Longtime Brunswick School Squash Coach Jim Stephens Honored At Scholastic Squash Dedication
by Rob Dinerman Dateline March 1, 2022
--- This past Saturday evening, February 26th, the Scholastic Squash
Exhibit on the ground floor of the Arlen Specter Center was unveiled
and dedicated at a ceremony that took place immediately prior to the
start of the semifinal round of the Division One portion of the U. S.
National High School Championships. The exhibit was donated in honor of
Jim Stephens, the longtime head squash coach at Brunswick School in
Greenwich, CT, who held that position (as well as that of a Middle
School math teacher) throughout the 35-year period from 1985-2020.
Stephens’s teams won the High School Nationals championship --- named
the Justi Cup in recognition of Melinda Justi, who founded the event in
2004 --- an all-time record five times (in 2016, 2017 and 2018-20) and
advanced to the final round 13 of the 16 times it was held prior to his
retirement in June 2020.
The concept of establishing a Scholastic Squash exhibit at the
Specter Center was the brain-child of Jen Mackesy, a U. S. Squash Board
member since 2014, both of whose sons, Tyler and Coulter, were avid
squash players (and members of teams that won the U. S. National Middle
School Championships), throughout their high school years. Tyler,
though still a junior at the University of Virginia, was a co-captain
of the Cavaliers team that placed eighth in the recent college
national-championship tournament, while Coulter, currently a freshman
and member of Princeton’s lacrosse team, played on the Brunswick School
squash teams that capped off their three-peat championship run in
2019-20 by winning all 11 of their dual meets --- four in the regular
season, four more in the High School Nationals and three in the New
England team championship --- by 7-0 scores. It was the first time that
a team had gone though the four-round High School Nationals tournament
(much less an entire season) without losing a single match, and the
title run in New England marked the ninth straight year that the Bruins
had notched this championship and their 18th overall.
At the ceremony, U.S. Squash Executive Director and CEO
Kevin Klipstein, Mrs. Mackesy and Coach Stephens all gave brief
speeches in an upstairs office in deference to how noisy and hectic it
was downstairs at the courts with 169 teams competing in 11 different
categories spread around five Philadelphia-area clubs, but mostly
concentrated at the Specter Center, which was teeming with activity
throughout the day and evening. Also in attendance were the Specter
Center’s Assistant Director Narelle Krizek, who planned and organized
the entire Dedication event and was responsible for all the historical
information on the Scholastic Squash walls; Ned Edwards, the Executive
Director of the Specter Center, who was accompanied by his
eight-year-old son Teddy; U. S. Squash Board Chair Soo Venkatesan; and a slew of Brunswick School players, past
and present, as well as many Brunswick School parents, teachers and
coaches. Following the speeches everyone present went downstairs to the
Scholastic Center for the actual dedication. Coach Stephens’s former
players were able to earn a hard-fought 5-2 win over Haverford School
in the semifinals before losing 4-3 to Kent School Sunday afternoon in
the finals. The Division One Girls championship (named the Patterson
Cup in honor of former Chestnut Hill Academy coach Bryan Patterson, who
was instrumental in helping Mrs. Justi get the inaugural 2004 event off
the ground) was won for a record 13th time by Greenwich Academy,
Brunswick’s “sister school,” which edged No. 1 seed Baldwin 4-3 in the
finals.
Coach Stephens characteristically gave a very low-key speech
during the ceremony, describing himself as “flattered and humbled” at
being selected as the honoree at the Scholastic Squash dedication. He
had previously been selected as the U.S. Squash nominee for USOC Coach
of the Year in 2014, then been presented with a Lifetime Leadership
Award by the Greenwich Leadership Forum in tribute to his many years of
service to the Greenwich community in 2015 and received the Appleseed
Award in 2016 in recognition of his contributions to Brunswick School
as a math teacher. As the inscription on the plaque at the Scholastic
Squash Exhibit reads in its final few lines of its statement about
Coach Stephens, “The fact that he received three major awards in as
many years, each of them honoring him in separate areas --- a coaching
award, a citizenship award and a teaching award --- bears full
testimony to the multi-front positive influence Coach Stephens has had
on his student-athletes and the larger community.”
