John F. “Jack” Herrick, 1938-2022, Former PSA Board Chairman and Member Of The US Squash Hall Of Fame
by Rob Dinerman
photo US Squash
Dateline October 26, 2022
--- DSR is sad to report that John F. Herrick, universally known as
Jack, one of the most influential figures globally in the history of U.
S. squash and a U. S. Squash Hall of Fame inductee as a member of the
Class of 2011, passed away yesterday morning at his home at Shaker
Heights, Ohio, surrounded by Mary Herrick, his wife of 60 years, and
the rest of his family. He was 84 years old.
A stand-out tennis player during his high school years in the
mid-1950’s, Herrick discovered squash at Dartmouth College and
became the team’s captain and No. 1 player during his senior year in
1959-60. He continued to play both sports with distinction, dominating
the Cleveland and northeast Ohio region in tennis and especially
squash, in which latter sport he won the Cleveland Open 12 times and
was a four-time Ohio State Champion. The highlight of Herrick’s squash
career occurred at the World Team Championships in New Zealand in 1983,
during which he both captained the U. S. men’s team (composed of Mark
Talbott, Ned Edwards, John Nimick and Kenton Jernigan, all future U. S.
Squash Hall of Famers) and won the 45-and-over World Masters, thus
becoming the only American to win a world singles title. He would
similarly serve as U.S. team captain in this prestigious biennial
competition in 1985 in Egypt, 1987 in England and 1989 in Malaysia,
during which he secured sponsorship from even such non-sports companies
as Pan Am and Phillip Morris, a remarkable breakthrough at the time.
Even more impactful than Herrick’s on-court achievements were his
contributions administratively, again in both racquet sports. He became
President of the Northeast Ohio Tennis Association while still in his
late 20’s, in which capacity he, along with his close friend Bob
Malaga, was instrumental in bringing the Davis Cup to Cleveland in
1964, later serving on the board of the International Tennis Hall of
Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. In squash, on first a national and
then an international level, in addition to those four U. S. team
captaincies, Herrick was USSRA President from 1982-84, following which
he served as commissioner of the WPSA pro hardball tour during the late
1980’s and early 1990’s. In this role he helped navigate the merger of
the hardball WPSA and the softball ISPA into one organization, the
Professional Squash Association (PSA), in January 1993. One year later,
Herrick began a 14-year tenure the Chairman of the Board of PSA tour
and played a central role in the development of the game around the
world, including stabilizing the PSA’s finances, overseeing the
promotion of the sport to a much larger audience and launching the
first worldwide televised Squash Super Series, sponsored by the
squash-shoe company Hi-Tec.
Within 24 hours of his retirement from the Chairmanship in 2008,
Herrick was gifted a Life Membership in the PSA to mark his
distinguished service as a Board member. Other honors in acknowledgment
of his multi-front contributions to racquet sports over the years have
been his selection as recipient of the 1988 President’s Cup awarded
annually “to the person who has made substantial, sustained and
significant contributions to the game of squash,” and his induction
into the College Squash Association, Dartmouth College and Greater
Cleveland Sports Halls of Fame, with the latter organization having
created the Jack Herrick Youth Sports Fund in 2021 to provide grant
funding to qualified youth sports organizations throughout Northeast
Ohio. Perhaps his legacy was best summarized by Ned Edwards, who, upon
hearing of Herrick’s passing, described him as “a great person of
squash and a great person for squash,” a summation that encompassed
both how much Herrick loved the game and how much he gave to it.
