Leonard A. Bernheimer

Lenny Bernheimer has been a beloved figure on and off the squash court for forty years. He has won more than thirty-five national age group titles in singles (hardball and softball) and doubles. In 1977, he represented the U.S. in the Maccabbiah Games in Israel ,winning the silver medal, and in 1977 he played for the U.S. at the World Championships in Ottawa, Canada. Along with Tom Poor, he was director of the Boston Open, for seventeen years an innovative major on the pro hardball tour. Since then he has co-directed the pro doubles tour stop at the University Club in Boston and the Can-Am Cup. He was president of U.S. Squash from 1984 to 1986 and president of the Jesters. He has also served as president of Massachusetts Squash and has been a board member for more than four decades. Lenny is a founding board member of SquashBusters and has been chair for the past thirteen years. He was awarded the U.S. Squash President’s Cup in 1993.

Thomas M. Poor

Tom Poor has won more than forty-five United States and Canadian national age-group singles and doubles titles. He won the Canadian national doubles in 1974, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1990 and twice reached the finals of the U.S national doubles. With partner Lenny Bernheimer, he has won more than twenty national age-group championships. Tom was a member of the 1973 U.S. National Team in the World Championships and was captain of the 1977 team. He and Lenny were co-directors of the Boston Open for seventeen years, the innovative hardball tour stop that was the first to use a portable glass court and accept sponsorship.  More recently he has been a co-director of the pro doubles tour stop at the University Club of Boston. Tom has served as a board member of Massachusetts Squash for more than four decades, was a founding board member of SquashBusters, and was given the Massachusetts Squash President’s Award in 2007. He has directed dozens of junior squash tournaments and is the current chair of the Massachusetts Squash Junior Committee.  He has served as a member of the U.S. Squash Board of Directors and U.S. Squash’s Investment Committee. An enduring giant on the court, Tom has used his passion for development to help squash reach its true potential.

[View article on induction of Bernheimer, Poor, and Herrick]

Robert W. Callahan

Bob Callahan is the legendary coach at Princeton University. Raised in Philadelphia, he learned squash at The Cynwyd Club with pro Norm Brammall and played for Episcopal Academy. At Princeton he played on three national title teams, including his senior year when he captained the Tigers to an undefeated season in 1976-77. A two-time All American, he was ranked fifth in the intercollegiates his senior year. In 1981 he returned to Princeton as men’s coach. In his thirty-one seasons, he has a record of 315-71. He has led the Tigers to national team titles in 1982, 1993 and 2012, as well as eleven Ivy League titles. He also has coached five players to the national intercollegiate individual championship (Jeff Stanley in 1987 and 1988; Peter Yik in 1999 and 2000; David Yik in 2001; Yasser El Halaby in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006; and Todd Harrity in 2011). Bob founded the nation’s first major squash camp in 1982 and has run it continuously ever since. In the late 1980s, he won the 30+ National Singles as well as the Professional Teaching Pro Championship, and in 1998 he directed the World Junior Men’s Championships at Princeton, the first time the U.S. had ever hosted a world singles championship.

Joyce V. Davenport
Joyce Davenport is a lesson on longevity. She began playing in the early 1960s under the tutelage of Cynwyd Club coach Norm Bramall. She won the national singles in 1965 and 1969. She won the national doubles in 1969, 79, 80, 81, 82, 87, 89, 90, 95 and the national mixed doubles in 1980, 81, 84, 89, 92, 93. She played number one on two Wolfe-Noel Cup teams. She has won more than thirty more national age group titles in singles and doubles. Joyce was part-owner and manager of Berwyn Squash, the oldest commercial squash club in the nation, and even at age seventy gives lessons there regularly as well as plays on the women’s pro doubles tour.

[View article on induction of Callahan and Davenport]

John F. Herrick
Jack Herrick has been more influential globally than any other American in history. A Cleveland native, he played #1 at Dartmouth before graduating in 1960. He was the head of Cleveland’s squash association and president of U.S. Squash in 1982-84. Jack received the President’s Cup in 1988. He was the U.S. men’s team captain at the world championships four times in the 1980s, and in 1983 he won the 45s World Masters in New Zealand, becoming the first American to win a world singles title. He has held dozens of squash roles including president of Jesters, chair of the Friends of Dartmouth Squash, member of several World Squash Federation committees, and the commissioner of WPSA hardball tour. From 1994 to 2008 he was the chair of board of PSA men’s pro squash tour, playing a central role in the development of the game around the world.

[Watch scenes from Herrick's induction ceremony]

Hazel White Jones (1942 – )

One of the most influential women in squash history, Hazel White Jones was a tournament director, magazine editor and visionary leader. From Indianapolis, she made a giant impact off the court and around the country. She edited Squash News for twenty-one years, making it a primary vehicle for U.S. Squash’s tremendous growth. With her husband Tom Jones, she directed three North American Opens and fourteen U.S. Opens-eight of which were portable court events that attracted enormous media attention and corporate support. She was a key force behind the transition to softball, whether turning the U.S. Open into a softball event, creating the Grand Prix Circuit of summer-time pro softball tournaments or persuading the U.S. Olympic Committee to accept squash as a potential Olympic sport. She was the press liaison for squash at the 1995 Pan American Games. For her many administrative and journalistic efforts, she was awarded nearly every honor possible, including U.S. Squash’s President’s Cup, NY Squash’s Board of Governors Award, U.S. Women Squash’s Achievement Bowl and the College Squash Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Thomas B. Jones (1935 – )

Tom Jones was a pivotal and ebullient leader who revolutionized squash in America in the last quarter of the twentieth century. A Rochester native, Jones won the 1977 U.S. and the Canadian national veterans (40+) doubles titles with John Swann and was an active A singles player. From 1978 to 1999 he and his wife Hazel White Jones issued Squash News, the first national squash magazine, with Tom as acting publisher, advertising executive and chief front-man. They became major tournament promoters, directing three North American Opens and after presciently switching it from hardball to softball, fourteen U.S. Opens. They hosted eight portable court events in total and collated smaller softball tournaments into their Grand Prix Circuit, as well as ran a Davis Cup-style tournament, the Loews Cup. Jones managed the U.S. Team at the 1991 World Team Championships and played a role in getting squash into the Pan American Games. One of the most laurelled men in squash, Jones has received U.S. Squash’s President’s Cup, NY Squash’s Eddie Standing Trophy and Board of Governor’s Award, the WPSA’s Man of the Year Award and the College Squash Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

[View article on induction of Tom and Hazel Jones]

F. Elizabeth (Betty) Richey (1913-1988)

Betty Richey created women’s intercollegiate squash. A graduate of Radcliffe where she captained the basketball team, she came to Vassar in 1937 and coached there for forty-one years. Richey started Vassar’s varsity programs in women’s and later men’s squash. When she launched the women’s team in 1937, it was the first program in the nation. In 1965 she founded the women’s national intercollegiate individual tournament, hosting it at Vassar. In 1973 she helped create the women’s intercollegiate team tournament, now known as the Howe Cup. A tremendous athlete, she played for more than twenty years on the U.S. national teams in both field hockey and lacrosse and was inducted into both the national halls of fame (field hockey in 1988, lacrosse in 1993), as well as the College Squash Hall of Fame in 1995. “She played for the love of the game,” it was said at her memorial service in September 1988, “and fought fiercely, primarily to give the opponent the very best challenge she could.”

Gregory H. Zaff (1962 – )

A man and an idea-that is the heart of Greg Zaff’s simple but possibly unequalled effect on the history of U.S. squash. Greg Zaff, while at Williams, played #1 on both the squash and tennis teams and was the first person ever to be named an All American in both sports. The southpaw then spent seven years on the hardball WPSA tour, reaching a ranking of #2 and winning one major, the 1990 Canadian Open. Afterwards, while pursuing a Masters degree at Harvard, he began thinking about the idea of starting an after-school youth enrichment program for underserved kids based around academic tutoring, community service and squash. In the September 1996 Zaff launched SquashBusters. It quickly expanded to become a seven-year program mentoring over a hundred students annually. In 2003 SquashBusters opened the country’s first-ever urban squash program facility, the $9.4 million, eight-court Badger & Rosen Facility at Northeastern. In July 2005 he founded the National Urban Squash and Education Association to support existing programs and develop new ones-in the fifteen years after he started SquashBusters he helped create eight other official, NUSEA-certified programs and a dozen fledging programs.

[View article on induction of Richey and Zaff]

Kenton Jernigan (1964 – )

A precocious player who had a penchant for late-match heroics, Kenton Jernigan was, along with Mark Talbott, Ned Edwards and John Nimick, a member of the quartet of Americans who dominated U.S. squash in the 1980s. A Newport, Rhode Island native, he reached the finals of the Nationals in 1982 while a senior in high school; he won the National Juniors that same winter. In an unprecedented feat of dexterity, Kenton took both the National Hardball Singles titles and the brand-new National Softball titles in 1983, 1984 and 1985; he also won the National Softball Singles, the S.L. Green, in 1992. One of the most dominant intercollegiate players in history, Kenton lost just a single college match in his four years at Harvard, winning the National Intercollegiates in 1983, 1984 and 1986 and leading Harvard to four straight National team titles. Kenton played on the U.S. National Team at the 1983, 1987, 1989 and 1991 World Championships and also spent summers on the international softball tour, earning a world ranking of 65. As a hardball pro, he won the Tournament of Champions in 1991 and was ranked #2 on the hardball tour in 1989. On the left wall in doubles, Kenton teamed with Jamie Bentley to be the dominant tandem of the early 1990s, winning five Johnsons, one North American Open, two Cambridge Clubs and three Elites (the last in 1995 with Jeremy Fraiberg).

Albert G . Molloy, Jr. (1928-2000)

The beloved coach at the University of Pennsylvania, Al Molloy was the amiable but tough mentor who made the Ringe Courts at Penn one of the meccas of American squash. The son of a longtime teaching pro, Al was born in Brooklyn, raised in Westchester and studied at Virginia Military Institute before joining the Marines. He went on to work in Montreal and then the Tennis & Squash Club in Buffalo and was good enough to twice reach the finals of the Tournament of Champions. In 1959 he came to Penn to coach the men’s squash and tennis teams. Upon retiring in 1990, he had garnered a 215-101 record, with his team winning three Ivy League titles. He coached three national intercollegiate champions (Howard Coonley, 1966; Palmer Page, 1971; and Ned Edwards, 1979) and dozens of future squash stars and leaders. For fifteen years, he directed the Hunter Lott, making the tournament the most prestigious on the junior circuit. Ahead of his time, Al was the first college coach to embrace weight training, to make an instructional film and to actively recruit overseas players. He was also a proponent of softball, using the ball for off-season training, and often took his teams to England for holiday tours. Al authored two seminal books on squash and never failed to be an advocate for the youth and the inexperienced in the squash world.

Carol Hunter Weymuller (1949 – )

An unassuming and graceful squash revolutionary, Carol Weymuller pried open the door for women in the country’s largest squash city and coached two generations of champions. A top tennis player who won three Orange Bowl junior titles and played in the 1968 U.S. Open at Forest Hills, Weymuller joined her soon-to-be husband Fred at Brooklyn’s Heights Casino in 1970, where she helped run their vaunted junior program. Her most lasting legacy, however, is her leadership in the advancement of women’s squash. Weymuller started New York City’s women’s league and hosted the first women’s professional tournament in U.S. history with the 1977 Bancroft Open, as well as a women’s pro tournament at the Heights Casino which is now named in her honor. She coached the U.S. Junior Girls’ team at the 1980, 1981 and 1985 World Championships and after 1980 coached at a number of clubs in Rochester before assuming her present position as men’s squash and tennis coach at Hobart College in 1995. She served as U.S. Squash’s Women’s Division president from 1981 to 1983 and on at least one U.S. Squash standing committee from 1975 to 2007. As a player she was nationally ranked in the top ten a dozen times, won the Rochester city title eleven straight years, and played on the U.S. National team at the 1979, 1981 and 1983 World Championships. The only winner of the Achievement Bowl (1980), the Sportsmanship Trophy (1984) and the President’s Cup (1994), Carol Weymuller has played an essential role in developing junior, collegiate and women’s squash.

Fred Weymuller (1928 – )

The innovative founder of the modern junior squash scene, Fred Weymuller changed the way many players first learned the game. In the late 1960s he developed a junior squash program at the Heights Casino in Brooklyn, where along with his wife Carol Weymuller, made it the model of all future club programs: the Weymullers were the first to take juniors to the Nationals (in 1982 all four girls’ division winners were protégés), the first to start a summer squash camp, the first to lead international summer squash tours, and at a time when most juniors were not allowed to play in private clubs, made the Heights Casino a hotbed of junior squash by inventing the method of group teaching. Among the dozens of champions to come out of their program was fellow Hall of Famer Alicia McConnell. Fred served on the first U.S. Squash Junior Committee and coached the U.S. Junior Boys team at the 1984 and 1986 World championships. Anticipating the change to softball, he was one of the earliest advocates for the game, starting softball leagues in New York and encouraging off-season play. He was also the first to suggest the idea of Bronze and Silver tournaments for less experienced juniors. As president of the North American hardball pro tour, he helped develop a certification process for teaching pros. From 1980 to 2000 he taught squash and tennis at the Genesee Valley Club, the University Club of Rochester and the Rochester Squash & Fitness Club. Awarded the President’s Cup in 1994, Fred Weymuller quietly and creatively led the late twentieth-century expansion of U.S. squash.

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- )

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 remi¬niscences 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 champi¬onships. 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 posi¬tions: 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 1979-1982 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 direc¬tor, Kingsley was hired. He established an office in Bala Cynwyd and for eigh¬teen years presided over the greatest growth the game had ever seen in the U.S. membership soared from 160 member clubs and 800 individual mem¬bers 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 avia¬tors 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’ trailblaz¬ing 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 1933¬1947, 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 pro¬fessional ranks in the U.S., winning three national pro tournaments and reach¬ing 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 con¬tained many of his aphorisms: “Never change a winning game,” he said, advice he himself followed to perfection at Yale.