Five years ago, Carter Wendt didn’t know the difference between a squash racquet and a yellow squash.
“I was a tennis player,” said the McCallie School junior on Tuesday afternoon from inside Scenic City Squash on Chestnut Street. “But I was starting to get bored with tennis. It’s basically the same three shots. There’s a lot more variety in squash.”
This was the goal when McCallie headmaster Lee Burns decided to introduce squash into the Blue Tornado athletic department a little less than five years ago. He wanted to add more variety for both its day and boarding students.
Having watched the positive impacts that the additions of lacrosse and rowing made on students when McCallie first introduced those sports 25 years ago, Burns – one of the better tennis players in school history – believed squash could become similarly popular over time.
“Squash is one of the fastest growing sports in America,” he wrote in an email earlier this week. “We want every boy to have a wide range of opportunities for exploring and developing passions and for having a meaningful team experience. Squash is one more such opportunity.”
The most vivid indicator that he was right to add the sport arrived this past weekend in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where McCallie finished second nationally in Division Five of the United States National High School Championships, falling 5-2 to Whitman High School from Bethesda, Maryland, on Sunday afternoon.
“It was amazing,” said Blue Tornado coach Dan Sharplin, a former world-ranked player from New Zealand who’s coached all over the world, including the Luxembourg national team for five years. “I’m so proud of these boys and so happy for them. They’ve worked so hard and pushed each other. And we had match points in two of our losses. We could easily have won it.”
To understand the significance of this achievement, more than 100 teams from public and private schools participated in the tournament, with more than 1,200 players total. To reach the finals, McCallie defeated Episcopal High School from Alexandria Virginia, in the semis after knocking off schools from New York and Pennsylvania earlier in the tournament.
Team members for the nationals tourney included Strobe Hill, Arthur Burns, Cotton Snoddy, Carter Wendt, Joshua Shirley, Riley Bye, Simon Monen, Weiyi Kong, and Andrew Negus, the squad’s only senior.
“Going to Philly was fun,” said Hill, who battled all year with Burns for the No. 1 spot on the team. “We wanted to prove to Northern schools that a Southern school could compete at that level and I think we did that.”
And when they weren’t competing they were soaking up the flavor of Philly, including the legendary cheesesteak subs at Sonny’s Famous Steaks.
A 1992 McCallie grad who’s proven for years to know a little bit about famous food, local restauranteur Mike Monen is as responsible for bringing squash to Chattanooga as Burns. With the same savvy intuition he used to open such culinary mainstays as Taco Mamacita, Clyde’s, Milk and Honey and Urban Stack, Monen opened the three-court Scenic City Squash near Finley Stadium.
A member of the Blue Tornado’s 1991 state championship tennis team, Monen was first bitten by the squash bug while visiting his older brother Scott when Scott was doing his residency at Mount Sinai in New York City some 15 years ago.
“I’d played tennis all my life,” recalled Monen. “I wanted a new challenge. Squash is kind of a hybrid of tennis and racquetball. It’s a tremendous workout. Forbes (magazine) calls it the healthiest sport in America. We built Scenic City Squash in 2016. And almost from the start, Lee (Burns) dove right in. Before too long, McCallie is going to have the best squash facility in the South.”
Indeed, the school will soon break ground on an eight-court complex and fitness center that is sure to be the envy of the region.
But until then, the Blue Tornado will happily fill Monen’s facility as often as possible to work out on its 32-foot by 21-foot courts in order to chase a national championship a year from now.
“We put in a lot of work,” said Wendt, who posted a 3-1 record in Philadelphia. “We practice two hours a day and try to work at least one day on weekends. I usually practice 12-13 hours a week.”
Said Hill: “Squash is fast-paced. The ball can travel 100 mph. You don’t get bored on a squash court.”
McCallie could, however, win it all next spring at a 100-mph pace that would defy logic.
“We finished third in Division Seven a couple of years ago,” said Hill. “We were second this year. We saw how much fun it was for the other team to win. So that’s our goal next year, 100 percent. We want to win it all.”
At their current rate of improvement, how could they not?
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.