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North Jersey "Y" Turns 25

by Rob Dinerman

Wayne New Jersey Pocket of Hardball Enthusiasm

New York. July 17, 2001 © 2001 Squashtalk.com

BUCKING THE TIDE---NORTH JERSEY Y CELEBRATES 25TH ANNIVERSARY

On the evening of July 7th, the YM-YWHA Of North Jersey celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its current location in Wayne, NJ, where it moved in the spring of '76 from its previous spot in nearby Paterson. The 130 members who turned out for the occasion enjoyed cocktails and a barbecue in the large open atrium, where they were entertained by Larry Chance and The Earls, a five-member band which produced several hit records during their heyday in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

In some ways, the choice of this band somehow seemed fitting, for the North Jersey Y's main claim to squash fame lies in the 65-75 hard-core members whose continuing commitment to the American hardball game has made their Y the club with seemingly the largest active hardball membership in the country or, for the matter, the world --- and the number of hardball-playing members has actually been growing in recent years, even as exactly the opposite happens everywhere else.

The club added a squash court -- a converted 20 foot wide court -- with a softball-height tin. This latter court is "versatile" in the sense that a good game of hardball OR softball can be played on such a court --- in fact the WPSA three-glass-wall portable tour court, which was a major factor in the hardball tour's growth during the 1980's when it was plunked down in major squash venues such as Toronto's Sheraton Hotel's Grand Ballroom and New York's Town Hall Theatre just off Broadway, was exactly this dimension (though with the lower American tin) on the theory that the extra width would (a) attract softballers from overseas to the WPSA tour, (b) create wider angles for television and (c) lead to fewer play-stopping let calls.

Hardball play has moved to both racquetball-width and softball-width courts as narrow hardball courts themselves continue to be converted or to disappear (the early-May professional Hamil Cup tournament on the University's Club's main exhibition softball court being a recent example), and the pair of racquetball-width courts at the North Jersey Y receive plenty of hardball play when the two hardball courts are taken.

What is unique about the squash situation in Wayne is how actively the hardball game is surviving there, even in a state where hardball has all but disappeared everywhere else (a few clubs in Montclair being virtually the sole other exception) and even though the club has never had a formal head pro. In addition to entering several teams in the Northern New Jersey Travel League (one of which, composed of John Cosmi, Tony LaSala and Serafin Valdes, reached the play-off finals), the club hosts a 14-team in-house league that stretches throughout the fall and winter months, and almost everyone competes in the three-division Club Championships, self-scheduling tournaments whose finals are all played on a designated Sunday in mid-February. In the past few years, these finals have been followed by a professional exhibition match featuring nationally-ranked players from the New York area, and this whole event has been a useful prelude to the U. S. Nationals a week or two later. A half-dozen Y members usually play in the Nationals, and this number should rise appreciably this upcoming season, since the Hardball Nationals will be played at the Harvard Club in nearby Manhattan.

In the face of almost universal conversion of narrow hardball courts to wide softball courts nationwide, the Wayne NJ "Y" resolutely and surprisingly successfully defies this trend and continues to thrive while doing so.

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