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.
