Franklin & Marshall College, located in the heart of Amish country in Lancaster, PA, announced earlier this week that John White, 34, a perennial (and current) PSA top-10 ranked player who ascended to the No. 1 standing a few years ago, will become the Director of Squash and the Head Coach of the men’s and women’s teams beginning in early October. A Queensland, Australia, native and Scottish national, White joins his former Scottish teammate Martin Heath, a former PSA No. 4 who has been at the helm of Rochester College squash for the past few years, as elite PSA performers who have been chosen to lead aspiring varsity programs at American colleges in the northeastern corridor.

John White (here with David Palmer) always mixed humor and perspective with an exciting offensive game (Debra Tessier photo:© 2007)

Known for his powerful forehand drives, durability and explosive attacking style, White has spent virtually the entire last decade of his 16-year pro career ranked in the PSA top 10, capturing 12 PSA tour titles along the way, earning runner-up status in both the World and British Opens in 2002 and attaining the No. 1 slot in March 2004 in the PSA rankings. Even as recently as last year, by which time White was cutting back slightly on his playing schedule in the wake of the move that he and wife Susie and their four children made in 2005 from Europe to suburban Philadelphia, he won four tournaments (the Dayton, Motor City and Baltimore City Opens, as well as the Virginia Pro Championship), reached the final round of the British National Championships and played well enough in several other events to land at No. 9 when the PSA released its September ’07 rankings a few days ago.

He will be taking on the challenge of restoring the Diplomats (whose men’s and women’s teams finished 15th and 20th respectively this past season) to the No. 2 positions that both the men’s and women’s squads occupied in the U. S. college ranks during the late 1980’s. The ’87 men’s team, co-coached by Athletics Director Bill Marshall and F & M alumnus John Stallings ’76 (who has been head men’s coach since Marshall’s retirement in 1991), finished second to Harvard, soundly defeating both Yale and Princeton and losing only to the Crimson, whose 7-2 tally in the dual match belies how close F & M actually came to winning --- they dropped two matches in which they held at least one match-point and were ahead 2-1,11-6 in another match that day. In addition to featuring senior and four-time all-American Morris Clothier (a U. S. Nationals semifinalist in both his junior and senior years and later a nine-time U. S. National Doubles champion with three different partners) at No. 1, the talent-laden F & M lineup that winter featured current U. S. 40-and-over doubles champion Chris Spahr, two-time (in ’05 and ’07) U. S. Nationals A Doubles finalists Beau Buford and Geoff Kennedy, all four of whom were products of elite Philadelphia-area high-school programs (namely Haverford and Hill), plus Indians Yogesh Panchal and Aashish Kamat and highly-ranked American juniors Nat Otis, Tim Long and Sam Crew.

The 2003 F&M team won the Epps Cup with Ron Epps at the helm and Patty Epps in attendance (Debra Tessier photo:© 2007)

Even after Clothier, Spahr and Kennedy graduated in ’87, the following season F & M won four of the first eight matches in the dual meet against Harvard, swinging the outcome to the No. 7 match, in which Richard Fisher held a fourth-game double-match-ball against his Crimson opponent David Handy, who however was able to force a fifth game, which he won 15-12 to launch Harvard to their sixth consecutive college national team championship. Franklin & Marshall subsequently lost to both Princeton and Harvard that winter and wound up finishing fourth.

That same 1987-88 season, however, saw the women’s team, coached by current Director of Athletics and Recreation Patricia S. W. Epps and paced by four-year all-Americans Lee Belknap and Carol Gould, as well as Monisha Grewal  and captain and all-American Shannon Martin, place second (also to Harvard) in the Howe Cup postseason tournament emblematic of the intercollegiate women’s squash team championship. Coach Epps headed the women’s varsity for 23 years (from 1979-2001) before handing the reins over to her husband, Ron, and in recognition of her lengthy and distinguished service during the crucial formative years of women’s intercollegiate squash (which began during the early 1970’s), the College Squash Association named one of the divisions of the Howe Cup tournament in her honor a few years ago. Probably her most accomplished protégé has been Margo Green, class of ’95, who was Intercollegiate Individuals runner-up during each of her final three varsity seasons, reached the final of the ’93 U. S. Nationals and annexed the Canadian National Singles championship in 2002, the same year she attained her career-best No. 37 ranking on the WISPA world professional women’s tour.

Stallings and the Epps couple have done an excellent job during the past two decades of maintaining the F & M legacy, always recruiting interesting and talented players and fielding dedicated teams, leading to an alumni base that is extremely loyal and supportive.

Other F & M notables during the past 25 years include ’96 U. S. Nationals semifinalist Scott Brehman, Jess Berline, David Ganek, the Asthana brothers, Vinay and Vineet, ’01 U. S. National Doubles finalist Dave Rosen and ’07 National Mixed Doubles 40-and-over finalist Brian Callahan on the men’s side and two-time all-American Amanda Long and four-time all-American Anjali Ponni Rajkumar on the women’s. Martin, Gould, Grewal, Belknap, Long and Green all played significant roles in the seven-year skein (from 1987 – 1993) throughout which the Franklin & Marshall women earned end-of-season team rankings in the top eight.

It is within the perspective of that impressive squash legacy – which includes the Mayser Center’s good-citizenship role in making its five courts available to both the students in Lancaster Country Day School’s program and the adults in the Lancaster Squash Association --- that the imminent arrival of such a decorated squash veteran as John White onto the scene must be viewed. He does plan to continue competing on the PSA tour, arranging his tournaments so that they don’t conflict with the varsity schedule, and he expects to rely heavily throughout the forthcoming season on the knowledge, experience and counsel of Stallings and Ron Epps, who will stay on as assistant coaches for the men’s and women’s squads respectively. Even Franklin & Marshall President John Fry has noted what a unique opportunity will now exist for the school’s student-athletes to train under the tutelage of one of the world’s greatest squash players, concluding, “I know John will help bring our squash teams to premier status, and in doing so will build on the great legacy of our storied squash program.”