Last weekend, SquashBusters and Moses Brown School officially opened an extraordinary squash facility in Providence, RI. It is a twelve-court facility, with eleven singles courts and one hardball doubles court, as well as classrooms, locker rooms and a pro shop.
The facility, the Gorgi Family Squash & Education Center, is the fifth such urban squash facility to be built in the country. In 2003 SquashBusters, seven years after Greg Zaff launched the program and the urban squash movement, opened the first facility, the Badger & Rosen SquashBusters Center at Northeastern with eight courts. In 2007 the H. Chase Lenfest SquashSmarts Center opened in northeast Philadelphia. In 2008 the S.L. Green StreetSquash Center opened in Harlem. And in 2015 the MetroSquash Academic & Squash Center opened in Chicago.
Including the Gorgi Center, the urban squash movement—which spans two dozen programs around the world—collectively has forty-two singles courts and two doubles courts, as well as nearly twenty classrooms, under its direct purview.
The Gorgi Center is the result of a unique three-pronged partnership. It involves Moses Brown, the Quaker school founded in 1784. More than sixty MB student-athletes are now in their squash team. SquashBusters, the after-school youth enrichment program, has three branches: at Northeastern, at Lawrence, Mass and now at Providence, with a class of twenty-eight sixth graders from Del Sesto Middle School studying and training at the Gorgi Center. And the Nicol Squash Club is now based the Gorgi. Created by former world champion Peter Nicol, the Nicol operates a public club and elite-level junior academy at the Gorgi Center. Arthur Gaskin, the former world No.80 and a five-time Irish national champion, is the resident professional.
Moses Brown, SquashBusters and Del Sesto students participated in the special dedication, ribbon-cutting ceremony and squash match on Saturday.
