Hours after Amanda Sobhy won the world juniors, the World Squash Federation sent out a press release, “Sobhy Soars to World Title Success,” declaring that she had become the first U.S. player to win a world singles title.
It wasn’t true. Alicia McConnell won the 1980 world juniors in Sweden. It was the inaugural tournament and the International Squash Rackets Federation (WSF’s predecessor) decided after the tournament to not make it an official, sanctioned world championship because the world’s two leading women’s nations, England and Australia, didn’t send teams. McConnell triumph came on the first of April and it was no April’s Fool joke—it didn’t count. (On her resume Mc- Connell has always noted that her world junior title was unofficial.)
An official one came in 1983 in Auckland, New Zealand. Again it was an inaugural tournament, this time the world masters. There were 35s, 40s, 45s, 50s, 55s and 60s in the men and 35s, 40s and 45s in the women. In the finals of the men’s 45s, Jack Herrick beat Peter Hartley 9-1, 9-5, 9-3. Hartley, the former England national coach, was then based in Hong Kong. (The reason that the WSF forgot about Herrick was in part because at the same tournament, there was a one-off 16-man “World Veterans” tournament, for men 45 and older, won by Ken Hiscoe. )
Herrick was an unlikely candidate to be the first American world champion. He is a Cleveland guy. He’s lived his whole life, but for four years at Dartmouth and three at Nortwestern Law School, within three miles of his present house. He grew up a tennis player and figure skater. (He once beat Clark Graebner around the time he reached the finals of the U.S. nationals.)
His tennis coach at Dartmouth, Red Hoehn, persuaded Herrick to come inside and try squash in the winter. He was #1 on the team his senior year, going 3-11 for the Big Green. He was a member of Alpha Delt, meaning that he was portrayed in the film Animal House, but he has never revealed which character was based on him. In the late 1960s he left his law firm and went into business. Herrick has owned and/or run a retail gift shop, a public utility, public refrigerated warehouses, a steel container manufacturer and the Thirteenth Street Sports Club.
He was one of the best squash players in Cleveland for a long while. He won the city singles title nine times and the doubles title eight times. On the administrative side, he joined the local Cleveland district association and rose up to become the president of the old Western Association in 1977-80. He joined the board of the USSRA in 1977 and was president in 1982-84. Four times he was captain of the U.S. team at the world championship— he was already in Auckland and although he had hardly ever played softball, he thought he would give the 45s a shot.
America’s first major leader in the international professional game, Herrick was a trailblazer. He was commissioner of the old hardball tour for a year, 1986- 87 and then chair of the WPSA board from 1988 until its merger with the softball tour in 1993. A year later he was asked to become chairman of the PSA board and he served in that position until 2008. Thus the amateur became the ultimate professional, traveling millions of air miles around the world to help develop the pro game.
Herrick loves his cats and has been seen patiently walking them on the track at the University School across the street from his house. He can also go at a different pace. He has missed just eight Indy 500s since he first went to one in 1952. Each summer he gets in an Indy car and does a couple of laps around the Speedway, first with a driver at 180mph and then alone at 125mph.
Now in his mid-seventies, Jack Herrick still works full-time. He is heavily involved in commercial real estate in Cleveland and in redeveloping downtown Cleveland and serves on numerous nonprofit boards. The lion never rests.
