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Strong Squad Heads to India
by Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Oct 22, 2002

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The USSRA has announced the composition of the 2002 Junior Men's team that will represent America at the 12th World Junior Men's Squash Championships in Chennai, India, on December 3-14.

Interim head coach Michael Callaway, the Manager and coaching professional at Westchester Squash, and interim assistant coach Duncan Pearson, squash coach and assistant development officer at the Hill School in suburban Philadelphia, will lead a strong four-man squad consisting of national under-19 champion Julian Illingworth, a freshman at Yale who was also a member of the 2000 team, high school seniors Nicholas Chirls of Brooklyn and Michael Gilman of Atlanta and Christopher Gordon, who has been based for the past year in Harrowgate, England, where he trains full-time.

Will Broadbent, the Harvard freshman sensation who was runner-up to
Illingworth in last spring's USSRA under-19 tourney, also earned a position
on the squad, but he withdrew after the tournament, which was originally
scheduled for this past August, was postponed as a result of the intensity of
the Pakistan-India conflict over Kashmir, which was at a boiling point early
this summer but has thankfully settled down considerably since then. Also
unable to attend the event in the wake of this re-scheduling are head coach
Mark Lewis, whose wife is expecting their first child in early December, and
assistant coach Doug Whittaker, who is unable to break his prior club
commitments during the prime winter season.

Julian Illingworth (photo © 2002 D Tessier)

The USSRA, like the squash federations of approximately two dozen countries currently planning to compete in this prestigious biennial event, will continue to closely monitor the political situation in India via the U.S. State Department and the United States Olympic Committee. For now, however, all countries originally entered are still planning to participate, even Canada and Australia, which understandably expressed major concerns about the event several months ago.

The level of the competition at the world team championship gets progressively higher every two years, but there is no question that the U. S. will be represented by some of the most talented and committed players of this vintage in the land. Illingworth, 18, is a Portland, OR native who was coached at the Multnomah Athletic Club by Khalid Mir, whose son Moysen won the S. L. Green title in 1996. In addition to winning the
under-19's last March at the Brady Courts at Yale, whose varsity he will head
as an instant No. 1 when the NISRA season begins later this fall, he also won
the USSRA under-17 title and has played on three PanAm and CanAm Junior
teams, while also starring in high-school soccer and in his studies, becoming
a three-time member of the National Honors Society. Illingworth sparked a fierce recruiting battle among the elite colleges from which Yale and head coach Dave Talbott emerged victorious.

His experience and achievements have already definitively marked Illingworth as the team leader, and after completing this event he also plans to compete in the British Junior Open and the USSRA Junior Olympics during a whirlwind several weeks before returning in January to New Haven, where he hopes to lead the Bulldogs to what would be their first Ivy League championship since the colleges voted to switch to softball prior to the 1994-95 season. Even the determination Illingworth demonstrated in
persuading the Yale dean's office to allow him to take his first-semester
exams early and hence avoid a conflict with the Chennai dates is a tribute to
the quiet force of his personality and the sincerity of his mission.

Chris Gordon (l) and Michael Gilman faced off in the 2002 US National Jrs. (photo © 2002 R Beck)

Backing Illingworth up, as noted, will be Gilman, Chirls and Gordon, all of whom have compiled impressive age-group resumes as well. Like Illingworth, the Atlanta-based Gilman is a multi-sport athlete, playing golf to a six handicap after having led his baseball team to the 1996 Georgia State Little League finals. Coached by USSRA age-group champion Tom Rumpler, the longtime WPSA Teaching Pro Committee official who ironically defeated Michael's father Murray in the final of the 45-and-over event a few years ago, and more
recently by Andre Maur, the younger Gilman attends Woodward Academy, where he recently initiated a tutoring program for Atlanta's inner-city children.

He won the USSRA under-17 title in 2001, finished second at the 2000 PanAm Games
in Mexico and made two American teams participating in the CanAm Games.

Chirls recently moved to Brooklyn, where he currently attends Hunter College High School and trains primarily at Heights Casino, which has produced so many outstanding players from its junior program over the past
few decades.

Nick Chirls (photo © 2002 D Tessier)

While previously living in Princeton, he volunteered at the Princeton Junior Squash Camps. The family moved shortly after the September 11th attack, which tragically claimed the life of his mother,
Cathy, in honor of whose memory the junior squash community has established a fund. Ranked No. 1 nationally in his age group in 1997, 1999 and 2000, Chirls won USSRA Junior titles in 1996, 1997
and 1999 and also was a member of the American team at the 2001 Maccabiah Games. From his current base in New York, he also serves as an advisor to the StreetSquash scholarship program, which uses squash as a vehicle to provide educational opportunities to inner-city children.

Unlike his three teammates, all of whom, notwithstanding their heavy involvement in squash, have taken fairly conventional paths through high school, Gordon has dared to be different, with excellent results.
Homeschooled for the past six years, largely through correspondence courses
from the Phoenix Special Programs And Academies, Gordon was originally
coached at the Harvard Club of New York for several years by three-time S. L.
Green finalist and perennial senior U. S. Team member Richard Chin before
moving to England in the summer of 2000 to train under National Team premier
coach Dave Pearson (no relation to Duncan), whom he credits with re-shaping
his swing and thereby expanding the shot options at his disposal. Mature well
beyond his team-low 16 years, Gordon has been traveling constantly to play in
tournaments all over Europe and plans to remain in England for the remainder
of his career.

His highlights to this point---the U. S. Closed under-15, Pioneer under-15 and Nordic under-17 titles in 2001, the Irish under-17 crown and finishes of third in the German under -17 and fourth in the Spanish under-19 in 2002, as well as runner-up in the Can Am Challenge both years and a PSA ranking of No. 219 from a smattering of satellite and challenger events---bear testimony to the fact and success of these travels and to
Pearson's wisdom in making sure Gordon gets occasional practice time with elite players like Paul Johnson and Adrian Grant as a complement to his daily training and extensive tournament schedule.

The members of this American squad have already demonstrated a noteworthy degree of commitment, courage and citizenship, both on and off the court. All of those praiseworthy qualities will be strongly tested in the formidable environment that awaits them in India, where they will have to match skills and smarts with some of the greatest array of teenage squash talent ever assembled.

There is no question that this is the generation that in a short time will have to be entrusted with lifting America's squash image at the senior (i.e. adult) level, which
is currently sagging after a disappointing 19th place finish (out of only 24 entered teams) at the most recent World Team Championships in Melbourne a year ago. Some of the seeds of this potential future harvest will likely be sown in the challenging crucible of this tournament just a few short months from now.

Get the USA Insider's Guide to Junior Squash Tournaments - Now Available!

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