{"id":176632254,"date":"2008-10-15T17:17:19","date_gmt":"2008-10-15T17:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/squashword.wpengine.com\/?p=176632254"},"modified":"2015-05-18T17:18:55","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T17:18:55","slug":"2008-gala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/?p=176632254","title":{"rendered":"2008 Gala"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What a night. It was incredibly incredible. The U.S. Squash Hall of Fame Gala 2008 rocked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was hard not to compare it to the last time the American squash community had gathered in our monkey suits at a posh Midtown Manhattan ballroom on an October evening. Statistically speaking, the USSRA centennial ball at the University Club in October 2004 was bigger: five hundred and seventy-six people v. three hundred and nineteen; $360,000 raised v. $100,000; fourteen USSRA presidents v. three; eleven Hall of Famers v. four. Worst of all, there were three people with a last name beginning with Z in 2004. This time, just moi.<\/p>\n

One number that was close this time was the number of President Cup winners. Last time, there was seven; this time six, including the first winner, in 1966, Charlie Ufford.<\/p>\n

But\u2014and this is a huge but\u2014the centennial celebration was a once-a-century party (note that no other national governing body has had their centennial yet) while this year\u2019s gala was meant to be an annual event. You might not ever match up to the 2004 numbers. To do this well, especially with our economy freefalling into a depression and ticket prices actually higher than four years ago, was amazing.<\/p>\n

And this one seemed much more forward-looking than the centennial gala. The poster board photos of the new Hall of Famers that greeted you as you walked in were joined by similar shots of our current national champions. The cover of the program depicted our 2008 gold-medal winning teams at the annual Pan-Am Fed Cup (not to be confused, as it often is, with the quadrennial Pan-Am Games). The music was loud; the videos were quick; the gift bag was hip (but sometimes odd\u2014sunscreen for squash players?!).<\/p>\n

The scene felt very very young\u2014everyone seemed twenty-something, beautiful and happy. That afternoon I had played tennis with two of the leaders this new generation (Preston Quick and Noah Wimmer) and wondered if they would have a good time at the party, thinking it might be old and stodgy.<\/p>\n

Instead, it was I who was antediluvian. I left at a quarter past midnight and headed to the New Jersey Turnpike to drive home to Washington. About an hour later I got a call from Lex Miron at the Whiskey Bar saying that a couple of dozen people had repaired there for a late-night refreshment. That\u2019s young, considering that the gala itself had lasted nearly six hours.<\/p>\n

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under\u00a0General<\/a>. You can follow any responses to this entry through the\u00a0RSS 2.0<\/a>\u00a0feed. You can\u00a0leave a response<\/a>, or\u00a0trackback<\/a>\u00a0from your own site.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What a night. It was incredibly incredible. The U.S. Squash Hall of Fame Gala 2008 rocked.\u00a0 It was hard not to compare it to the last time the American squash community had gathered in our monkey suits at a posh Midtown Manhattan ballroom on an October evening. Statistically speaking, the USSRA centennial ball at the … Continue reading 2008 Gala<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176632254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176632254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176632254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176632254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176632254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176632254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squashword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176632254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}