In Response to Richard Millman's Post of 24 April by Guy Cipriano
April 27, 2015
I had the pleasure of playing with my son
Peter in the US National Father- Son doubles tournament in Boston
this weekend. The topic of Mr. Richard Millman’s DSR opinion
piece from 24 April came up in discussion at the cocktail party on
Saturday night and again on Sunday morning in the gallery . Many of the
fathers and sons had read the post and were quite forthcoming
with their comments. To recap, the consensus of opinion among
both the fathers and sons, as a result of my extremely un –scientific
discussions, were:
1. Nobody
thought that attending college for seven years, using a semester
on/semester off program , was a good idea. In fact the idea was
unanimously panned . The overwhelming sentiment among the fathers with
whom I spoke was that three years lost at the start of a
career had a significant economic impact and that the
opportunity cost was sky high. After three years a college alumnus
could be out of law school, or finished with two years of work
and year one of business school, or well into another industrial or
commercial career. Given that the cost of attending an
elite university is over $50k per annum, recouping that
investment was deemed by the fathers to be very important and not
worth delaying graduation for the pursuit of professional squash.
2. I was
informed that some colleges ( Princeton being one) will not permit a
student to take only one semester off- it has to be an entire year
off , or not at all.
3. Everybody
present knew that former Drysdale Cup winners Yasser El Halaby and
Baset Ashfaq Chaudhry, arguably the two finest
players ever to play collegiate squash, had elected to come to
America and pursue their education in conjunction with playing
collegiate squash precisely because they did not want to pursue a pro
squash career. Messrs. El Halaby and Chaudhry are now quite
successfully working on Wall Street , and almost everybody
with whom I spoke knew that .
4. Even
the youngsters playing in the Under 15 flight knew that America is a
capitalistic society. They opined that young American hyper
– elite athletes are going to pursue participation in sports with the
highest professional pay- off: basketball, baseball, football, hockey ,
golf or tennis. Squash pays very little when judged against other major
sports . The young men said that if you’re going to pursue a
professional sports career you should do it in a sport where you can
make a huge amount of money and date super- models .
5. Not one
single father with whom I spoke, and I made it a point to speak
with two dozen , advocated that his son should play
professional squash. The fathers of the younger players all aspired for
their sons to play collegiate squash and to continue playing
competitive tournament squash after graduation, but as a recreation,
not as a vocation. For the fathers whose sons had already been
graduated from college and were playing in the event, they
were overjoyed that their sons were still active in the game, playing
at a good standard, remaining fit, and having joy in participating in
tournament play.
