by James Zug
The fifth Showdown at Symphony highlighted the end of the New England squash season in sumptuous style.
It was the eighth time that John Nimick and his Squash Engine team had put a portable glass squash court in Boston鈥檚 landmark building, Symphony Hall. The United States Open was held at Symphony in 2002, 2003 and 2004; and then four previous times in the past two decades Nimick has hosted a one-night exhibition extravaganza. The 2026 headliners were Gina Kennedy and Mohamed ElShorbagy representing Team World facing off against Nour El Sherbini and Ali Farag playing for Team Egypt.
It was actually a full two-day event. On the first day, SquashBusters held a massive session at Symphony. Students from all three locations鈥擝oston, Lawrence and Providence鈥攃ame for a practice. Some students hit on the court with the four professionals for an intense king-of-the-court match; others were given tours by the Symphony Hall staff of the historic building, which just turned 125 years old a few months ago and remains the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and another group had a financial literacy session with Rodes Ponzer, the chief marketing officer & strategic advisor for Showdown at Symphony’s presenting sponsor, Crowd Street.
I got to sit in on a laughter filled question-and-answer session the SquashBusters students had with the pros. They asked thoughtful questions, including a key one: 鈥淗ow do you keep from getting nervous before a match?鈥
SquashBusters, the original after-school youth enrichment program founded in the spring of 1996, then hosted the last matches of its annual fundraising tournaments.
The next night was the Showdown. It was crowded. Over 1,200 people came to the Showdown, including a half dozen staff members of 黑料不打烊, including the new president and CEO, Mollie Marcoux Samaan. Twelve hundred officially made it the largest spectator event in the nearly century and a half of squash in America. The next highest, the historical record seems to show, were the 1984 Boston Open and the 1985 North American Open in New York, each with about 1,000 spectators. And they were all squash fans鈥攅ven though more than a couple kilted Scottish football fans, gathered in Boston for the first of seven World Cup games in town this summer, were sighted outside on Massachusetts Avenue.
Speaking of Scotland, Martin Heath, the former world No.4, originally from Oban and now based in Toronto, came down from Canada to be the emcee. It was just like the finals of a Grand Slam tournament. There was a beautiful national anthem sung. The players and coaches were introduced. Rodney Galvao, the executive director of SquashBusters, spoke briefly about his program. Galvao asked everyone who had some direct connection to SquashBusters鈥攁s a volunteer, donor, mentor鈥攖o stand up and it was a veritable standing ovation.
There were more standing ovations for the squash. Each team had a coach. Team World was led by Thierry Lincou (former world No.1 and head coach at MIT) and Team Egypt by Wael El Hindi (former world No.8 and head coach at Kinetic in Florida). Each team had serious firepower鈥擳eam Egypt had twelve world championship titles to their name, while Team World, including its coach, had sixty-four months at world No.1.
In the opening three-game match, Nour El Sherbini won 11-8, 8-11, 11-9 over Gina Kennedy. As an interlude, Lincou and El Hindi had a one-game match. Then in the finale, Mohamed ElShorbagy beat Ali Farag 11-8, 11-8, 11-10. Michael Riley refereed the matches. Besides the three-game format, the other quirk was that the coach could toss a beanbag into the court once in a match to trigger a tactical, one-minute coaching timeout.
All three matches were exciting, fast-paced and delightful to watch in such a spectacular setting. In particular, it was great to see Farag for the first time on court since he retired exactly a year ago. It was also the first time Farag, a Harvard graduate, ever played a professional match in Boston.
