As you are all aware for various reasons Squash SA (SSA) has been temporarily suspended by SASCOC. A Special General Meeting which will be overseen by SASCOC has been convened on the 24^th September to elect a President and an executive (comprising 8 people).

This letter is being sent by an ex chairman of SSA - Simon Malone - and current squash administrators in various roles - Lloyde Hanson, Garth van Rensburg, Chris Holden, Michael Melvill, John van Heeswijk, John Raubenheimer, Ian Graham & Peter Bridges -  to the squash players, administrators and regions outlining the position as it stands and recommending a way forward.

HISTORIC SITUATION

The original SRA – now SSA – enjoyed long standing and sound relationships with Government and World Squash during its existence. Successive Ministers of Sport and Senior Dept. of Sport officials – Piet Koornhof, Dawie de Villiers, Steve Tshwete, Mthobi Tyamzashe and recently the President of SASCOC, Gideon Sam - have attended SSA functions and have enjoyed cordial relations with the sport.

The British SRA and the World Squash Federation have always considered SSA as a solid, supportive and constructive member of the international squash community.

It is TOTALLY unacceptable that the administrators of the sport can embark on a public spat about office bearers caused by some sloppy administration and exacerbated by some personality clashes.

These actions place SSA in a category with some of the appallingly run sports bodies embroiled in continued and unnecessary controversy in SA. Squash has and should avoid public controversy. It is small enough and mature enough to do so, and the administrators as elected by you – the squash player – should ensure this.

CURRENT SITUATION

SSA has been suspended and is currently being run by SASCOC. SSA has no Executive Committee. The provinces/regions are required to nominate a new Executive for the Special General Meeting on 24 September.

Barry Hendricks, the previous President, together with a number of others, who would, if elected, make up the new Executive, are being nominated by a number of regions .

These nominees include :

-         Zuko Kubukeli (Previous Chairman WP and currently no. 8 in SA)  

-         Siyoli Waters (currently in the top 5 on the SA Women's Rankings, Squash Olympic ambassador),

-         Craig van der Wath (A legend!)

-         Edward Jantjies (Chairperson of SA Country Districts Squash)  

-         Helene Schlebusch (North West Province Squash administrator).

-         Angie Clifton-Parkes (Another legend!)

This amounts to a mix of experience and gender as required by the constitution and national sport priorities in SA.

Barry Hendricks, who may not be known to  all of you, is arguably the most suitable potential President SSA could have. He played squash for Eastern Province Squash Federation and was Chairman of that Association.

He is currently Chairman of Central Gauteng Squash (to retire in about a year) where he has revitalised that organization in terms of planning, management, finance and development (800 disadvantaged players and 10 coaches, National Lottery funding money and more).

Most importantly Barry has spent a considerable part of his career in national sport and semi-government organizations, such as the National Sports Council and SA Sports Commission, and brings to squash an intimate knowledge of the workings of Government and sports administration - which is evidenced by the increase in lottery money awarded to SSA (R7.2m).

A number of spurious allegations  with respect to Barry (and others) are being circulated apparently in an effort to discredit his campaign.  Each allegation together with our rebuttal follows:

1. Barry wants to change the SSA constitution so he can draw R30 000pm

Minutes of the SSA executive meeting 3-12-2011 – where Barry raised the possibility of being compensated for approx R1000 of  ‘out-of-pocket’ expenses - follow verbatim:

9.3.1     

Mr Hendricks informed the meeting  that he would like the GOVAS structure to look at the payment of honoraria. He was attending a number of meetings on behalf of Squash South Africa e.g. travel to Midlands for their AGM.

    Ms Prosser replied that Constitution explicitly disallowed remuneration (honoraria are considered remuneration) for EXCO     members. Travel and other expenses are currently reimbursed for expenses incurred beyond the Gauteng region.

 Mr van der Wath asked if Mr Hendricks was intending to request a change to the Constitution.

    9. 3.1.1 

Mr Hendricks would submit a formal request in writing so that it may be placed on the agenda for the Annual General Meeting in June. This would need to be approved by EXCO in advance and the correct notice given to provinces in accordance with the constitution’s requirements for changes.

2. Barry took a 20% commission on the  R1.7m  Central Gauteng lottery allocation.

We have received verification from Central Gauteng (which can be confirmed upon request) demonstrating this is untrue.

3.  Barry awarded contracts to his cronies.

As President of Squash SA,  within his mandate, Barry had opened up a discussion with Jacque Haremse (ex-CEO of Rowing SA) as to the SSA CEO position . There was a clear understanding such a relationship required contracts requiring SSA executive ratification. Obviously this has gone no further.

4. Barry wanted his cronies on the committee.

We are entirely supportive of the notion of squash being more inclusive.  

This notion is not predicated only by a sense of fair play.  Inclusiveness is the only way we will provide commercial benefits to our game (especially in the eyes of sponsors and government.)

This does not – however - amount to an accusation of cronyism. Such an accusation is entirely without basis.

We have no hesitation in recommending Barry as a nominee for President and urge you to support his nomination. The remaining nominees – Zuko, Siyoli, Craig, Edward, Helene, Angie et al are all lovers of squash and share the vision of putting squash back on the map both at an African and an International level.

Simon Malone

Lloyde Hanson

Chris Holden

Garth van Rensburg

Michael Melvill

John van Heeswijk

Peter Bridges

Ian Graham

John Raubenheimer

Matthew Roberts of Cape Town and Elani Landman captured the respective Under 19 titles at the weekend when the finals of the S A National Under 16 and Under 19 championships were played at Londt Park Squash Club on Saturday afternoon.

After dropping the first game to Durandt Martin of Paarl ,Robertsi in his usual clinical effective manner, proceeded to collect the next 3 games to take the title and add it to the Hitec S A Closed title which he won in March at Parkview.

Third place went to Jason Byrne of Border who outplayed Ruan Olivier of Northerns in straight games.

In the fourth meeting of 2011 between Western Province’s Alexandra Fuller and Elani Landman of Eastern province , Landman who , like Roberts, had captured the Hitec S A Closed title, played her usual brand of attacking squash to win 3-1. Third position went to Julie Lee of Kwazulu Natal. With the score standing at 1 game to Lume Landman and 11 points all,  Landman inured her ankle and had to withdraw.

In their fourth clash of 2011 Luke Willemse (WP) edged through in five games against Boland’s Aubrey Lawrence in the Boys under 16 final. Boland’s Baruch Truter took third position defeating Shivaan Salligram of Kwazulu Natal in 4 games.

The Girls under 16 final between Kacey Leigh Dodd of Eastern Province – in her first year in the age-group- and Maryke Coetzee of Border – second year unde r16 – provided the battle royale.

Points and games seesawed with Dodd eventually winning the title at 15-13 in the decider.

Third place went to Ashleigh Schepers , also of Eastern Province who outplayed Border’s Tayla Victor in straight girls – what augurs well for the future is that both players are first year under 16.

Port Elizabeth normally a quiet venue was overflowing to the seams: Smokie on Wednesday 6^th: a visit  by The President Mr Jacob Zuma and Juju Malema on the 7^th – they actually had lunch at the Chapman Hotel where some of the players were staying: Neil Diamond on the 8^th: Rhodes and UPE Graduations on Saturday 9^th and the Ironman on the 10^th with subsidiary races on the 9^th !!!!  (Don’t think it will ever be the same!!)

2011 de Beers S A National Doubles Championships

North West’s Jimmy Schlebusch and Christo Potgieter set the 2011 de Beers S A National Doubles Championships alight when they first defeated second seeds Mike Tootill and Paul Atkinson by 3 games to 1 in their pool – basically the semi-final,  and then in a  power packed display outgunned defending champions, Craig van der Wath and Gareth Schnehage in straight games in the final.

Potgieter, who has pistol sharp reflexes and uncanny anticipation , ably supported by the counter balancing consistency of Schlebusch, allowed the more experienced combination of van der Wath and Schnehage no lattitude nor opportunity to get in to the game, and are very worthy winners of the 2011 title.

Third place was taken by Tootill and Atkinson who defeated Darren Helwick and Gary Plumstead in 4 games.

In the women’s A section, the experienced combination of Angie Clifton Parks and Diana Argyle overcame a game challenge from Sonika Fritz and Milnay Louw, defeating them by 3 games to 1.

4th position went to another experienced combination - Claire Nitch and Sharon Le Roux, who also needed 4 games to subdue the Tukkies combination of Cheyna Tucker and Senade Haupt.

Argyle and Atkinson successfully defended their Mixed doubles title by defeating Potgieter and Cara Fourie, also from Potchefstroom. Nitch again took 3^rd place when she combined with John van Heeswijk to beat Nico Mulder and Lindy Riphagen.

Newcomers, Wayne Muller and Sean Schouten won the men’s B section when they beat Calvin Deutschman of Free State and Mark Southwood of Northerns.  Vladimar Djurak, partnered by Rob Louw , both of Vaal Triangle - another new pairing – combined to beat Laurie Moth and his son, Gavin in the C section final.

Familiar faces, Maryna Aucamp and Tracey Le Roux won the women’s B section defeating second seed Michele Kohne and Tina Jamieson.

Defending champions Garth van Rensburg and Chris Holden had a tough battle with Deon Venter and Vince Olley before winning in four games while Venter appeared in his second final, when, he together with Tracey le Roux, edged through 11-9 in the fifth game against Jacques Harmse and Sharon le Roux in the Mixed B final.

Gavin Sundstrom and Douglas Espin travelled from Cape Town to participate.

Played at the delightful Johannesburg Country Club Squash Club in Auckland Park , the de Beers S A Doubles championships is a highlight on the squash calendar. Serious competitiveness balanced with sportsmanship, camaraderie and a pleasant ambiance  are hallmarks of the event which receives the personal sponsorship of Mr Nicky Oppenheimer, an avid squash enthusiast – with his own singles and doubles court !  

An always  welcome player, Darryl Schneeburger donated R500 to Gary Thompson thirty four years ago to host the first Tranvaal doubles championship. In 1997 it became the S A Doubles Championships and was used as a selection tournament for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur where Natalie Grainger, partnered by Claire Nitch in the women’s doubles and Rodney Durbach in the mixed, brought bronze medals back to South Africa.

2011 saw Mr Warwick Bester present the prizes on behalf of de Beers. Himself a  squash player, he intends participating in 2012.   

A highlight package will be flighted on Supersport later in the month.

News from the PSA World Tour

RESULTS: PSA Challenger 15 Hibiscus Gardens Open, Brisbane, Australia

Final:
[1] Stephen Coppinger (RSA) bt [2] Martin Knight (NZL) 11-7, 7-11, 11-5, 11-8 (75m)

Coppinger Slays Knight In Hibiscus Gardens

South African Stephen Coppinger justified his top billing in the Hibiscus Gardens Open when he downed New Zealand's Martin Knight in today's final of the PSA World Tour Challenger 15 squash event at Hibiscus Gardens Squash Centre in Brisbane, Australia.

The world number 39 from Cape Town won a high quality final 11-7, 7-11, 11-5, 11-8 to claim the seventh Tour title of his career and his second of the year.

Coppinger and Knight are separated by only 13 places on the world rankings and they were evenly matched throughout the opening two games.

However, the Kiwi began to show signs of fatigue at the start of the third and Coppinger took full advantage.

The 26-year-old top seed stepped up his attack at the start of both the third and fourth games, seizing on his opponent's mistakes and racing away to big leads.

Knight fought hard but he was unable to make an impression and the South African added the Brisbane title to the Finnish Open he won in February.

"It was a really, really tough match so I was delighted to get through," said Coppinger.

"I really had to regroup after the second and force myself to make the pace, to get onto the T and to push him around the court rather than the other way round."

Coppinger said he realised Knight, who had a tough semi-final win on Saturday, was tiring after the second game.

"We both put a massive effort into the second game - I sensed he was tiring towards the end of that game. It's easy when you are winning the game to stay pumped up but after the rest between games, I think it took its toll."

Knight conceded he had lost concentration in the third game after battling hard to get the final back on terms.

"I hung back and was trying to control the ball and play a more controlled, accurate pace, but he was a bit more frantic and he was able to cut the ball off and do a bit with it," said the Wellington-born 27-year-old.

"I got back a little bit in the fourth, but my legs gave way - I was tired."

Does anyone on squashball know who these squash players are?

Alan Stapleton and his partner Steve Smith clinched the prestigious St Francis Bay Doubles  invitational o50 title

Rank outsiders Van Rensburg and Graham examine Stapes' form before meeting him in the final.

Fives Reasons for Olympic Gold

The modern incarnation of a medieval ball game is looking for a place on the ultimate stage

 

Peter Cohen and Adrian Lee play one-wall handball in the shadow of a traffic flyover at London's Westway sports center.

 

 

LONDON—In the shadow of West London's urban sprawl, two school kids hit a soft, bright blue rubber ball against a wall. They are playing a court game known as one-wall handball, a derivation of fives, one of the world's oldest sports that can trace its lineage back to medieval times.

For most people in Britain, fives is seen as the preserve of elite private schools and universities. Like polo or lacrosse, it's played by a small social elite, with a blue-blood appeal limited to alumni from the handful of institutions which have courts—places like Oxford, Cambridge or Eton College, the famous boarding school where British royals are educated.

But thanks to a version of the game that started life in some of the roughest neighborhoods of New York, this ancient sport of hitting a ball against a wall with your hand is being introduced to a new generation of children in Britain's inner-city schools.

Such is the success of one-wall handball that in just five years of it first being played in the U.K. more than 3,000 children now play the game and dozens of adult competitions have been launched. Meanwhile, the England national team was crowned European one-wall handball champion at the sport's European championships in Valencia, Spain, last September.

It's still early days for one-wall handball here, of course. But with eight state-run schools already playing regularly and interest spreading from London to outposts as far afield as north Yorkshire and the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, there is a feeling among the sport's organizers that interest could snowball and even imitate its success in New York, where more than a 100,000 people play the game, according to the U.S Handball Association.

"It is a really good inner-city sport," says Peter Cohen, fives development manager at the Westway sports centre in London.

"It works well with schools that don't have a lot of space for onsite sports facilities such as football, cricket and rugby. It also benefits from its cost and simplicity: you don't have to be a coordinated athlete, don't have to own expensive equipment and you can play the game almost anywhere."

The game is the simplest variation of a slew of court games that have evolved across the world from the natural sporting instinct of hitting a ball against a wall. In France, a variation of the game is called jeu de Paume; the Spanish play pelota; in Italy it's known as pallapugno, while the Dutch play kaatsen and the Belgians call it llargues.

In Britain the oldest court-based predecessor one-wall handball is fives. It is played in three formats—Eton, Rugby and Winchester—which vary according to the physical shape of the court. In the case of Winchester and Eton fives, the left-hand wall features a buttress halfway up, which is based on buttresses found on the exterior of the Eton College chapel. The game is not dissimilar to squash, the main difference being that players hit the ball with their hands.

Organizers of one-wall handball say the next step is Olympic recognition.

This weekend the major governing bodies for handball, including the World Handball Council and the Confederation Internationale de Jeu de Balle—the organization for wall games in South America and Europe—will meet in Valencia to discuss a joint agreement to promote handball globally, with the aim of competing in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

For Dick Warner, the Deputy President of the Rugby Fives Association, this development is crucial to the growth and survival of fives in Britain.

"There are a limited number of people who can go to private schools and pick up fives," says Mr. Warner. "If you really want to get large numbers playing fives and create a legacy sport for the Olympics, you need to have the facilities within every school that wants to play it."

The brainchild behind one-wall handball in the U.K. is James Toop, a 29-year-old modern languages teacher who played Eton and Rugby fives at Oxford University.

Frustrated by the lack of sporting facilitates in the London inner city school in which he taught, he introduced the game after seeing the success handball enjoyed in New York.

"When I originally started the game it was solely with the view that it was a great inner city sport for urban schools in urban estates and communities," says Mr. Toop.

"Since then the game has grown so much we have had a lot of demand from independent schools and existing fives players. Sport is such a leveller, irrespective of class and ethnicity, and it is a great way of bringing different parts of society together.

"Ultimately, if it keeps growing it will become an Olympic sport. My dream is that we will be able to go round every estate in London and put up walls where children can play. If we bring enough attention to handball hopefully those that champion fives will start building fives courts in schools again."

It is a view echoed by Howie Eisenberg, 71, who grew up playing handball in the 1950s in New York's Brighton Beach and became one of the game's greatest players with five U.S. titles.

"It is a game of power," says Mr. Eisenberg from his home in California. "In that sense it is similar to tennis in that the player requires the physical attributes of strength, quick reflexes, speed and stamina. All of those are integral to the game.

"But the really great thing about one-wall is that not only is it the simplest form of the game it is the cheapest as well."

From basic etiquette to squash markings. Its all here.....

Squashing the Ivies

By PAUL WACHTER

NEW YORK TIMES

One day in 1996, Trinity College’s new president, Evan Dobelle, called the men’s squash coach into his office. Dobelle was an unconventional hire. He didn’t complete his bachelor’s degree until he was 39, working in politics — mayor of Pittsfield, Mass., aide to President Carter, treasurer of the Democratic National Committee — then running first one, then another community college. But Trinity was a troubled institution, and the trustees weren’t looking for another tweedy scholar. Enrollment was down even as the liberal-arts school was accepting 65 percent of all applicants — a striking contrast to its rivals Amherst and Williams, which typically admit fewer than 20 percent of their applicant pools. The biggest problem was Trinity’s immediate surroundings, the crime-­ridden, blighted neighborhood of Frog Hollow in Hartford. So Dobelle started an ambitious $225 million public-private urban-renewal project to improve the area — including the construction of three schools and a performing-arts center — without pushing its residents out. Then he turned to the college’s sports programs, wondering if there might not be a quicker way to improve Trinity’s brand.

The obstacle there was that Trinity is a Division III school, and in Dobelle’s view, winning a basketball championship, say, against an obscure college in the Midwest wouldn’t make much of a splash. Trinity had a squash team, however, and even if the sport wasn’t played everywhere, at least the school competed against Harvard, Yale and Princeton, elite universities known throughout the world. Beating them in anything would be big news. It was still easier said than done, though: no school outside the Ivy League had won the Potter Cup, given to the men’s national champion in college squash, since the U.S. Naval Academy’s surprise victory in 1967.

Dobelle asked his squash coach, Paul Assaiante, what it would take to compete with the Ivies.

Dobelle didn’t know it at the time, but Assaiante’s path to Trinity was as improbable as his own. A working-class kid from the Bronx, Assaiante competed in gymnastics at Springfield College in Massachusetts and coached the sport at the U.S. Military Academy. During his downtime there he took up tennis, became an accomplished player and applied as a lark when Army’s tennis-coaching job opened up. When other candidates turned down the job after finding out they would have to lead cadets on mandatory early-morning runs, Assaiante got the position in 1977 — and the added duty of coaching the squash team. He learned the sport quickly, moving on to coach it at Williams and then private clubs before landing the Trinity job in 1994.

So when Dobelle posed his question, Assaiante had been around squash long enough to know how to change the preppy American face of the sport. Recruit foreign players, he said, without skipping a beat.

It has been 15 years since that short conversation, at which Dobelle gave Assaiante the go-ahead to canvass the globe for players. Dobelle is now the president of Westfield State University in Massachusetts, but Assaiante is leading Trinity’s squash team into the national-championship tournament later this week at Harvard as a favorite to win its 13th consecutive title. And if, after this article goes to press, Trinity gets past Princeton and Brown, there will be another streak on the line, too — The Streak. Over the last dozen years, Trinity has not lost a single match to another school. At 239 matches and counting, as of this writing, it’s the longest winning streak, by far, in the history of college sports.

Trinity opened its 2010-11 season at Williams in December. As the first snowflakes of winter fell on the campus in Williamstown, Mass., the home team was being pummeled inside the squash center. Down two games to none in a best-of-five match, Will Morris, Williams’s top player, slumped against a water fountain and conceded to a teammate, “I’m tired,” as his opponent, Trinity’s Parth Sharma, casually practiced a few shots on court, barely sweating.

Morris matriculated from St. Paul’s, the New Hampshire boarding school that built the country’s first squash court in 1884. His teammates were from Exeter, Choate and other top prep schools; 20 years ago Williams’s roster would have been the envy of any school in the country. Today, against Trinity, it didn’t stand a chance. Trinity started only one American, Travis Judson, a senior, in its nine-man lineup. Sharma was from Jaipur, India — he attended a squash academy in Chennai before Trinity — and behind him was a fellow countryman as well as players from Sweden, South Africa, Malaysia, Colombia, El Salvador and Jamaica.

What Assaiante understood in 1996 and what remains the case is that the United States isn’t very good at squash. (The highest-ranked male American pro is No. 40: Julian Illingworth, a Yale graduate.) In part, that’s because until the last 15 years or so, Americans played a different version of the game, one that employed a harder ball and smaller court. Also, in many other parts of the world, more people are able to play; squash isn’t an upper-class sport. “I grew up in a middle-class, maybe working-class, family,” says Martin Heath, the Scottish coach at the University of Rochester, who was once ranked No. 4 in the world. “In Europe, you didn’t need to belong to a country club to play the game.”

At the beginning of Sharma and Morris’s match, each player was conservative. Occasionally, each sent drop shots to the front corners — not so much in order to win the point outright, however, as to tire his opponent. Squash is like sex, Assaiante likes to say: the object is to make it last as long as possible, wear the other person out. As in tennis, a point ends when the ball bounces twice or is struck out of bounds. But a squash court is small, a 672-square-foot box, and a good player who’s not terribly out of position should be able to reach any ball.

Morris wasn’t used to playing the game at Sharma’s tempo. “He forces the pace, and you can’t slow it down,” Morris said after the match. As the errors mounted for Morris, Sharma opened up his bag of trick shots. Lining up to hit a backhand into the front-right corner, he instead played it to the left with a deft flick of the wrist that wrong-footed Morris. “My favorite part of the game is the deception,” Sharma told me later. “I like finding new ways to trick my opponent.”

When Sharma finished off Morris, he completed a 9-0 romp for Trinity over the No. 11 team in the country. Only Trinity’s No. 5 player, Christopher Binnie from Jamaica, surrendered a game.

Trinity’s first international recruit was Marcus Cowie, from Norwich, England. Just out of high school and already ranked among the world’s top 100 squash professionals — he deferred prize money that would have put him afoul of N.C.A.A. regulations — Cowie first attracted the interest of Harvard’s coach, Bill Doyle. But the admissions department turned him down, and Doyle, a Trinity alumnus, put him in touch with Assaiante. “Trinity made a tremendous pitch,” says Cowie, who hadn’t heard of the college until Assaiante called. He met with Dobelle and was courted by Luke Terry, a Trinity graduate who served at Credit Suisse’s London offices. Assaiante took him to a Red Sox game.

When he arrived on campus in the fall of 1996, Cowie was instantly the best college player in the country; he went on to win the individual intercollegiate championships as a freshman and sophomore. In 1999, Trinity beat Harvard for the first time, in front of 2,000 spectators at home. “It was so crowded that when I broke a string, I couldn’t push the door open to get another racket,” Cowie recalls. “It was match ball, and I won that last point with broken strings.” Later that year, Trinity beat Harvard again to win its first national championship, ending Harvard’s own run of eight consecutive titles. Seven international players were on that Trinity squad.

Other schools have had international recruits, but never in such numbers, and there have been chirps about Trinity’s mercenary approach inside genteel squash circles. In 2004, The Harvard Crimson wrote — erroneously — that the “Evil Empire of College Squash” was handing out athletic scholarships, something schools in the Ivy League and the New England Small College Athletic Conference (which Trinity belongs to) are not allowed to do. “The feeling was that if you beat Harvard, you had to be cheating,” Assaiante says.

Trinity does enjoy one significant recruiting advantage: lower admission standards. “The kids that play squash for Trinity could not get into Williams (and Harvard, Yale and Princeton),” Zafi Levy, Williams’s coach, told me by e-mail. (Levy, who is from Israel, played for Assaiante at Trinity and then transferred to Williams.) In some cases, that’s certainly true: Randy Lim, a senior from Malaysia, didn’t get into Princeton, for example. What’s more, Trinity’s admissions office, with support from the president, is able to give more slots to squash players than its competitors do. As the Yale coach David Talbott puts it, “At Yale, where sports aren’t the emphasis, the president isn’t going to put that much focus on any sport.”

Still, if Trinity focuses more on squash than other sports, that’s well within the rules set down by the N.E.S.C.A.C., which permits Trinity to devote 71 spots annually to athletes who would not be likely to gain admittance. Schools are free to divvy the slots among the sports as they like. (The Ivy League’s numbers are not as transparent.) “What I say to the critics is that we’ve never tried to pretend we’re Harvard or Princeton,” Assaiante says, adding that he’s proud of his team’s academic record. During his tenure, only one player has failed to graduate, and that student returned to his home overseas for financial, not academic, reasons.

But by now, the Ivies, too, have filled their ranks with international players. Assaiante’s scouting advantages — he coaches the U.S. national team and is also tipped off by the vast web of Trinity squash alumni now scattered around the world — have been mitigated by the rise of the Internet, which makes it easy for anyone to track junior results in Lahore and Cairo.

“When we played Trinity in the national championship last year, they had nine international players in their top nine, and we had seven,” Talbott says. Nearly all students will still choose an Ivy League university over Trinity when they can get in. “Of the top eight squash teams, five are in the Ivy League,” Bob Callahan, Princeton’s coach, says. “That’s what’s unique about the sport. You can access the best education in the country and still play at the highest level.”

Meanwhile, schools with less lofty admissions standards, including the University of Rochester (ranked No. 4) and Franklin & Marshall (No. 8), are catching up to Trinity by following its model.

Trinity’s home match against Yale in mid-January was the most anticipated of this season. Last year, Trinity beat Yale 6-3 to win its 12th national title. And it was a contest that briefly captured the nation’s attention, thanks to some histrionics involving the teams’ No. 1 players. After the final point, Baset Ashfaq Chaudhry, a Trinity senior from Pakistan, who stands 6-foot-5, ran to his Yale counterpart, Kenneth Chan, who’s a foot shorter, leaned over him and let out a primal scream. The footage was broadcast on SportsCenter and went viral online, but ESPN didn’t show the moment earlier in the match when Chan made a similar unsporting gesture. Ashfaq apologized and later withdrew from the singles championship, but Trinity’s phone lines were deluged with angry calls, and the incident did little to diminish Trinity’s image as the bully of college squash.

Chan was playing at No. 2 this year, as was Sharma, who lost a challenge match to a teammate and countryman, Vikram Malhotra, who was now No. 1 for Trinity. But the biggest shake-up wrought by challenge matches was the arrival, for the first time in several years, of two Americans in Trinity’s top nine, both graduates of the Brunswick School in Greenwich, Conn.: Judson was at No. 8, and a freshman, Matthew Mackin, was No. 9. Behind them were another dozen or so Americans, affectionately called the “bomb squadders” by Assaiante, who doesn’t divide his team into varsity and junior-varsity squads. Instead, he inserts lower players into the lineup against weaker teams.

It’s a philosophy that endears Assaiante to parents of all nationalities. “I kept thinking there has to be something fake about this guy, but I never found it,” says the author Tom Wolfe, whose son played for Trinity and who gave a party to celebrate Assaiante’s recently published memoir, “Run to the Roar.”

When Sharma and Chan took the court, Trinity led the match 2-1; Andres Vargas, from Colombia, and Antonio Diaz, from Mexico, eked out close victories for Trinity, while Mackin lost to Yale’s Robby Berner, another Brunswick alumnus. Berner liked his team’s chances. “We were close last year, and they graduated a lot of players,” he said.

Sharma and Chan split the first two games. The third game, and the match, tilted on an epic rally with Sharma leading 6-5. Three times Chan dove to the floor, barely able to flick the ball toward the front wall. Finally, Chan couldn’t pull himself up in time, and Sharma whacked the ball to the open court. Sharma closed out that game and pulled away in the fourth.

On another court, Johan Detter, a Swede, avenged a junior-circuit loss to Yale’s Neil Martin, from Ireland, and Binnie recorded Trinity’s fifth win, clinching the match. Trinity would end up prevailing 7-2, with Judson accounting for the second loss. Yale’s Berner told me that it augurs well for American squash that two homegrown players have cracked Trinity’s lineup — but he didn’t mention that they were responsible for Trinity’s two losses.

All streaks come to an end. “The mathematical odds are so acutely against any continuation ad infinitum of such a historic feat,” James Jones Jr., Trinity’s current president, says. In December, the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team broke the U.C.L.A.men’s basketball record of 88 consecutive victories, but then, just two games later, fell to Stanford. In his comments immediately after the game, Connecticut’s coach, Geno Auriemma, smiled, praised the Stanford women and said he would probably appreciate his team’s run all the more now that it had ended.

“Losing is a disease,” the New York Knights’ clubhouse psychologist says in the baseball movie “The Natural.” But winning also carries its own heavy burden. As a Trinity freshman, Gustav Detter, Johan’s older brother, took the court against Princeton in February 2006 with the match tied at 4. He was facing a senior, Yasser el-Halaby, widely considered to be the best player in the history of college squash. Coming back from a two-game deficit, Detter pulled off a miraculous upset. He fell to the court and raised his arms in ecstasy. Two years ago, however, when Detter was a senior and pulled out the match in a similar situation, he felt only relief. “I played that match with a completely different feeling, a fear of losing and letting the team down,” he told me.

Of course, Assaiante is attuned to this feeling, this burden. “The streak motivates them, it spurs them on, and it paralyzes them,” he says of his players. He says he is prepared for the day his team loses, that he has rehearsed many times the speech he’ll give. He pictures the match ending 5-4, with the Trinity player who loses the deciding match walking off the court, head down.

“First of all, I’ll ask the five players that lost to raise their hands,” Assaiante says. “I’ll say: ‘All of you lost a point today. You lost the same number of points as the last man on the court. So Johnny, you have nothing to hang your head about.’ ”

He’ll invite the team to dinner, where he’ll assure his players that “nothing has changed,” certainly not how he feels about them or how they feel about one another.

But first, before the team leaves the courts, Assaiante wants to do something else. “I’m going to dance,” he says. “And then I’ll yell, ‘Yippee!’ ”

Paul Wachter, a founder of the news aggregator Web site againstdumb.com, last wrote about women’s roller derby for the magazine.

The Human Gene Map for Performance and Health-Related Fitness Phenotypes 

This review presents the 2003 update of the human gene map for physical performance and health-related fitness phenotypes. It is based on peer-reviewed papers published by the end of 2003 and includes association studies with candidate genes, genome-wide scans with polymorphic markers, and single-gene defects causing exercise intolerance to variable degrees. The genes and markers with evidence of association or linkage with a performance or fitness phenotype in sedentary or active people, in adaptation to acute exercise, or for training-induced changes are positioned on the genetic map of all autosomes and the X chromosome. Negative studies are reviewed but a gene or locus must be supported by at least one positive study before being inserted on the map. By the end of 2000, 29 loci were depicted on the first edition of the map. In contrast, the 2003 human gene map for physical performance and health-related phenotypes includes 109 autosomal gene entries and QTL, plus two on the X chromosome. Moreover, there are 15 mitochondrial genes in which sequence variants have been shown to influence relevant fitness and performance phenotypes.

Figure 1.

The 2003 human performance and health-related fitness gene map. The map includes all gene entries and QTL that have shown associations or linkages with exercise-related phenotypes

Does anyone one understand it?

The Santam Doubles Tournament - St Francis Bay 4^th to 6^th March 2011.

The Santam St Francis Bay Doubles Championships will be holding its annual Tournament from the 4^th to the 6^th March, this will be the 8^th year the tournament has been run – and when one considers its humble beginnings, which was to celebrate the opening of the only doubles court in the Eastern Cape way back in 2004 – then we realize we have certainly come a long way. Sir Michael Edwardes and Peter Trimingham, 2 of the inventors of the doubles court have brought a contingent of doubles players from the UK to compete in what has become the friendliest of friendly tournaments year after year – and this year sees nearly 20 UK visitors to our tournament. The tournament produces the most wonderful doubles squash that would not be out of place on any world stage.

Our major sponsor is Santam and our minor sponsor is BoE Bank, and the tournament has grown to the point where it is now “difficult to book a berth” for players that have as yet not enjoyed the fun, the camaraderie and the special spirit of St Francis Bay Doubles Squash Tournament, as last year’s players have first right of entry.

 The Santam Tournament is run on a knock out basis and all other categories are run on a Swiss pairing basis, and the tournament caters for all the different age groups. There are 7 categories – Open, Over 40s, Over 50s, Over 60s, Over 70s, Ladies, and Mixed. This year we will have many a current or previous world champions, a good number of provincial and county champions, and many very competent players that have held top seedings in their countries provinces and clubs.

What is probably totally unique in this tournament is that all the games are marked from within the court by the players themselves. In the 7 year history of this special Tournament we have never had a single incident where the Tournament referee has been asked to adjudicate a query. The sportsmanship is very special at this tournament, and this is recognized by the coveted Stewart Cup, the highest award in the competition, that goes to the person who displays the “best spirit in playing the game”.

There will be over 100 matches played during the Tournament which runs from Friday the 4^th March to Sunday the 6^th March. The tournament is now a firm favourite on the SA Squash calendar with over 100 players coming in from around the Globe and all corners of South Africa to plat at the SFB Squash Club which is arguably the finest doubles squash facilities worldwide – having two doubles courts and a singles court. In fact this year we welcome 17 Canadians who are on a Jesters Squash tour of South Africa and have incorporated the SFB tournament into their tour. As mentioned earlier we also have just short of 20 players from the UK – which include the current Santam Open title holders, Greg Pearman and Peter Crossman, who will be back to defend their title.

Doubles squash is a great leveler allowing the experience of the older players to compete against the agility of youth – and no doubt we will witness many a real cliffhanger over the 3 days of play.

By all accounts the doubles courts at the St Francis Bay Squash Club are quiet excellent – the Edwardes Doubles Court is considered near perfect, and the Henderson court which has recently had the front wall resurfaced is considered by the English squash professionals who have competed in all 7 of the tournaments, to have a near perfect pace.

The Thursday afternoon (March 3^rd) always hosts an informal match between the team from the UK and the local “SFB boys” for the Edwardes trophy, which has been won twice by the Brits and 5 times by the South Africans. There will also be the Jesters match between the Canadian team and the Eastern Cape team.

In summary there will be teams representing the UK, Canada, and a good number from Johannesburg, and the balance of players coming from Cape Town Durban Pietermaritzburg East London Queenstown Knysna Plett and of course PE and St Francis Bay.

The weekend is always socially very busy.

INVITATION HERE

All Africa Squash Championships

Parkview Centre, Johannesburg

Results: Men :Finals: 1- Steve Coppinger (RSA) bt 2- Clinton Leeuw (RSA) 11-7 11-6 11-8 : Semi-Finals: 1-Steve Coppinger (RSA) bt 3-Rodney Durbach(RSA) 11-6 11-0 11-7; 2-Clinton Leeuw (RSA) bt 5/8-Thoboki Mohohlo (RSA) 11-9 11-7 11-6; Plate: Enos Mwale (Zam) bt Ishmael Mubure (Zim) 9-11 11-6 11-9 11-7; 2^nd Round Plate : Mwinga Lenewe (Zam) bt Mana Chilambe (Zam) 11-5 10-12 15-17 11-6 11-5

Consolation Plate 1: Malvern Mubure (Zim) bt Niciolas Mourga (MAur) 4-11 13-11 11-0 11-5 ; Consolation Plate 2 : Alex Holmes (Zim) bt Ahmed Hassan (Zim) 5-11 11-2 11-6

Women:Final: 1-Tenille van der Merwe (RSA) bt 2-Milnay Louw (RSA) 11-3 11-7 11-3; 3^rd position: 3-Cheyna Tucker (RSA) bt 5-Longi Dasbak (Nigeria) 11-3 11-8 11-5; 5^th Position : Vanessa Florens(Maur) bt Isabell Schnoor (Nam) 9-11 11-4 11-4 12-10; 7^th Position: Tara Phillips (Zim) bt Sharon Chifwembe (Zam) 11-7 11-7 11-1.Semi-finals: 1-Tenille van der Merwe (RSA) bt 5-Longi Dasbak (Nig) 11-2 11-5 11-5; 2-Milnay Louw(RSA) bt 3- Cheyna Tucker (RSA) 11-3 14-12 11-6.Plate: Michele Williams (Zim) bt Sheri Curle (Zim) 11-6 11-4 11-6.

South Africans Steve Coppinger and Tenille van der Merwe captured the premier titles at the All African Squash Championships, which were completed at the Parkview Squash Centre Johannesburg at the weekend.

In the men’s final Coppinger accounted for team mate Clinton Leeuw in straight games while van der Merwe outplayed fellow South Africa Milnay Louw also in straight games. South Africans Rodney Durbach and Thobokhi Mohohlo, who had provided the upset by defeating fourth seeded Kelvin Ndhlovu of Zambia in the quarterfinals, took bronze medal while South African Cheyna Tucker collected another bronze for South Africa by defeating Longi Dasbak of Nigeria  11-3 11-8 11-3.

Sponsored by the Lottery  South Arica swept the boards at the All Africa Championships by taking gold and bronze in the team event. Zambia pocketed gold while Namibia surprised by sharing he bronze medal.

No other sport is connected to wall St. as the gentlemanly game of squash

Isn't [squash] - versus soccer - one of the most widely played sports in the world? Actually -yeah -they tell me it's palyed on every single continent - outside Antartica  - in the world and I am not even sure football can say that.

it's an expensive game to play -Only the affluent can really afford it.

$9000 per box - 4 seats for the tournament

30% increase from last year

completely sold out

You couldn't get one if you tried

CAUTIONARY NOTE TO SQUASHIES

'The judicial committee found that the Springboks' conditioning coach, Neels Liebel, instructed the entire team to ingest a product called Anabolic Nitro Nitric Oxide Extreme Energy Surge, manufactured by supplement company USN, directly before the Test against Ireland and again at half-time.'

Rugby players cleared

Results: Final : South Africa 3 Zambia A 0: Steve Coppinger bt Kelvin Ndhlovu 11-5 11-6; Clinton Leeuw bt Ray Simbule 11-8 11-5 11-6: Tenille van der Merwe bt Sharon Chifwembe 11-3 11-2 11-0.3^rd

: South Africa B  3 Namibia 0: Thoboki Mohohlo bt Marco Bekker  11-4 11-8; Paul Rodrigues  bt Norbert Dorgerloh 11-2 12-10 11-3; Milnay Louw bt Isabell Schnoor 11-1 11-6 11-2. 5^th Position : Nigeria 3 Zambia B 0: Sodiq Taiwo w/o Richard Twali :Tunde Agjabe bt Mwinga Lengwe 3-1: Longdi Dasbak w/o Ethel Mambwe : 7^th position: Zimbabwe A  bt  Mauritius 3-0: Shaun Mackenzie  bt Nadeem Hosenbux 11-4 11-6 11-6; Malvern Mubura bt Nicolas Mourga 11-5 11-6 11-5; Tara Ralphs bt Vanessa Florens 11-9 12-10 11-4

South Africa captured the gold at the All Africa Squash Championships when they  outplayed  Zambia  3-0 in the final of the team event played at the Parkview Squash Centre on Wednesday .

Clinton Leeuw defeated Ray Simbule  in straight games to give South Africa their first  point. Tenille van der Merwe , ranked 48 in the world,  raced through  her encounter with Sharon Chifwembe dropping only 5 points to clinch the tie. In the dead  rubber  Steve Coppinger, who has moved to 43 in the world,  then accounted for Zambia’ s number 1 Kelvin Ndhlovu 11-5 11-6.

South Africa’s  B  comprising under 23 players, impressed in their defeat 3-0 of Namibia to take third position. Paul Rodrigues beat Norbert Dorgerloh in straight games with Milnay Louw outplaying Isabell Schnoor  for the loss of only 9 points. Thoboki Mohohlo beat Marco Becker 11-4 11-8 in the dead rubber.   

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ALL AFRICA SQUASH - 7 nation tournament being held at Parkview, Johannesburg HERE

The cash from Sport England will also be used encourage bisexuals to take advantage of free coaching sessions, as well as funding equipment Photo: ALAMY

“It’s nice to attract different members. Many of ours at present are males between 20 and 50 years old, but we want to open up squash to experts or novices of any age, gender or sexuality.”

He added: “We can show that there are other things to do as an LGBT person, other ways to meet people, not just the stereotypical party scene.

"You can meet like-minded people through doing something that keeps you fit and you enjoy. Sport brings people together."

However, not everyone in Camden is happy about the grant.

Alison Davies, 43, who lives in the area, said: “It’s great that there are clubs for everyone, but whey they need £6,500 is a mystery to me - especially when everyone is cutting back.

"If I wanted to join a squash club I'd just turn up at a leisure centre and join the league and that wouldn't cost anybody anything.”

Greg Wallace, 27, said: "I had to cancel my gym membership because I can't afford it at the moment, but the Government is paying out all this money so gay people can play squash?

"It's a bit much really considering all the cut backs at the moment.

"Why can't the players just buy a racket and ball and go for a game with a friend? It's not really that complex and certainly doesn't need stacks of money thrown at it."

The Taxpayers’ Alliance is similarly unimpressed, with a spokesman saying: “It’s astonishing that the Government is spending our money on encouraging people to take up squash.

"With huge pressures on the public finances, funding thousands of pounds worth of squash lessons simply isn’t fair or sustainable.

“Many people will be giving up extras like racket sports lessons as they struggle with the rising cost of living, so it’s unfair to expect them to subsidise others for a luxury they cannot afford themselves."

The club says that it is proud of the “non-threatening environment” it offers lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender players.

Terry Stacy, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Islington Council, said: “I congratulate the club on its grant - Sport England must feel there is a gap there.

"We’ve had women-only sports clubs, Muslim women’s swimming groups, and girls’ tennis - I don’t have a problem with targeted provision if there’s a gap in the participation."

Squash SA Calendar 2011

Squash SA Calendar

World Squash Calendar 2010 - 2011
Click here to download