A Comparative Examination Of The US Squash Decision To De-Classify The Hardball Nationals
by Rob Dinerman

Dateline June 11th --- At the US National (softball) Championships in Richmond this past March, all five of the women’s age-group events had to be held as round-robins due to the small turn-out, as did five of the 10 men’s age-group competitions. Both of the Open flights had only eight entrants.

    At the US National Doubles in Buffalo a few weeks earlier, three of the seven men’s age-groups and both women’s age-groups similarly were round-robins and the women’s open draw had only one entered team (namely Dana Betts and Steph Hewitt) until four teams from the women’s age-groups were prevailed upon to also play in the Open. A player on one of those teams, which had been scheduled to play Betts/Hewitt in the semis, hurt herself in her 40’s age-group match, forcing her team to default out of both the 40’s and the Open and thereby causing Betts and Hewitt to advance to the final (which they won handily) without having played a single match.

   And at the US National Mixed Doubles last month in Philadelphia, supposedly a hotbed of squash doubles, there were only two teams in the 40’s, resulting in a one-match tournament; this was also the case in Greenwich in 2014, and the only reason even that one match took place is that one of the entered teams, which had been traveling late that week, was able to it back to Connecticut by Saturday night and was therefore able to play the “final” the following morning.

    By contrast, seven out of the 11 competitive categories in the US Hardball Nationals at the Merion Cricket Club this past February were full draws (seven out of nine if one excludes the two “oldest” flights, the 75’s and 80’s), including an 18-man Open draw which was won in a thrilling five-game final by Merion pro Dane Sharp over top-20 SDA doubles star Imran Khan, and more than 75 players turned out to vie for glory in their respective divisions.

    All of which raises the question why none of the first three national tournaments are in any kind of trouble, yet the Hardball Nationals was played in the shadow of the late-December announcement by US Squash that its Board of Directors had voted unanimously to make the 2016 edition of this event (the 105th in a storied history that began in 1907) would be the last that it would classify as an official national championship. This edict came out of the blue and with no advance warning and there was a certain admirable element of defiance with which the hardball players --- while still reeling both from this news and after learning right around the same time that the three Merion courts, which had hosted the Hardball Nationals in 12 of the prior 16 years, were being converted to softball courts later this year as part of a major renovation of the club --- nevertheless thronged to both the William White event in January and the Hardball Nationals in mid-February in greater numbers than in previous years.

   Certainly hardball squash currently has nowhere near the numbers that it had during its glory days of the late-1970’s and throughout the 1980’s, when the Hardball Nationals routinely attracted 400 participants. But neither do the Softball Nationals or either the US National Mixed or Men’s/Women’s Doubles tournaments --- if anything, all three of them are even LESS well-subscribed than the Hardball Nationals --- and to de-classify the Hardball Nationals via an eleventh-hour vote while allowing the other three US National events to continue to limp along with no apparent mandate to increase their number or face the same fate, seems at best inconsistent. In making its late-December pronouncement, US Squash quite properly cited the loss of credibility and cheapening of what it means to be a national champion when participation numbers decline past a certain level – but how credible is a tournament where the only match is the final, and why is US Squash allowing the three other Nationals to retain their status as an official national championship while pulling the plug on the most venerable and (at least this year) most round-robin-free national event it held this entire season?

   The hardball group has written to the US Squash Board of Directors requesting to be allowed to make a presentation in which they appeal the latter ruling. One possible solution that has been floated is that the 2017 Hardball Nationals will regain its “official championship” status if and only if a minimum entry figure --- say 80 players --- is met, with the understanding that such a criterion would have to continue to be filled going forward for the Hardball Nationals to continue to retain its restored standing, and with the understanding as well that this requirement would be imposed as well on the other National Championships that are held under the US Squash aegis. This type of objective standard would encourage all forms of squash to get their respective participants to turn out to support its season-culminating event. It could be combined with subjective factors that US Squash could overlay, but at least it would provide an important level of fairness and lead to the perception of even-handedness when making these types of decisions about the handling and standing of National Championships going forward.