Their Best Shots
An archetypal prep-school sport opens doors for city kids.
by Amanda DiGiondomenico
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On a Friday afternoon in November, Meadow Mill Athletic Club is teeming with high school students carrying squash racquet bags and wearing windbreakers bearing the insignias of area prep schools: Roland Park Country School, St. Paul's, the Park School. Off to one side, a boisterous group of students from Booker T. Washington Middle, wearing oversized T-shirts and red gym shorts, are reluctantly doing arm stretches.
- Tyler Fitzpatrick
- Many happy returns: High school volunteer John Harriss practices squash with John McQueen, a Baltimore Civitas School student in the SquashWise program at Meadow Mill Athletic Club.
These young athletes are participants in SquashWise, a program for twenty-five middle schoolers at Booker T. Washington near Upton and the Baltimore Civitas School in Coldspring. The mission of the 2-year-old program is both academic and athletic. Three times a week, students are bused to the Hampden gym. While half work on their game with high school varsity squash players, the others get homework help and participate in enrichment activities on such topics as leadership and achieving one's potential.
Seventh-grader Jasmine Williams has been enrolled in SquashWise since 2008. She spent time away from her West Baltimore home for the first time this past summer when she participated in the Harlem StreetSquash sleepaway camp, where she earned the "Most Improved Player" award. And her academic performance has also gotten better. "When I first came here, I didn't know how to do long division," she says. "Now I do."
Abby Markoe, a former college squash player, co-founded SquashWise in 2008 when she realized Baltimore lacked an urban squash program like those in Boston and San Diego. An archetypal prep-school sport that often serves as a networking pursuit for well-to-do professionals, squash is generally inaccessible to most public school kids; it requires special courts and equipment. But that's exactly why it can open doors. "Squash is the hook," Markoe says. "Our donor base is [largely] made up of people that play squash. It's close to their hearts, and they want to give back." And it can serve as a pipeline to college: George Washington University (Markoe's alma mater) recently became the first U.S. university to offer squash scholarships.
SquashWise is supported by a nonprofit arm of Meadow Mill, the MMAC Foundation, which gym president Nancy Cushman founded in 2007 to support four programs that use sports and fitness for philanthropic ends, including bMOREfit, which gives career training in fitness and nutrition to at-risk urban young adults. "Squash is an equalizer," Cushman says. "No matter how hard you hit the ball, it's just going to bounce back."
—Amanda DiGiondomenico
Each month, Urbanite profiles people and programs that are transforming the city, one block at a time. To nominate a transformer, e-mail editor@urbanitebaltimore.com.
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