The city of Everett is a youth football power, and Peabody could have a team heading to the Little League World Series this summer, but when it comes to junior squash, Boston - and specifically the University Club (UC), a social and athletic club on Stuart Street - is the place to be.
Chris Spahr, UC director of squash, and his coaching staff, have the largest number of junior players in Boston competing in squash, and 49 of those players have earned rankings in the United States. In fact, one of the elite players, Julian Kirby, is ranked No. 2 in the country, and his prep school team, Belmont Hill School, could be the best team in the country in 2010. Two other nationally ranked players, Ryan Mullaney and Marcus Bullen, also play squash for Belmont Hill.
Spahr is rapidly earning a reputation as the Nick Bollettieri of junior squash in Boston. As tennis fans know, Bolletieri has developed many young players into tennis professionals at his famous instructional academy in Florida.
And like Bolletieri, Spahr has assembled a world-class team of squash players to be on the UC coaching staff, including former world No. 1-ranked David Palmer of Australia, Nadeem Osman of South Africa, Dan Roberts of Ireland, and Fernanda Rocha of Argentina.
As quickly as the ball can travel during a squash match, Spahr deflects the success of the junior squash programs at UC to that team of coaches.
“We have a great coaching staff,” he said. “The kids love to play, and as they continue getting better, they compete in sanctioned tournaments in the Metro Boston area; and if they play in four tournaments during the season (September-April), they qualify for a national ranking.”
The nationally ranked players, both boys and girls, are spread out over five age brackets, from 11-and-under to 19-and-under.
Spahr said kids begin learning how to play squash when they are as young as 5 years old, in the clinics and structured programs at the UC. “At the age of 5, they’re just learning how to hit the ball,” said Spahr. “When they’re about 8 or 9, they’re ready for serving and returning the ball and playing points out, so they start to understand the competitive game by then.”
Squash has a reputation as an upscale activity, but the start-up equipment is actually less expensive than a popular youth sport like ice hockey. Parents can expect to spend $40 to $100 for a squash racquet, $20 for glasses, and $40 to $60 for squash shoes.
“The expensive part may be joining a club where you have access to squash courts, but that’s probably the only deterrent to getting started,’ said Spahr.
Spahr said approximately 20 high (prep) schools in the Metro Boston area have squash teams. “The sport is growing rapidly, which is terrific to see. A lot of schools are putting in squash courts and making commitments to squash teams. Perhaps what we’re doing at the University Club is putting squash on the map, where schools are considering putting in squash courts and ultimately making a commitment to it down the road.”
Above all else, the University Club coaching staff focuses on making the sport fun for its talented contingent of juniors.
“The kids are having a ball, an absolutely blast, which is the most important thing far and away,” said Spahr. “The competitive aspects of the game build in at the back end. The players enjoy challenging the skills that they learn, and that’s what leads them into the tournaments. They’re also getting an opportunity to play the sport for their schools.”
The junior squash program is booming at the UC, where Spahr is overseeing six youth squash camps for beginners, intermediate, and elite players. Student-athletes from some of the most prestigious colleges in the country serve on the camp’s instructional staff.
One of the junior players attending squash camp is 11-year-old Nate Baranski, who is ranked No. 229 in the U.S. Under-13 division and has four years of playing experience at the club. “The coaches at the camp are great,” said Baranski, “and Mr. Spahr is a really nice guy. I’ve learned a lot about squash from him. Squash is a great sport, and it keeps me in condition for all my other sports. My parents always say that I can play it for the rest of my life.”

Chris Spahr
The son of Christian “Kit” Spahr, a former national squash champion, University Club Director of Squash Chris Spahr began playing the sport in the Philadelphia area when he was 6 years old. At the age of 11, he made the finals in his first competitive tournament. Ranked No. 2 in the country, he went on to win several junior tournaments and became a standout performer at the Haverford School. Incredibly, the top seven players on that Haverford team, including Spahr, went on to become captains of their college teams.
As the captain at Franklin and Marshall College in his senior year, Spahr led his team to the Division 1 national tournament, where it lost in the championship match to Harvard University. Spahr’s collegiate career was legendary: he was a three-time All-American squash player.
And now he’s passing on that wealth of knowledge from his college and professional careers to budding squash players throughout the metro Boston area. One rising star is Spahr’s son, Carson, who will be ranked in the top 10 nationally in his age group in the coming year. Together, the Spahrs make a pretty good team: Chris and Carson Spahr have won the national father-son doubles championship the past two years in the Under-13 division. A daughter, Caroline, also plays the sport.
Spahr still plays professional doubles tournaments and is hoping that squash becomes an Olympic sport in 2016, but his main focus is the University Club, where he is in his 10th year and the face of the sport’s surging popularity in Boston.
“The membership here is tremendous, and that really is the thing I enjoy the most – the people here are terrific,” he said. “I have a great staff that has been very supportive and the programs are great. I love Boston. I would never move back to Philadelphia in a million years at this point.”

Despite an 11th hour hearing sponsored by City Council President Mike Ross last week to save the 136-year-old tradition of Boston police on horses, the city’s Mounted Patrol Unit will disband tomorrow after falling prey to budget cuts.
“I start today on my quest to bring the Mounted Unit back to the City of Boston,” Ross said during a farewell ceremony at City Hall on Thursday, one day after approval of Mayor Thomas’ Menino’s budget proposal for the 2010 fiscal year, which included reduced funding for police. “I disagree with disbanding the unit, no matter the fiscal crisis.”
In March, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis announced the elimination of the Mounted Patrol Unit, which operates at an annual cost of $750,000, as part of departmental cutbacks. Under the plan, nine officers and the sole supervisor from the Mounted Unit will be reassigned to other police units, and nine civilian personnel will be laid off. The 12 horses will go to the New York City Police Department, the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department and private organizations, and bicycle patrols are slated to take their place in the city.
“I have to make a decision to affect people in the organization or animals in the organization,” Davis said during the hearing last Tuesday. “I wish there was an easier solution to this, but we’re doing the best that we can.”
Some met Davis’ pledge to work to bring the Mounted Unit back to Boston with skepticism.
“I’m not convinced we’re going to bring them back,” said Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association. “I think this is the beginning of the end.”
Meanwhile, the approved budget made provisions to save the Boston Parks Department’s mounted unit, which patrols city green spaces.

Area D-4, which includes sections of Back Bay, the South End, Lower Roxbury and the Fenway, has seen a more than 3 percent increase in violent and property crime in 2009 as opposed to the same timeframe last year, with larcenies largely to blame for the spike.
According to Boston Police, Part One crime incidents have risen to 2,216 between January 1 and June 21, 2009, as opposed to 2,142 during the same time last year.
Larcenies and attempted larcenies, including theft from motor vehicles and shoplifting - a longtime problem in the Newbury Street area - were also up 13 percent as the number of incidents rose to 1,645 from 1,454 last year.
Sgt. Kevin Power of Area D-4 cited the June 5 arrest of an individual who allegedly targeted the Sunglass Hut on Newbury Street as a recent success for police combating larcenies in the area.
“We have a few individuals who drive the numbers up,” Power said. “This is a perfect example of this.”
Three homicides have taken place this year, compared to one last year. In addition to the April 14 fatal shooting of a 26-year-old masseuse in Boston Marriott Copley Place Hotel by the alleged “Craigslist killer,” Power said the other two homicides this year occurred in the Lenox Street area of Lower Roxbury.
Rapes and attempted rapes remained steady as 15 incidents were reported both this year and last, but all other categories of Part One crime have declined in 2009.
Aggravated assaults, which Power said commonly involved patrons from area nightclubs and bars, were down 22 percent, as the number of incidents dropped to 137 from 175 last year.
Burglaries and attempted burglaries dropped 20 percent, with 180 incidents reported in 2009, compared to 224 last year.
Robberies and attempted robberies saw a 14 percent decrease, as the number of incidents dropped from 146 in 2008 to 126.
Vehicle theft and attempted vehicle theft was also on the decline, with 110 incidents in 2009 as opposed to 127 last year.

The Michael Jackson I knew, whose music I have always enjoyed – and which I will enjoy into the twilight of my own life – is not the person who died in Los Angeles last week.
It was indeed Michael Jackson in body who died, but it was not Michael Jackson in mind and soul.
And when you think about it – if, in fact, you take a moment to think about it at all – the Michael Jackson we loved for the great music he made and the dance steps he performed, died long before he stopped breathing last Thursday.
The Grim Reaper walked side by side with him as he rose, side by side with him as he changed, and had taken him over completely when he died alone in his bed in a largely empty mansion he had rented.
His rise was meteoric, the stuff of legend.
His fall was a catastrophe mixed inexorably with drugs, depression, loneliness and the type of lifestyle, it seems, that only great wealth can bring to so many who are like him.
Fame is not what it is cracked up to be – not when you take your last breath at age 50 as Jackson did.
“Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are,” wrote Erica Jong, the writer and feminist.
Indeed. Perhaps Jackson was not that masked man often wearing a white glove. Maybe he wasn’t a child molester or a prescription drug addict.
Maybe beneath everything he contrived to make himself appear odd and eccentric was an act which ultimately cost him his life.
Beneath the veneer of everything odd he did to himself was a living, breathing person with real feelings.
Ambrose Bierce, the American writer and journalist, regarded fame as oblivion, where the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest.
Oblivion, he wrote, is fame’s eternal dumping ground.
Jackson died years ago. It was his body only that stopped breathing last Thursday.

The Fourth of July 2009

This year marks the 233rd year of American Independence.
It has been the best of years. It has been the worst of years. It is to be a summer filled with great hope. It is to be a summer that won’t be without major despair.
The nation is a vastly changed place from what it was last year at this time.
The mighty nation is led by an African American. The election of Barack Obama stirred the world.
The American people showed that American democracy is the great light among those millions on this earth struggling to be free.
After all, man is born free, and everywhere, he is in shackles.
That’s how the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau viewed mankind before the American Revolution electrified the world.
President Obama’s election, however, has been superseded by the near collapse of the American banking system – and the following near collapse of the world economy.
In the 233rd year of American independence, the nation has suffered the loss of $15 trillion in equity values that disappeared from spread sheets and banks, pension funds and retirement accounts.
Our homes are worth less. Our money earns no interest. Our portfolios are cut in half and worse.
The banking system failed. The American business model is in disarray.
Millions are unemployed. Millions more have lost their homes.
We are all staring into a brave new world, which is a bit like staring into the heart of darkness.
But all that will change. Business will improve. The downward economic cycle will improve over time.
For all the failures in business and equities, our democracy remains strong.
The election of President Obama showed that in modern America, freedom rings. Those who opposed the election of Obama haven’t been beaten by thugs, shot, or imprisoned for not wanting him elected.
It isn’t a crime to support political, social and moral change in this nation.
In fact, it is a duty to maintain the belief and the possibility for American democracy to always better itself.
The smooth transition of power to a new American president proved to the world that American democracy is strong, that the American Dream is alive, and that America talks the talk and walks the walk.
As we celebrate Independence Day, all of us should be thankful for the great position in this world our nation holds.
Post Bush America is a better place.
To those who live in shackles all over the world, there is the hope that America inspires.
Thank God for the United States of America.