July 24, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local players off to Junior World Squash Championships
by TOM UTESCHER

Alex Domenick

Scholastic squash isn’t the first sport that comes to mind during the dog days of summer, but last Saturday three local racquetmen from the Class of 2008 headed overseas to play some of the most important matches of their careers.

Twin brothers Alex and Matt Domenick, who helped Penn Charter win the national high school championship last winter, joined Chestnut Hill native and Lawrenceville School grad Thomas Mattson as part of the team representing the United States at the 2008 Junior Men’s Squash World Championships in Zurich, Switzerland. Reigning U.S. junior champion Todd Harrity, a rising senior at Episcopal Academy, is the fourth Philadelphia area native on the team.

The biennial event consists of an individual tournament, running from July 28 to Aug. 1, and team championships from Aug. 2 to Aug. 7.

Alex Domenick, who played number two for Penn Charter last season, will enter Cornell University in September, while his brother Matt, the Quakers’ number three, is headed for the University of Rochester (NY). Matt’s coach at Rochester will be Martin Heath, who is also head coach of the U.S. junior national team.

Matt Domenick

Mattson, a team co-captain and top player at Lawrenceville during his senior season, will attend the University of Pennsylvania this fall. His younger brother, Oscar, is going into his junior year at Penn Charter.

The Quakers were also represented on the U.S. team at the 2006 junior world championships in New Zealand. The roster that year included Wyndmoor resident Chris Callis, a PC classmate of the Domenicks’ who is bound for Princeton University.

The U.S. team is not among the top powers on the international squash scene; no American juniors, even Harrity, are ranked in the top flight of 16 players in the draw for the Zurich tourney. An Egyptian player won the junior title in 2006, and this time around the top overall seed went to Pakistan’s Aamir Atlas Khan.

The Swiss squash establishment will be hosting the largest field ever for the junior championships, with 163 players hailing from 37 countries. Despite the increasing popularity of squash, it is not yet an Olympic sport; a bid to have it included in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London was unsuccessful.