Owen Maier ’20:
Palmer Page ‘68, a former Episcopal squash player, is leading a project to write a book entailing the entire history of squash at EA . Along with Rob Dinerman, who has previously written books about squash at various schools, including Harvard, Princeton, and the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, the two hope to have the book published by December of 2018 according to a press release.
EA SQUASH BOOK: Rob Dineman and Palmer Page to publish book on squash history at EA. Photo Courtesy of Amazon.com
In order to find more information about the extensive history of the sport, Dinerman is receiving help from Cassandra Keith, EA Librarian and Archivist, to research season records as well as notable competitors and coaches. Notable information information includes five of these players and four coaches that have been named to the United States Squash Hall of Fame. Additionally, a successful four-year stretch between 2009 and 2012 saw the boys’ team take home the National Championship every season as well as a girls’ team National victory in 2007.
Keith’s research process has thus far been a long and tedious one. She explains, “The first thing I did was I made copies of all the team pages and the Tabulas starting in 1931 (in which the first season of squash occured).” After that, she went through all past issues of Scholium to find articles covering the matches. Keith was most successful in the issues between the 1930’s through 1970. However, a decrease in coverage, in her mind as a result of the changing campus culture, made it difficult to find as much from recent years. Keith estimates she has thus far put in 15-20 hours of work into the research as a whole.
EA alumni plan to hold a dinner on February 8th, 2019 in honor of the book’s release. Head of School Dr. TJ Locke observes how a long tradition of squash success has impacted students’ lives, saying, “We are very excited to have the history of our teams and players documented. Our players aspire through squash to learn about about the values we teach.”