Inaugural Barnaby Dinner At The Harvard Club Of New York
By Rob Dinerman

During the afternoon and evening of Oct 25th, the denizens of the Harvard Club of New York were treated to a rare visit from the members of the current men's and women's varsity squash teams, who participated in the first annual Cowles match and Barnaby dinner.

Harry Cowles was Harvard's coach from 1923-36 before being succeeded by Jack Barnaby, one of Cowles's most devoted disciples, who headed the Crimson program for more four glorious decades before retiring following the 1975-76 season.

The Harry Cowles Invitational had a distinguished half-century run from 1947-96, during which time it became known as one of the most prestigious amateur invitational tournaments on the USSRA calendar while filling an important time slot in late January a few weeks before the mid-February U. S. Nationals.

In 1980 a tournament named for Coach Barnaby was added to the Cowles weekend
for players age 35 and over. But both events were discontinued following the 1995-96 season, casualties, at least in part, of the switch from hardball to
softball.

The re-surfacing at the host club of these legendary names after an almost eight-year hiatus, and the institution of this weekend's festivities, was the brainchild of Dylan Patterson '03, a Harvard co-captain last season and currently an assistant pro at the Round Hill Club in Greenwich and a PSA tour aspirant, who did a remarkable job of both putting the event together and recruiting a number of Harvard graduates to form an alumni line-up that opposed the current Harvard squads in a friendly but still (in characteristic Crimson fashion) competitive match that ran on the club's four gallery international courts (two of which are brand new) throughout the afternoon.

Daniel Ezra, winner of the '98 Intercollegiates, many-times U. S. Team member and current Harvard Club head pro Richard Chin, 2002 captain Pete Karlen and four-time S. L. Green champion Marty Clark headed the alumni squad that faced present-day Harvard stars Will Broadbent and Siddharth Suchde, the top two players of a men's team that is favored to win the Ivy League title this season, and their teammates Ziggy Whitman, James Bullock, Jason Delierre, Mihir
Shethe, Garnett Booth, Todd Ostrow et al.

WOMENS EVENT
The women's matches featured recent alumnae such as Libby Eynon Welch, the '95 Intercollegiate champion, 2002 captain Margaret Elias and Blair Endresen against Louisa Hall, Lindsey Wilkins, Alison Fast (all of whom won their respective matches) and Co., the three-time defending Ivy League women's squash champions.

The last of those titles was due to a riveting 5-4 win last February over a favored Yale team that had thrashed them 8-1 at the Howe Cup just five days earlier and that has vowed revenge this season and significantly fortified their roster over the intervening summer. The men's team has finished first in the Ivy League only once (in 2001) in the last four years, but it figures to be much stronger this season after a strong recruiting performance this past season.

Unfortunately both Broadbent (patellar tendinitis) and Clark (ankle) suffered mid-match injuries against Ezra and Bullock respectively, and the much-anticipated No. 1 match between Chin and the Indian freshman sensation Suchde was kayoed when Chin was delayed for several additional hours in Brooklyn due first to his coaching commitments that afternoon at Poly Prep and then as a result of a major traffic jam that kept him mired on the BQE far too long for the match to come off.

But the matches that WERE played demonstrated the high quality that has been so characteristic of Harvard squash over the years, with the men alumni prevailing by a narrow margin and the women varsity showing the strength they possess, especially at the top of the line-up.

BARNABY DINNER
The Barnaby dinner that followed in the third-floor banquet room drew a substantial turn-out and was highlighted by speeches given by Charles Ufford,
Victor Niederhoffer, Patterson, co-captains Bullock and Whitman, and the latter's father Glen Whitman, captain, No. 1 player and an Intercollegiates finalist of the 1973-74 team and currently the Chair of the Friends Of Harvard Squash. Ufford, Niederhoffer and the senior Whitman, all of whom had played for
Coach Barnaby, extolled the many remarkable qualities of their distinguished
mentor (who died at age 92 last year), as did Peter Briggs, a two-time intercollegiate champion during the early 1970's, who was unable to attend due to prior commitments but who wrote a letter that Patterson read out as part of his
presentation.

Briggs, who won both the Cowles and the U. S. Nationals in 1976, has been a strong influence in Harvard-related commemorative events like this one over the years, having MC'd both the 50th Cowles Dinner in '96 and the festivities surrounding Coach Barnaby's 80th birthday at the Kennedy School of
Government in '89, and having given the speech at the '97 Intercollegiate championships when Barnaby was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He also has coached a number of current Harvard players (Broadbent, Fast and Laura Delano among others), who will be officially starting their 2003-2004 season next weekend at the Ivy Scrimmages up at Dartmouth.