1986-87 Squash Team To Be Inducted Into Franklin & Marshall Hall Of Fame This Autumn
by Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline July 23rd --- The 1986-87 Franklin & Marshall College squash team, which posted a 15-1 record (including nine 9-0 shut-outs) while becoming the No. 2 team in the nation behind only Harvard’s dynasty, has been elected into the school’s Hall Of Fame, according to a July 10th press release from its Sports Information Department. The induction ceremonies will occur during the Homecoming Weekend of October 19-21, by happy coincidence when the team members who were seniors that year ---- namely captain, No. 1 player and four-time first-team all-American Morris Clothier, Chris Spahr and Geoff Kennedy ---- will be attending that graduating class’s 25th reunion. Coached by Dr. Bill Marshall, who was elected into the College Squash Hall Of Fame in 1999, and John Stallings (who coached for 20 more years after that season before retiring in 2007), and featuring an all-American trio of Clothier, Spahr and Aashish Kamat, the ’87 squash team is the eighth team to be inducted into the F&M Hall Of Fame, and the first squash team to be honored in this fashion.
F & M’s breakthrough season came at a time when the Ivy League, specifically the Big Three of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, had been dominating intercollegiate squash for many decades, to a degree that made it virtually unheard of for any other college, much less this much smaller entity in Lancaster, PA, to interfere with this phenomenon. But the Diplomats prevailed 7-2 over Yale and 6-3 over Princeton, with the latter outcome keyed by comeback wins from two games to one down by both Kennedy (who would later record more than a dozen high-end Open invitational titles and gain election into the Maryland Squash Hall Of Fame in 2008) and Nat Otis. Though F&M lost to Harvard in a torrid mid-January encounter in Cambridge before 350 screaming Crimson supporters, the meet was contested on much more even terms than the 7-2 score; Clothier rallied from 3-10 to a stirring overtime-in-the-fifth victory over Darius Pandole in the showcase No. 1 match(reversing the outcome of their Gold Racquets semifinal match seven weeks earlier), Anthony (Beau) Buford won three-love at No. 8, and there was a series of death-battles in the middle of the lineup, with three of Harvard’s wins coming in five games and a fourth being decided 17-16 in a fourth-set tiebreaker.
In the postseason Six-Man tournament, F&M placed all but one of its six entered players into at least the quarterfinals, with Clothier getting to the semis of the A Division and Yogesh Panchal reaching the finals of the B Division en route to a second-place team finish, again after Harvard. Many of the standout members from that 1987 F & M squad have gone on to outstanding squash careers, especially in doubles, most notably Clothier, a two-time National Singles semifinalist whose nine U. S. National Doubles crowns (with three different left-wall partners) are the most of any right-wall player; Kennedy, as noted, a long-time pro first at Racquet & Tennis in New York and then at the Metropolitan Club in Washington D. C.; Spahr, the head pro at the University Club Of Boston since 1996 who this past spring won both the U. S. National Doubles 45-and-over and the Massachusetts State Open titles, in each case with Doug Lifford; and Buford, who went undefeated at No. 8 as a junior that season and who has won both the Baltimore Invitational Doubles and the Silver Racquets on multiple occasions during the past dozen years.
In addition to the 1986-87 squash team, Franklin & Marshall’s Class Of 2012 Hall Of Fame inductees will include six individuals for outstanding achievement in their respective sports, namely Jen Power ’97 (volleyball); Tasha Faill ’90 (field hockey and lacrosse, as a goalie in both cases); Charlie Detz ’95 (basketball); Andy Surtz ’97 (football); Lou Figari ’73 (football); and Al Ingraham ’72 (basketball and soccer), currently the President of the Diplomat Athletic Club.
The following 16 team members from that 1986-87 varsity squad will have their names affixed to the plaque marking the team’s induction: Clothier, Spahr and Kennedy, as mentioned, from the class of ’87; Kamat, Buford, Otis and Adam Packard from the class of ’88; Panchal (already an individual member of the F & M Athletics Hall Of Fame, as is also true of Spahr, Clothier and Coach Marshall), Tim Ferris, Al Aspen and Robert Geary from the class of ’89; and Sam Crew, William Underhill, Colm Eliet, Kimathi Gordon-Somers and Kirk Robeson from the class of ’90.
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