By Josh Krueger
Daily News staff
NEWPORT Ross Freiman Mendel makes no bones about the fact that his work is not a new idea.
It’s just new to this area. Freiman-Mendel is the co-founder of RhodySquash, an after-school program designed to introduce kids to squash and use the sport to sharpen their skills in the classroom. It may sound groundbreaking, but Freiman-Mendel freely admits he’s following a trail others have blazed before him.
“RhodySquash is not an original idea,” he said. “We take pride in the fact that we’re copying what other organizations have already done and done well.”
RhodySquash has 13 participants from Thompson Middle School. Three days a week, they report to the courts at 8 Freebody Street for a couple hours, sometimes longer. The 13 kids are split into two groups. One group spends an hour on the squash courts while the other spends that time studying with the help of tutors. After an hour, they switch.
“If you’re not serious in the classroom, you can’t play squash, and we made that very clear early on,” Freiman-Mendel said.
Freiman-Mendel, a Newport resident, graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall School in Wallingford, Conn., last spring. He’s taking a year off before college, and during that year, RhodySquash is his full-time job.
“Urban squash programs are not new. The first one, which was in Boston, was probably started 20 years ago, and they’ve been popping up all over the country,” Freiman-Mendel said. “These programs are a proven success all across the country. Urban squash programs have a 100 percent graduation rate from high school, and 90 percent of those kids end up going to college."
“Our program changes lives.” Freiman-Mendel previously had worked with Squash Haven, a program in New Haven, Conn. When he returned home after high school, he wanted to start something similar.
“There is a need in Newport. People think of Newport as the land of the rich,” he said. “They don’t understand that there is need here, and that’s actually a hurdle we’ve had to overcome.”
Another hurdle was finding start-up money, and that hurdle was cleared with the help of some local philanthropists. “The program is completely free and we rely on support from our local community,” Freiman-Mendel said. “I approached the De Ramel Foundation with this idea and they provided the seed money for us.”
Finding kids who wanted to participate was much easier than expected. In early October, a tryout was held at Thompson and 54 students attended. “We didn’t know if two kids were going to show up, or 50,” Thompson principal Jaime Crowley said. “We literally had no idea.”
A second tryout proved necessary and from there, the group was pared to 13. “We selected these kids on commitment, above all, innate athletic skill, enthusiasm, need, all of those went into consideration,” Freiman-Mendel said. “The most important thing was commitment and enthusiasm.”
There’s no question all 13 participants have both. Kevin Vivieros, a sixth-grader, had to choose between squash and the Thompson boys basketball team. He’d never played squash before and didn’t really know what it was before that first tryout. But when the time came for him to choose, he chose squash. “I just wanted to try something new,” Vivieros said. “I didn’t know anything about it, and it was a hard decision, but I wanted to do something that I hadn’t already done.”
Nijah Johnson, a sixth-grader, had a similar outlook, and after a day of sitting in class, she enjoys being active. “We get to move around a lot, and we don’t really get to move around a lot in school,” she said.
Vivieros has proven himself as a pretty talented squash player, but he said RhodySquash also is helping him in the classroom.
“I’ve got basically all ‘A’s on all my tests,” he said.
Michael Boughton, a sixth-grader, also likes the combination of academics and athletics.
“Since we get half the time studying and half the time playing, it keeps us on task for school,” he said.
All 13 kids that started with the program a month ago still are on board. Crowley said that kind of success is almost unthinkable. “I had no idea where this was going to go, and it has been incredibly successful,” he said. “What I’m most proud of is 100 percent attendance. Every kid. After school, it’s next to impossible.”
A month and a half ago, some of these kids had never heard of squash, let alone played it. Now, they can’t get enough of it. Freiman-Mendel said Vivieros stayed an extra 90 minutes after everyone else had left last Saturday’s session.
“No one’s forcing them to be here, and they tried out to be in this program. They all made the very conscious decision that they wanted to do this program,” Freiman-Mendel said. “We can’t get kids off the squash court. I know they love it.”
Like a lot of sports, squash is relatively easy to pick up, but difficult to master. Freiman-Mendel, who played the game all four years at Choate, said all 13 kids learned the game very quickly. “It’s not hard to start getting the basic skills so you can start playing matches,” he said.
Watching Wednesday’s practice, Crowley was impressed with how much the kids have improved. “We had 54 kids in the Thompson gym who had never held a racket, had no idea what a squash ball could do,” he said. “And now, you see these guys doing multiple volleys, it’s amazing.”
Programs like RhodySquash have myriad benefits, and squash is the driving force. “Squash is the means to an end. There are a lot of ends — character, performance in school, and eventually placement to good high schools and colleges,” Freiman-Mendel said.
“Squash is the hook to get kids in.” Vivieros said he’d like to continue playing squash until college, but as Freiman-Mendel pointed out, opportunities exist to play squash at the college level. “Squash is fun. It’s an excellent workout and in terms of the college aspect, it’s the most heavily recruited sport, because not a lot of people play it,” Freiman-Mendel said.
There will be plenty of people playing this weekend at the RhodySquash Rhode Island Open, which will be held at St. George’s School in Middletown. The event will feature a professional tournament and an amateur tournament, as well as a draw for the RhodySquash kids.
“This weekend is the first tournament they’ll be playing in, and they’ll actually get to use the drills that they’ve learned and implement them in a real match situation,” Freiman-Mendel said. “They’ll be playing at St. George’s, which has eight amazing squash courts, in a very academic setting and there will be, hopefully, hundreds of people there to support them and the pros. And they’ll all have an opportunity to hit with the pros.”
The opportunity with RhodySquash extends into the spring, and if the first month is any indication, all 13 participants will be there until the end. “What I am most proud of is the kids’ commitment and dedication, because it’s a long program,” Crowley said. “It opens doors that never would have been open to a lot of these kids. How many of these kids would have ever played on these courts? None.”
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