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Wendy Lawrence Opens New Facility
by Rob Dinerman
New Clubs Provide Focal Point for Future Squash Growth in DC
New York. Nov 1, 2001 © 2001 Rob Dinerman for Squashtalk.com
The opening days of October 2001 saw the opening of a new and substantial squash and fitness center in the Capitol Hill section of our nation's capital, as the Results-Capitol Hill made its impressive debut.
Located at 315 G Street, S. E. in a renovated three-story public school building with 65,000 square feet of space covering an entire square block, Results features four international singles courts, plus a basketball court, a rock-climbing wall, two aerobics studios, a yoga room, a steam room, a spinning room and a huge fitness area with exercise machines and weight-lifting equipment. In addition, a five-lane swimming pool will be operational by the beginning of next summer.
The primary figures behind this significant addition to the squash picture are two well-established personalities of the Washington squash and fitness scene, namely Wendy Lawrence and Doug Jeffries. Lawrence was nationally ranked in the top twelve in the early 1980's, when she was the head squash professional at the Uptown Racquet Club (now New York Sports Club, at East 86th Street) in Manhattan.
She also won both the Feron's Sportsmanship Award and the Wedgewood Trophy for Contribution to Squash during that period. In 1981, she moved to Washington to assume a similar position at the Washington Squash Club, where she soon also was named the manager, a position she held for 18 years before leaving two years ago. She is primarily responsible for the growth of the junior program, which has produced a number of prominent players (four-time S. L. Green winner Marty Clark being the most noteworthy example) and which she has moved in recent years to The Potomac School in McLean, VA (whose girls varsity squad she also coaches) so that her youthful charges can train on international courts.
After teaming up with several partners to purchase the aging former public school building when (along with 11 other similar structures) it was auctioned off, Lawrence leased it to the aforementioned Jeffries, whom she had known from their days at Washington Sports Clubs, where Jeffries had worked for her as a personal trainer. The entepreneurially-minded Jeffries had eventually bought and operated his own small boutique fitness club in downtown Washington, then upgraded with his first Results Fitness Club, in Dupont Circle, a 22,000-square-foot facility which is now the older but smaller "sibling" to the Results-Capitol Hill Squash-and-Fitness Club that just opened.
The advent of a facility of this nature comes as an absolute boon for a Washington squash community starved for international courts. In a marked departure from what is happening at other squash centers both in the eastern corridor and nationally, very few of the established squash clubs in D.C. have converted their American hardball courts to the 30-inches-wider international dimensions. Between them, the three downtown clubs---the University Club of Washington D.C., the Metropolitan Club and the Fitness Company at Lafayette Center, all located within a four-block radius near Dupont Circle---have a total of one softball court, and the Washington Squash Club, in the Capitol Hill area, which used to be the site of one of the most popular events of the season, the early-spring Cherry Blossom Open, during hardball's heyday in the 1980's and early 1990's, has neither converted any of their courts nor hosted a tournament for close to a decade.
The response to the arrival of Results-Capitol Hill and the sudden availability of those four international courts(two with glass back walls, the other two with side sections of glass for viewing) has been immediate and dramatic. Less than a month after opening its doors, the club already has 2,600 members. Almost all of the 65 juniors who filled the program Lawrence had been running at The Potomac School have joined, and the junior program figures to be bigger and better than the D.C. area has ever seen.
Both Lawrence and Mark Allen, a native of England and currently the boy's varsity coach at The Potomac School, will be giving lessons at Results during this initial phase, but Lawrence is actively seeking a full-time squash pro to take over and run both the adult and junior squash programs. She also plans to revive the long-dormant tradition of hosting major tournaments in the Washington D.C. area.
Currently the only significant event is the mid-February Woodruff-Nee Invitational, which the University Club has hosted for more than 50 years (with junior and softball flights to go along with their hardball events), but the kind of all-flights squash happenings that events like the Boodles and Cherry Blossom Opens used to engender have been absent from the D.C. environment for some time. In fact, a strong case can be made that the openings of Results-Capitol Hill and the L.A. Sports Club at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel last year(also with four international courts) have been the two most positive developments for squash in Washington D.C. in more than a decade. Anyone interested in participating in this squash revival, either as a member or as an applicant for the head pro position, should contact the club at (202) 234-5678.
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