By Jennifer Gabler
Dawn Gray has focused her life on helping others; both as an emergency room nurse and as coach of a national championship high school girls squash team. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you can find her in charge of the emergency room at Paoli Hospital near Philadelphia; on Tuesday and Thursday, she is on the courts coaching the Episcopal High School girls squash team. She has coached Episcopal for the last five years, and finds teenage girls receptive to learning life’s lessons when they are competing in a sport they love. Dawn tells all of her players, “This is too hard of a game to expect to always win. If you have given your best, just take what comes at you.”
Dawn came to squash relatively late in life. She grew up in Virginia when squash was not very popular. In high school, she played trumpet, piano and ran track. It wasn’t until she got to the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 that she wandered into the courts—seeking an outlet to balance the tough nursing program she was pursuing—and fell in love with the game. She took lessons and was mostly self-taught. Ann Wetzel, the U Penn coach, saw her potential and took her on the junior varsity team in her freshman year. She progressed so fast that she played some varsity matches also. As a sophomore, she was firmly in the middle of the varsity line-up; junior year she played in the top three, and cracked the top two in her senior year.
Dawn’s rocket ride journey through college squash has been followed by a continuous and highly successful adult squash career. After college, Dawn did her first nursing year at the Boston VA Hospital. While in Boston, she joined the Tennis & Racquet Club and played on a league team. Her second year of nursing took her back to Philadelphia where she joined the Germantown Cricket Club. She married in 1995 and moved farther outside the city and joined the Berwyn Squash and Fitness Club in 1998. Since last year, she has also been a member of the new Fairmont Athletic Club run by Demer Holleran.
Dawn focuses her singles competition schedule around Howe Cup, and she has played on several winning Philadelphia teams. Dawn is also a fixture on the Philadelphia doubles scene. She won the National Doubles title in 1993 teamed with Jody Law, and in 2008 came in third in the Women’s Open Doubles teamed with Amy Milanek. What keeps her playing as an adult is the camaraderie. As she so aptly says, “Squash is not just about winning, it’s about connecting and having a good time.”
A particular incident at last year’s National Doubles Championship in Philadelphia, showed Dawn’s deft combination of squash with nursing. Down 0-2 and playing the third game in the semifinals with Milanek, Dawn heard a hush and her name being called outside of the court.At the end of the point, Dawn ran off the court, kicked into her emergency room nurse mode and found a player on the next court had dislocated his shoulder. She assisted with relocating the shoulder, wrapped him with ace bandages (so that he could continue his play), collected herself and went back on the court to finish her match. Though she and Milanek did not win their match, Dawn showed an amazing amount of composure, skill and her trademark concern for others.
Dawn knows the exercise and social aspect of squash balances out the stress of her nursing job. She hopes that the many junior squash players who feel burned out from competitive pressures will see the social connection of adult squash, and will be drawn back to participating in the sport. Dawn has made it a point to reconnect with the players she helped out as juniors, by hitting with them and talking to them about their lives whenever they meet at tournaments. Once again she is helping, this time to make squash a continuing part of their lives.
