Navy Cross after fighting in the Marines on Iwo Jima. He won a record seven national senior doubles titles, with Jimmy Ethridge in 1965-1966, 1968-69, Howard Davis in 1970, Vic Elmaleh in 1973 and Newton Meade in 1974, and in 1965 he captained the winning New York side in the national team champi­onships. Off-court Ketcham gave his energies to running tournaments and sustaining and developing the game. He served as U.S.S.R.A. president from 1965-67 and was the only man to serve in all four Association leadership posi­tions: as secretary, treasurer, vice-president and president. He was president of the Metropolitan Squash Racquets Association from 1959-61, he ran and gave the cup for the national intercollegiate doubles tournament, he helped start and run the Bigelow Fund for junior development and the US Squash endowment fund, and he has for decades been president of the Friends of Yale Squash. Since 1960 he has been tournament director of the Gold Racquets at Rockaway, the oldest singles and doubles tournament in the world. In 1966 he donated the trophy for the President's Cup, which he received himself in 1969. He has led the U.S. branch of the Jesters Club for the past twenty years. With his fervent love of the game and his irrepressible enthusiasm for its past, present and future, Treddy Ketcham embodies the highest ideals of squash.

 

Mohibullah Khan (1938-1994)

North American Open Champion 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968

U.S. Professional Champion 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969

One of a fearsome foursome �-Hashim, Azam and Roshan �-that rode the first wave of Khans coming to America, Mo Khan was a ferocious, acrobatic force on the court and a gregarious professional at the Harvard Club in Boston. Khan won, after seven tries, his only British Open in 1962; in the finals he engineered what many consider the greatest comeback in British Open history, when he was down 2-1, 8-1 in the fourth against the Egyptian Abou Taleb, saved three match balls and won 9-6 in the fifth game. In 1963 Khan followed his uncle Hashim and emigrated to the U.S. He went on to win four North American Opens and reach the finals four other times (the tournament was called the U.S. Open until 1965 when it was amalgamated with the Canadian Open). He also took five U.S. Pro titles, four professional veterans from 1979­1982 and a professional seniors in 1988. The lefthanded Khan played with a tempestuous gusto and blinding speed, "like a very angry octopus," wrote Rex Bellamy in Squash: A History. On the left wall on the doubles court, Khan was equally brilliant. He took five Johnson Opens in a row, 1970-1974, with Colin Adair, Ken Binns and cousin Gul Khan, and he won three Cambridge Doubles, in 1974 with Gul Khan and 1978-79 with Clive Caldwell. For thirty years Khan oversaw the fourteen singles and one doubles court at the Harvard Club, where he died outside the doubles court in 1994. "Mo could entertain either way," said Senator Ted Kennedy at his memorial service, "with his racquet or his conversation." It was often said Mo Khan played every point as if it was the last one on earth.

 

Darwin P. Kingsley, III (1927- )

A part of the Kingsley clan that has given so much to squash administration, Darwin Kingsley served as the first executive director of the United States Squash Racquets Association from 1974-1992. He was raised at the Rockaway Hunt Club where he played in the annual Gold Racquets tournament and was club champion. At Yale, class of 1950, he played number one on the famous Skillman team that went undefeated for four years and 47 matches in a row until losing to Princeton in the final match of the 1949-50 season. In later years Kingsley partnered with Alfie Hunter to win the national senior doubles in 1979 and 1980 and the national masters doubles in 1988. But it was behind the scenes where he made his largest impact. Both his father, Darwin, Jr., and his brother, Charlie, served as president of US Squash, and he did likewise from 1973-75. When the Association decided it needed its first full-time direc­tor, Kingsley was hired. He established an office in Bala Cynwyd and for eigh­teen years presided over the greatest growth the game had ever seen in the U.S.� membership soared from 160 member clubs and 800 individual mem­bers in 1974 to 350 member clubs and over 10,000 members when he retired in 1992. Throughout his tenure he was an active, ebullient leader and a solid force for the amateur game. In 1984 he was awarded the President's Cup.

 

Eleonora Randolph Sears (1881-1968)

National Champion 1928

Winner of the first women's nationals and the early leader of the national women's squash association, Miss Eleo Sears was considered the founding matriarch of U.S. squash. She came from the bluest of Boston bloodlines and was known as the "Society Bachelor Girl," but it was her renowned athletic prowess that gave her headlines. She loved pedestrianism and regularly walked the forty miles from Boston to Providence, she was one of the first female avia­tors and in 1909 broke fashion barriers by being the first woman to play polo in riding breeches and astride a horse. With her racquet genes �-her uncle was Dick Sears, winner of seven straight U.S. tennis nationals �- Sears won four U.S. tennis women's doubles titles and one mixed doubles. Yet Sears' trailblaz­ing reached an apotheosis on the squash court. Sears helped secure playing privileges for women at the Union Boat Club and the Harvard Club in Boston and helped to organize the first women's tournament at the Union Boat in 1926. Two years later at Round Hill Club in Greenwich, CT, Sears, at the age of thirty-seven, won the first-ever women's national singles tournament. With what John Reynolds, the Harvard Club professional, described as "a particularly strong backhand," Sears also won the Massachusetts state title in 1928, 1929, 1930 and, forty-seven years-old, in 1938. She captained the U.S. team in the Wolfe-Noel Cup matches against England in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1937. Her greatest contribution was founding the U.S. Women's Squash Racquets Association, on which she served as vice-president in its first year and then as president from 1933­1947, the longest tenure of any president in its history.

 

John Skillman (1907-1977)

U.S. Professional Champion 1933, 1935, 1937

For forty-one years the words Skillman and Yale were interchangeable with squash excellence. Born and raised in Princeton, NJ, Skillman first started playing squash at age nineteen. In the mid-1930s he was at the top of the pro­fessional ranks in the U.S., winning three national pro tournaments and reach­ing the finals in two more (once having to withdraw with a leg injury). He was the first player to use the volley as an offensive weapon. But it was a coach, mentor and friend to three generations of Eli men that made Johnnie Skillman unforgettable. In 1934, after working as assistant squash coach at Princeton and then as a pro at Apawamis Country Club in Rye, NY, he was persuaded to come to New Haven to coach in the new twenty-six court complex in Payne Whitney Gymnasium. Only mandatory retirement at age sixty-eight in 1975 could make Skillman leave. With his ever-present pipe and cheerful demeanor, he coaxed brilliance from his charges. Yale had a record of 452-79 under Skillman, just one losing season, had a 47-match winning streak and garnered eight national intercollegiate titles. (He also coached the men's tennis team from 1943-1975, with a record of 162-91 and six New England titles). Champions and leaders like John Holt, Glenn Shively, Ted Hands, Treddy Ketcham, Charlie and Darwin Kingsley, Sam and Ralph Howe and Derrick Niederman all credited Skillman with their successes on court and in life. In 1937 he published Squash Racquets, a valuable coaching manual which con­tained many of his aphorisms: "Never change a winning game," he said, advice he himself followed to perfection at Yale.

 

 

Class of 2002

 

Cecile M. Bowes (1914- )

National Champion 1938, 1940, 1941, 1948

With a greater span between first and last hardball national victories than any other man or women in U.S. history, Cecile Bowes proved to be an enduring and vivacious force in the early years of women's squash. Known as Babe, she played at the Cynwyd Club outside Philadelphia; an early mixed doubles part­ner was Norm Bramall, later to coach a half dozen national champions at Cynwyd. In 1931 Bowes burst onto the scene as a sixteen year-old when she reached the finals of the nationals. She lost four more times in the finals, but also managed four wins-usually playing her archrival Anne Page. Bowes, a brilliant shotmaker and tactician, won the Pennsylvania state singles in 1938, the doubles in 1935 and 1938. In 1936 while on tour with the U.S. side in the Wolfe-Noel Cup she reached the quarterfinals of the British championships.

 

Ralph E. Howe (1941- )

National Champion 1964

National Doubles Champion 1965, 1966, 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1976

North American Open Champion 1967

The younger brother of Sam Howe, Ralph Howe played an up-tempo, attacking game balanced by a beautiful lob serve and a zippy reverse corner. Howe won almost every title available: he won the 1960 juniors, the intercollegiates in 1962 and 63 while at Yale, three Atlantic Coasts, one Gold Racquet, one Harry Cowles and one Deforest-Tyler. In 1964 in Annapolis he beat three national champions to win his sole U.S. title. His finest moment occured at the North American Open in Montreal in 1967 when he vanquished Mo Khan 15-12 in the fifth in the semis and then his brother Sam in the finals, 15-12, 15-13, 5-15, 13-15, 15-13, becoming one of only four amateurs ever to win the most presti­gious open tournament on the continent. Howe won six doubles titles, two with Diehl Mateer, three with his brother and one with Peter Briggs. Howe later gar­nered silver at court tennis, winning a U.S. title, a Gold Racquet at Tuxedo and eleven national doubles titles, including one with brother Sam.

 

Samuel P. Howe, III (1938- )

National Champion 1962 and 1967

National Doubles Champion 1963, 1964, 1967, 1969, 1970 and 1971

Sam Howe began his competitive squash career at the inaugural national junior tournament in 1956. After captaining the Yale varsity team, Howe won his first-ever singles tournament at the 1962 nationals in Buffalo. Playing Ben Heckscher in the final, he came back from a 2-0, 9-5 in the third deficit to win 15-13 in the fifth. Five years later in Chicago he won his second national singles title without losing a game, which helped him complete a North American grand slam never duplicated: the national singles and doubles titles of both the U.S. and Canada in the same year. With his classic, graceful strokes, he won every major invitational, from the Gold Racquet to the Harry Cowles to the William White, as well as losing in three other national finals. A strong shotmaking left­waller in doubles, Howe won six nationals, the first three with Bill Danforth and the last three with his brother Ralph.

 

 

Class of 2003

 

Edward C. P. Edwards (1958- )

North American Champion 1987

One of the most devastatingly brilliant players in US Squash history, "Ned" Edwards was a giant of the 1980's professional hardball tour. Imaginative, quick and intense,

he had the rare gift of both power and touch.  A protege of Al Molloy at Penn and the number one ranked amateur in 1979 and 1980, Edwards produced a superlative pro career. He won the Boston Open in 1985 (15-14 in the fifth in the finals) 1986 and 1991.

Edwards was ranked number two on the tour for six years and set the standard for

international play by leading US teams in five world championships.  Edwards was

the only hardball player to consistently challenge his arch-nemesis Mark Talbott,

winning a third of their matches and some years being the only tour player to beat him.

On the doubles court, Edwards played either wall with his consummate style and won

numerous tournaments including three North American Opens, three Johnsons, one

Cambridge and one Elite.

 

Margaret Howe (1896 � 1989)

National Champion 1929, 1932, 1934

Women's squash began at Boston's Union Boat Club in 1926 when Margaret Howe organized the first bona fide women's squash tournament in the country.  She won it.  A year later she launched the Massachusetts states. Sixty women entered and Howe again won it. With a perfectly placed lob serve, smart court positioning and the instinctive ability to adjust her game to exploit any opponents' weaknesses, Howe won three National titles. In the third victory, she came back from an 8-3 deficit in the fifth game to win 15-10.  She went on to capture a record seven Massachusetts state titles. A mainstay on the U.S. Wolfe-Noel squad, Howe reached the quarter-finals of the British Nationals while on tour in 1934, and in 1937 she clinched a 3-2 victory with an upset win in New York. The inter-city Howe Cup was given in honor of her (and her twin daughters), and in 1973 Margaret Howe donated the trophy for the intercollegiate Howe Cup.

 

Ann Wetzel (1931- )

National Champion 1964

National Doubles Champion 1952, 1956, 1959 and 1964

A product of Norm Bramall's legendary women's program at the Cynwyd Club, Ann Wetzel had a profound effect on women's squash. A consistent shotmaker with well-honed strokes, she lost in the finals of the nationals six times before winning her sole title. She won four Pennsylvania state titles, eight Philadelphia & Districts and one Connecticut states title. Her most memorable win might have been when she broke Betty Howe Constable's six year unbeaten streak with a crushing victory in the 1959 Pennsylvania states. A vibrant left-waller in doubles, she won national titles with Anne Mattson, Barbara Clement, Sylvia Simonin and Jane Austin Stauffer. Wetzel's legacy off the court was most felt at Penn, where she started the women's squash team in

1968 and coached until 1994. In 1973 Wetzel was one of the women who founded the women's intercollegiate association.

 

 

Class of 2004

 

Edwin H. Bigelow (1886-1970)
Ned Bigelow revolutionized the relationship between amateurs and
professionals. An avuncular and sometimes bluntly honest figure,
Bigelow held numerous influential positions within the squash
bureaucracy, most notably as the president of the Metropolitan SRA,
vice-president of US Squash, chair of the 1950 nationals and the first
US Squash officer for international affairs. As president of the Heights
Casino in Brooklyn, he was responsible for building its famous doubles
court (which now bears his name). But it was a tournament founder and
director that he managed to change the squash landscape. In 1938 he
started the Heights Casino Doubles Open (now called the Johnson), which
was the first tournament in the country open to both professionals and
amateurs; in the late 1940s, he created the Racquet & Tennis Club's
annual spring Interscholastic Invitational, the first junior tournament
held outside Philadelphia, as well as the R&T's Freshman Invitation for
collegiate men. But Bigelow's greatest legacy was the United States
Open. He almost singlehandedly launched the Open in 1954 in New York,
doing everything from personally recruiting the star-studded field to
persauding US Squash to sanction the tournament. An immediate
sensation, the U.S. Open brought Hashim Khan to America, led to
incredible media exposure for squash and became the foundation of the
pro tour. Ned Bigelow demonstrated that squash leadership required both
a willingness for experimentation and a devotion to the game's timeless
values.

Demer Holleran (1967- )
National Singles Champion 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996,
1997, 1999
National Doubles Champion 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001,
2002, 2003, 2004
National Mixed Doubles Champion 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2000, 2002
World Doubles Champion 1994, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2004
World Mixed Doubles Champion 1996
Earning more open national titles than any person in U.S. history,
Demer Holleran was the only American to effortlessly cross over from
hardball to softball. She won two national junior titles; at Princeton
she captured three intercollegiate championships and captained the team
to an undefeated season in 1989. With her classic strokes, unpeturbable
confidence and unequalled sportsmanship, Holleran won the Apawamis in
1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1995, the Carol Weymuller Open in 1992 and
1993 and the Hyder in 1996, 1998 and 1999. She took the national
hardball title the last six years it was contested, as well as the
national softball title six times-three times she won both titles the
same year. On the doubles court, Holleran has garnered ten national
titles in women's doubles (one with Berkeley Belknap, nine with
McConnell), five world doubles titles (with McConnell), eight national
mixed (with Keen Butcher) and one world mixed (with Butcher). Achieving
a world softball ranking of twenty-one, she was a silver medalist in
both the individual and team tournaments at the Pan-American Games in
1995 and in 1999. Holleran coached the Penn women for nine years,
bringing them their first-ever Howe Cup victory in an undefeated 2000
season. That year she also won the President's Cup, becoming the first
women pro to receive US Squash's highest award. Since October 2003 she has been
the U.S. women's team coach.

Sharif Khan (1949- )
North American Open Champion 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976,
1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981
U.S. Professional Champion 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976,
1977, 1979
Boston Open Champion 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1981
The eldest son of Hashim Khan, Sharif Khan was the best player in North
America in the 1970s. He dominating the professional game as few have
ever done. He won the Drysdale Cup (Great Britain's national junior
title) and reached the semifinals of the 1970 British Open, but it was
the hardball game that became his private stomping ground. With his
famous up-tempo, eye-popping, slashing style, Sharif spelled doom for
two generations of challengers. He won an amazing twelve North American
Opens, nine U.S. Professionals (Tournament of Champions), seven Boston
Opens and four Boodles Opens. His greatest win was over Geoff Hunt in
the 1977 North American Open finals, when he outlasted the eight-time
British Open champion 15-13 in the fourth. Sharif bridged the pro
circuit from its humble beginnings in the late 1960s to the early 1980s
when, with his media-savvy, explosive talent and tremendous record, he
helped carry the tour to its apogee.

Class of 2005

Peter S. Briggs (1951- )
National Singles Champion 1976
National Doubles Champion 1976
National Mixed Doubles Champion 1984
North American Open Doubles Champion, 1976, 1984, 1995
One of the greatest left-wall players in doubles history, Peter Briggs
was renowned as both a gutsy sharpshooter and a brilliant junior coach.
At Harvard he won two national intercollegiate titles and played number
one for three straight years, leading the Crimson to three undefeated
seasons. He won one national title, one Gold Racquets, one Harry Cowles
and the 1976 Mexican nationals, before becoming the third amateur
player to turn pro. He also headed the U.S. team that played in the
1977 world championships. In doubles, the wily southpaw proved to be
extremely versatile. He won a national title with Ralph Howe and as a
pro won three North American Open titles, three Cambridge Club Doubles
and two Gold Racquets. In 1984 he swept through the doubles circuit,
winning the national mixed with Joyce Davenport, the Johnson with Gul
Khan, the NAO with Mark Talbott and the Elite with Dave Johnson. After
starting a varsity team at Cornell, Briggs returned home in 1988 and
has worked as a pro at the Apawamis Club ever since. His junior program
is renowned for its breadth and depth, with an immense number of
participants and a talented elite of national champions. Briggs'
emphasis on leadership is seen in the fact that more than sixty high
school and college team captaincy positions have been filled by one of
his Apawamis proteges.

Harry Lee Cowles (1889-1958)
The founder of intercollegiate squash, Harry Cowles coached more
national champions than any college coach in history. A court tennis
pro from Newport, Cowles taught squash at the Harvard Club in Boston
and was reputed, in an era without professional tournaments, to be a
leading player. In 1922 Harvard University hired him to be the first
college squash coach in the country. Before he retired in 1937, he had
generated a squash boom around the U.S. and launched what remains today
the world's largest and highest-quality university squash league. His
Harvard teams never lost a single match, going undefeated for fifteen
seasons. Four of his players won six of the first seven national
intercollegiate titles. Harvard captured the national five-man team
tournament six times, a record that remained unbroken for sixty years.
The enthusiasm for squash at Harvard was seen in the fact that by the
time Cowles retired there were fifty courts on campus. Most of all, he
mentored seven national champions in an unmatched period of success,
with Palmer Dixon, Myles Baker, Herby Rawlins, Larry Pool, Beek Pool,
Germain Glidden and Willing Patterson winning thirteen out of sixteen
straight titles. The illustrious Harry Cowles Invitational, played at
the Harvard Club in New York from 1947 to 1996, was named in his honor.
Combining suberb technical advice, psychology and a strict demand for
sportsmanship, Harry Cowles set the standard for all future college
coaches.

Agnes Bixler Kurtz (1941- )
Aggie Kurtz was the innovative pioneer of women's intercollegiate
squash. A leading player at Smith College, Kurtz won the Delaware
States and the Baba Lewis in Boston and was ranked in the top ten from
1964 to 1979. She represented the U.S. in the Wolfe-Noel Cup matches in
England in 1968 and in Australia in 1972, and she coached the U.S. team
at the 1990 women's world championships. In 1965, while teaching
physical education at Vassar, she founded and ran the first national
intercollegiate tournament. Seven years later she moved to Hanover, New
Hampshire to start a women's team at Dartmouth. For seventeen years she
coached the Big Green, earning over one hundred wins and compiling just
one losing season. A diligent college squash administrator, Kurtz
directed the women's intercollegiate squash association from 1977 to
1983 and since 1991 has run the intercollegiate Howe Cup. She is the
only person to twice be awarded the women's division Achievement Cup.
With her gracious style, infectious enthusiasm and behind-the-scenes
activism, Aggie Kurtz has provided thousands of college women the
opportunity to learn and excel at the game of squash.

 

Class of 2006

 

Elizabeth Woll Meade (1936-1990)

National Champion 1966, 1967, 1968

National Doubles Champion 1968

Betty Meade was pure perseverance. A Philadelphian who went to Penn, Meade picked up squash at age twenty-six when she joined the Cynwyd Club. Under the tutelage of Ted Friel and her future husband Newt, she went from neophyte to national champion in just four seasons. In 1962 she won the first tournaments she entered (the Philadelphia Districts B division) and the Manheim Challenge (for novice players). Meade went on to capture three Pennsylvania state titles, two Philadelphia Districts (A division), two Wilmington Country Club Invitationals, two New Jersey state titles and one New York state title. She took up doubles in 1968 and on the left wall took the nationals with Bunny Vosters, as well as the Philadelphia Districts with Jane Stauffer. Meade played a power game, accentuated with a deadly reverse corner. In March 1968, just a week after becoming the fourth American woman to win both the national singles and doubles in the same year, Meade lost her right leg at the knee in a car accident. With tremendous courage and optimism, Meade continued to play and coach tennis and took up golf (she regularly broke 80). After an eight-year battle, Betty Meade died of cancer at age fifty-three.

 

John G. Nimick (1958- )

National Champion 1982

North American Open Champion 1988, 1990

A clutch champion on the court and a visionary off the court, John Nimick has been a central figure in the development of professional U.S. squash in the past quarter century. Rising from the familiar proving grounds of Episcopal Academy and Merion Cricket Club, in 1981 Nimick captained Princeton to a national title and won the national individual intercollegiate title. After taking the nationals in 1982, he turned pro and became a top-two ranked star on the North American hardball tour. He captured four majors�two North American Opens and the Boston Open in 1987 and 1989�and twice represented the U.S. at the world team championships. In doubles, Nimick won the 1987 Johnson, as well as two 45+ World Doubles titles with Clive Caldwell. Showing inspired leadership, he was president of the pro hardball association from 1988 to 1990 and executive director of the pro softball association from 1994 to 1999. He then formed an event promotion firm to produce spectacular pro squash tournaments, including the Tournament of Champions in New York's Grand Central and the U.S. Open in Symphony Hall in Boston.