October ’16

The Season has officially started.

We had a great Ed Jocoy Tournament last weekend at T&S. We had one player coming from Cleveland and Thomson Chew, President of Rochester Squash, also signed up for the tournament and won the 5.0 Division in Singles. He also made it to the Doubles Final.

The other big event of the month was the Nardin Courts Opening Ceremony. The 4 brand new courts look gorgeous! This facility will change the face of Squash in Buffalo. Besides Nardin and Canisius Teams, these courts will be home for the new St Joe’s and Tapestry teams. The big announcement of the evening was the confirmation that 2 new more courts are on the way!

Speaking about St Joe’s team, It has been confirmed that Mike McGorry will be the Program’s first coach. They could not have asked for a better option. The BSRA National Fund will support this initiative.

I don’t know if many of you know of the BSRA National Fund. This Fund was established many years ago to support and foster the sport. Although part of BSRA, it has an independent President and Board of Directors.  The Fund’s current President is Gordon Anderson. Any profit from any tournaments we ran in the past, like the highly successful 2016 National Doubles Tournament, goes to this fund. Any extra money we get at the BSRA Level, goes to this Fund. Any initiative you would like the Fund to help finance, please contact the myself or any of the BSRA Board Members. We will look at all of the requests and decide which ones to be brought to the Fund Board for approval.

US Squash is running the PSA US Open at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Like every year for the last 3, they take this opportunity to honor the Top 50 most influential people in US Squash. Our Gordon Anderson was part of this list the last two years. US Squash decided to change the format this year and pick one person per State, as a way to “share the wealth” with the smaller markets.  To my surprise, they picked me as the NYS Representative. I was out of town but I sent my wife Patti and daughter Hannah to represent me. This recognition is for all of you. We are smaller than most Associations in NYC, Philly, Boston or Toronto, but we can still run our tournaments!

Another nice event in Buffalo: The head coach of Denison College put together a women’s college round robin tournament last year that was hosted by the T&S and they are putting a new one this year, adding some Men’s Teams. The event will take place the Weekend of November 5 and Bill Pearce is leading the coordination efforts. This is a great opportunity to showcase scholastic squash in Buffalo as well as an opportunity for the high school students to see how the game is played at the college level.  So far the teams are: Women: Denison, Washington University (St Louis),William Smith, Bucknell, U of Rochester. Men: Denison, Notre Dame, Bucknell, Washington University

One last thing: City Leagues start in November. Brian Donaghy and I will be putting teams together in the next two weeks. Please let me know if you want to participate.

See you in the courts!

Gui Alvarez

President

BSRA