John M Barnaby Obituary 2-15-02

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Jack Barnaby, Obituary Boston Globe 2/15/02
By Tom Long, Globe Staff, Feb15 2002 copyright © 2002, Globe Newspaper Company. Reproduction prohibited.

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John M. Barnaby, 92 Harvard tennis, squash coach

John M. Barnaby, a former Harvard University tennis and squash coach whose integrity and enthusiasm for amateur athletics earned him the sobriquet ''The John Wooden of Racquet Sports,'' died Wednesday in his home in Lexington. He was 92.

Jack Barnaby at Hemenway Gym

Mr. Barnaby was appointed men's tennis and squash coach at Harvard in 1937, after five years as assistant coach. He held the post until 1976, with the exception of a short time during World War II, when the school didn't field teams and he was an executive with a fastener company in Cambridge. He coached the women's squash team from 1979 to 1982 and was a special assistant to the school's tennis and squash programs for the next 10 years.

His men's squash teams won 16 Ivy League titles and 17 national championships. Overall, as coach of the men's and women's squash and tennis teams, he compiled a record of 745 wins, 257 losses and three ties.

But winning was not everything to Mr. Barnaby. ''The idea always has been not to rack up a great record. It doesn't mean that much,'' he said in 1976. ''We would much prefer to have good competition, and that's been the goal ever since I've been here.'' He wasn't allowed to recruit players for his teams, and that suited him. He always said it allowed him more of an opportuinty to teach. ''You try to bring out the potential in a kid,'' he said. ''It's like cultivating a garden. All of a sudden there is something where there was nothing. That's the way they come along here, and by the time they are seniors, they are good players. Then they're gone.''

Of his 1970 squash team, he said, ''My team works like hell - not too talented this year, but they'll win because they're tigers. I get a team at the start of a season and tell them the object is to have fun. But the best way to have fun is to get the most you can from the game - that means work, and usually work means winning.'' ''Jack always told us, `If you're going to do something, you might as well do it well,' and he led by example,'' Dave Fish, Harvard's current tennis coach, said yesterday. ''And, while Jack would be the first to say that he was only teaching us `how to play a game,' his lessons have served us even better off the court.''

Fish, who was coached by Mr. Barnaby as an undergraduate, said he considered him the ''John Wooden of racquet sports,'' referring to the UCLA basketball coach who believed you had to be a good man to play a good game. ''Jack defined what it was to be a professional,'' said Fish. ''He wasn't able to serve in the military during World War II because he had flat feet, so he became an executive in a factory. After the war, he was offered a lot of money to remain with the company, but he returned to coaching. He didn't want to make money as much as he wanted to make a contribution.''

Mr. Barnaby graduated from Harvard College in 1932, with a degree in romance languages. He played schoolboy tennis in Hackensack, N.J., but didn't play squash until he attended Harvard. He reached the semifinals of the intercollegiate squash championship in his senior year.

A former president of the US Professional Lawn Tennis Association and the Youth Tennis Foundation of New England, he was the author of several books, including ''Squash Racquets in Brief'' and ''Racquet Work: the Key to Tennis.'' He leaves his wife, Charlotte (Bouton); a daughter, Margaret B. of Volcano, Hawaii; two sons, John R. of San Francisco and Charles S. of Lexington; and a grandson.

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Jack Barnaby, Obituary Boston Globe 2/15/02 By Tom Long, Globe Staff, Feb15 2002 copyright © 2002, Globe Newspaper Company. Reproduction prohibited.

Jack Barnaby, Obituary Boston Globe 2/15/02
By Tom Long, Globe Staff, Feb15 2002 copyright © 2002, Globe Newspaper Company. Reproduction prohibited.