Wellesley Students Strive for Team
June 28 2005, by Rob Dinerman
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2005 SquashTalk LLC

Wellesley Student/Athletes Battle To Salvage Upcoming Season

In the wake of a tersely worded official statement on June 10th by Louise O'Neal, Director of Athletics of Wellesley College, announcing the discontinuation, effective immediately, of squash as a varsity sport, a number of the famed Massachusetts woman's college squash alumnae and current varsity players have embarked on a determined attempt to reverse this situation and proceed with the 2005-2006 College Squash Association (CSA) season.

Ms. O'Neal's statement, released on her behalf to CSA Executive Director and Squashtalk.com editor Ron Beck by Associate Athletics Director Mindy Mangels, was notably uninformative, indeed cryptic, as to the reason for this move, which was even more surprising in view of the fact that a full schedule of fall and winter matches has already been booked with Wellesley's traditional opponents. In the several weeks following the release of the statement, which alluded vaguely to the discontinuation as being "consistent with our ongoing evaluation of our athletics program," Ms. O'Neal has gone totally incommunicado, refusing to meet or talk with either Wellesley players/alumnae, declining to respond to a lengthy detailed letter by Beck suggesting various possible solutions to Wellesley's current problems (which include the recent resignation of Shona Kerr, this past season's coach, and the lack of international-sized courts in the school athletic complex) and failing to return repeated messages left over a 10-day period by a Squashtalk.com reporter on her answering machine.

Frustrated by this stonewalling tactic on the part of the athletic department's leading administrative figure, captain-elect Emily Oldshue '06, who has taken a lead role in the effort to salvage next season, managed to arrange what turned out to be a very encouraging meeting with Dean Andrew Shennan late last week. The follow-up memo she sent yesterday to Ms. O'Neal, Dean Shennan and Wellesley president Diana Chapman Walsh spoke eloquently to all of the issues that were raised in last week's meeting, ranging from player recruitment to the coaching situation to the current lack of regulation courts (the team DID practice weekly on the international-sized courts at nearby Belmont Hill prep school last season, and before she left last month Coach Kerr arranged for the team to also practice weekly on the courts Dana Hall is presently constructing).

Though ranked 24th at the end of the 2004-2005 college season, Wellesley has placed as high as the mid-teens in the recent past and has a solid three-decade tradition that even includes hosting the prestigious end-of-season Intercollegiate championships. An effort is already underway to enlist the involvement of Wellesley's substantial squash alumnae in this matter and Beck wrote a lengthy responding letter to Ms. O'Neal proposing solutions to the various obstacles, offering the CSA's involvement, including financial assistance on the part of the CSA, and listing a number of qualified coaches to potentially step into the breach caused by Ms. Kerr's departure.

Towards the end of her memo, captain-elect Oldshue, noting how difficult it was for her and her teammates "to internalize a decision that was made without notice, without consultation and without explanation," stressed how seriously the entire squad took the cancellation of the season and the termination of what has been an extremely meaningful program. It is clear that she and her growing group of supporters and allies are determined to have a Wellesley presence in 2005-2006, if need be as a club sport rather than one with official varsity status, and it will be interesting to see how the school's key administrators respond to a save-the-squash-team movement the intensity of which they could not have foreseen when they decided to discontinue the program earlier this month.

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