NUSEA Letter from Executive Director Tim Wyant January 2, 2015
Friends,
2014 was a banner year for NUSEA. Our student events at college
campuses around the country grew in both size and number. In January
390 students traveled to Philadelphia for the Urban Team Nationals at
Drexel, Penn and SquashSmarts. Williams and Amherst hosted the same
number of competitors in June for the Urban Individual Nationals. Yale
held 100-player regional competitions in May and November.
July was NUSEA's busiest month. 130 students played in the Midwest
Urban Championships at Kenyon. Stanford hosted a 30-player squash camp.
Deerfield Academy welcomed 40 players for four days of training.
Phillips Exeter Academy provided 10 urban squashers with scholarships
to its summer school. 22 of our high school and college students met
and played squash with governors, senators, and civic leaders on a
9-day trip from Boston to Washington, DC, as profiled in The Washington
Post.
Throughout the year NUSEA worked closely with our member programs to
identify and promote best practices. In addition to conducting site
visits and managing a peer-led member program evaluation process, we
created a national alumni database which tracks the more than 350
graduates of our programs. The database has already provided valuable
insights into trends and patterns across our programs, and it will
continue to be a helpful tool as we look for new ways to support our
alumni and better understand the long-term outcomes of our work.
We increased our focus on start-ups, helping to launch organizations in
Cincinnati, Hartford, Pittsburgh and Cartagena, Colombia, and we
formally welcomed into our network urban squash programs in
Johannesburg, Toronto, and Chandigarh, India, each of which has been
operating for several years.
Over the past year NUSEA itself grew as an organization. Sage Ramadge,
a veteran staff member of Harlem's StreetSquash, became our Deputy
Director, and Alana Lerner, another former StreetSquash staff member,
joined NUSEA as our Project Manager. Our Board of Directors welcomed
outstanding new members in Rick Braddock, Brooke Herlihy Cooper, Abby
Markoe, Rob Schiller, and Oliver Weisberg. We also moved into the New
York City offices of US Squash, which provides NUSEA with operational
and administrative support.
It feels like the wind is at NUSEA's back. There are now 20 urban
squash programs operating under our umbrella that collectively enroll
more than 2,000 students. 340 of our alumni -- representing 97% of our
graduates -- have matriculated at college or post-secondary school,
including some of the most selective institutions in the country.
Cities such as Charleston, Atlanta, Houston, Seattle, and London have
promising young urban squash initiatives that we're working with to
become NUSEA member programs in the future.
Urban squash also has a big birthday coming up. Over the weekend of
January 16-18, NUSEA will be hosting over 1,250 people from across the
country and around the world for Urban Squash's 20th Anniversary
Celebration in New York City. All are welcome to attend. The weekend's
activities will include the Urban Team Nationals, a best practices
conference, and a 900-person gala dinner on Saturday night. The
fundraising goal of the event is $2 million, and $1.7 million has been
raised to date.
Thank you for helping to make all of this possible.
