Data Driven
For twelve months, NUSEA has spearheaded what arguably is its most important contribution to the urban squash movement – the creation of a web-based data management system which all member programs and NUSEA itself will use to track information and manage performance. The platform is expected to go live in November and will be an invaluable resource for current and future practitioners. NUSEA extends a huge ‘thank you’ to Abby Markoe and Steve Gregg, Executive Directors of Baltimore SquashWise and SquashSmarts, who invested a great deal of time and effort in helping NUSEA develop and launch this project.
College Bound and College Ready
One of NUSEA’s greatest claims to fame is that almost 100% of the time when students stay in our programs throughout high school, they successfully matriculate to college. This past spring’s results support this finding with 40 of 42 high school seniors earning acceptances and hundreds of thousands of dollars of scholarships. The list is incomplete but some of our successful graduates will be entering freshman at Cornell, Bates, Smith, Hamilton, Hobart, Tufts, Bryn Mawr, Franklin and Marshall, Northeastern, Temple, SUNY Albany, Connecticut College and Penn State Berks.
Rockin’ in Motown
As a result of months of intensive development work in Detroit by NUSEA, Racquet Up Detroit is ready for launch in January 2011! An innovative partnership between NUSEA and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has Motown abuzz with talk about squash as a vehicle for much-needed change. With a long history of squash in Detroit, and an active community of players in and around the city, Racquet Up will follow the lead of other NUSEA programs in broadening access to the sport and helping public school students fulfill their potential. The leadership of Derek Aguirre, former Program Director at SquashBusters and a Michigan native, financial support from the McGregor Fund and the Kresge, Taubman, DeRoy, and Erb Family Foundations, and a great facility agreement with the Northwest Activities Center for squash courts, classrooms, and office space leave Racquet Up poised to make a deep impact on youth in Detroit. Check out RUD’s website (www.racquetup.org) and stay tuned for more updates.
New Developments
No fewer than seven urban squash start-ups are hard at work with program launch dates scheduled between January-September 2011. These programs are Rhody Squash in Newport, Rhode Island; Urban Squash Cleveland in Cleveland, Ohio; Capitol Squash in Hartford, Connecticut; Squash Drive in Oakland, California and Santa Barbara School of Squash in Santa Barbara, California; Chucktown Squash in Charleston, South Carolina; TDot Squash in Toronto, Canada. Each program has secured a certain amount of capital, identified facility partners, developed its founding board, and in some cases, hired its full time Executive Director. NUSEA is assisting all of these worthy endeavors with technical assistance and perhaps, soon enough, grant funding for when they become Provisional.
Summer 2010
2010 Urban Individuals Slideshow
Fall 2009 - Winter 2010
NUSEA leads the way in Detroit
NUSEA is teaming up with the squash and education community to create an urban squash program targeted to launch in January 2011. Racquet Up Detroit will serve 30-35 Detroit public school students with our intensive squash, academic and community service program. As with all our programs, our plan is to 'go deep, not wide' with each participant and to provide year- round enrichment and mentoring that will change students' lives and engage the broader community. Racquet Up Detroit will partner with Northwest Activities Center where all practices and study sessions will take place. Members of the Detroit and Birmingham Athletic Club are signing on as board members and a couple of major foundations have taken an early interest in the project. No city in America needs urban squash more- Detroit has a 30% unemployment rate, the median price of a single family home within its city limits is $15,000, and it is combatting the nation's highest high school drop out rate. Racquet Up Detroit's sights are set on keeping its students in the program throughout middle and high school and ensuring that they matriculate to and graduate from college. The program also promises to bring thousands of people in the Detroit region together to show they care and to celebrate the potential of the community to unite to help its young people.
Franklin and Marshall launches the Squash ACES Program
In its first year, the program is serving 12 middle school students from the Reynolds School. President John Fry has made urban squash one of his top athletic priorities at Franklin and Marshall over the past couple of years. Steadily, he has been gathering the financial and organizational resources needed to operate a great urban squash program. All the ingredients are there for long--term success and growth including F&M Head Squash Coach, John White, former world #1, five available squash courts and numerous classrooms, a plan to build many more squash courts, an unlimited number of college students ready to jump on court and tutor the kids, and many financially-supportive alumni and Lancaster residents. NUSEA looks forward to the day that Squash Aces joins its ranks as a member program.
NUSEA challenges Charleston
NUSEA challenges Charleston, South Carolina's urban squash start-up with a major grant. If Chucktown Squash grows its local fundraising base, hires a great Executive Director, and formalizes its agreements with the Medical Center of South Carolina for courts and study space and the Sanders-Clyde School, its partner school, NUSEA will award the program a grant between $15,000- $25,000. For more information about Chucktown Squash, please contact Tabedon@chartwellholdings.com.
Recap of 2010 Urban Team Championships
and MLK Essay Contest
Spring - Summer 2009
Using Squash Court to Put Youths on Road to College
StreetSquash featured in New York Times
Urban Squash plays key role in 2016 Olympic Bid
As testament to the global importance of urban squash, one of NUSEA’s very own, Hanna Fekede Balcha, from Surf City Squash in San Diego travelled to Lausanne, Switzerland on June 12 to speak before the board of the International Olympic Committee. Hanna was accompanied by her coach and mentor, Renato Paiva, Executive Director of Surf City Squash. She spoke before the committee as a representative for the thousands of junior squash players across the world.
Urban squash embodies the Olympic ideal of using sport to bring the world together. In its short 14 year life, urban squash has changed the paradigm for our sport by broadening its reach into new communities, uniting people of vastly different circumstances, and spreading hope and opportunity throughout America’s inner-cities. This is why Hanna was invited to speak before the IOC. Hanna, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia four years ago to seek a better life, is completing the eighth grade at the Preuss School with a 4.0 GPA. She became involved in the sport of squash through Surf City Squash, a unique urban youth enrichment program that combines academic support, community service, and the sport of squash. Hanna joined the program in its first year in 2007 and was one of the six Preuss students from Surf City to recently win the Urban National Under 15 National Championship Team Championship. Her ultimate goal is to represent her country in the 2016 Olympics when she will be 20.
Congratulations to Denver’s Mile High Squash and Baltimore’s SquashWise – NUSEA’s newest members!
Top-notch programs in Denver and Baltimore have become NUSEA’s newest members. Both programs are serving urban youth with NUSEA’s proven recipe of intensive squash, academic support, mentoring, community service and summer engagement. Thirty-two lucky pioneers from the Bryant-Webster School in Denver and the Booker T. Washington School in Baltimore City are blazing the urban squash trail in their communities. Each program is blessed with a visionary and dedicated founder/leader, Greg Courter in Denver and Abby Markoe in Baltimore, as well as very generous and committed boards, stable facility partnerships with the Denver Athletic Club and Meadow Mill Athletic Club, and a whole host of volunteer and financial backers. Both programs plan to grow modestly in 2010.
Urban Squash = Educational Success
There’s no question about it – students who remain in NUSEA’s Urban Squash Programs for three years or more get accepted to better high schools and colleges than their peers! This year, seven urban squash middle school graduates scored full scholarship acceptances to the country’s best private high schools, St. Mark’s School, Blair Academy, Westover, and Trinity-Pawling among them. This September, forty one urban squash boys and girls will be enrolled in private high schools with scholarship support totaling more than $4m. These successes are joined by others - dozens of our students earning admission to highly competitive exam, charter and catholic schools in their neighborhoods and 100% of urban squash high school students graduating on time and matriculating to college. NUSEA is proud that twenty-five of twenty five high seniors will matriculate to college in September. Our scholars will attend outstanding institutions such as Boston College, Merrimack, Mount Holyoke, SUNY Albany, SUNY Purchase, St. Lawrence, Wesleyan, Hamilton, and Penn State. These twenty-five entering college freshman will join forty-one urban squash graduates already enrolled in college.
NUSEA’s Columbia Education Fund opens more educational doors for urban squashers.
NUSEA, in partnership with long time supporters of Urban Squash, Steve and Sarah Columbia, has established the Columbia Education Fund (CEF) with the purpose of strengthening and broadening the many educational opportunities already made available through NUSEA programs. In this first year, $20,000 of support will be granted to member programs to help our students thrive in high school and college. CEF made grants in June to support the following educational initiatives:
Intensive summer college-preparatory programs at Brown and Cornell University for three highly-motivated StreetSquash high school students
Tuition assistance and school book stipends for two City Squash boys accepted to the Trinity-Pawling and the All Hallows School and one METROsquash boy accepted to the Hales Franciscan High School in Chicago
Princeton Review SAT classes for 20 SquashBuster college-bound high school students
NUSEA partners with SquashSmarts and StreetSquash to host Summer 2009 Exchange Camps.
The Embrace Camp offered by SquashSmarts in Philadelphia from July 12-17 and the Summer Discovery Camp offered by StreetSquash in Harlem from July 26-31 will team up to involve eighty urban squash students from all nine programs in two week-long camps in squash, Outward Bound, fitness and nutrition, and civic exploration. NUSEA applauds SquashSmarts and StreetSquash for opening their doors to the entire urban squash community.
Williams College hosts 2009 NUSEA Urban Individual Championships
For the second year, one of this country’s largest junior squash tournaments, NUSEA’s Urban Individuals took place on the beautiful campus of Williams College on June 19-21. The tournament convened 280 competitors from nine NUSEA programs – StreetSquash, CitySquash, METROsquash, SquashBusters, Squash Haven, SquashWise, Mile High Squash and Surf City Squash. All students and staff slept in the dorms and ate in the college’s cafeteria. There was a poetry and art competition that took place alongside the squash and, for the first time ever, NUSEA presented scholar-athlete awards to all urban squashers attaining a 90% or better average in school as well as awards for overall excellence at the middle school and high school level.
