NY Squash Legend: Alicia McConnell, U.S. Squash Hall of Famer
Record Seven-Time U.S. National Singles Champion

By Rob Dinerman
June, 2024

The all-time leader in U.S. National championships at the Open level in both women’s hardball singles (7) and women’s doubles (11)—n each case one more than her longtime rival-turned-doubles-partner Demer Holleran—and the youngest (born in 1962) of the 15 people who were inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame at its inaugural ceremony in 2000, Alicia McConnell was a dominant force in American women’s squash throughout her career. She won her last women’s Open championship (the 2006 National Doubles)  24 years after her first (the 1982 U.S. Nationals) and winning her last overall U.S. championship (the 2017 National Women’s Century Doubles) 39 years after her first (the 1978 U.S. Under 17’s). During the 1981-82 season, as a freshman at Penn, she won the first of her seven-straight U. S. Nationals, the first of her three-straight U.S. Intercollegiates (there almost certainly would have been a fourth as well had she not turned pro prior to the start of her senior year), and the last of her five-straight U.S. Junior crowns, a three-part parlay that has never been achieved, either before or since.

As by far the most athletically gifted of the many high-achieving youngsters who learned the game as part of the legendary Heights Casino junior program that was created during the early 1970’s by Fred and Carol Weymuller, McConnell exploded into prominence midway through her teenage years and never looked back. In 1980 she won the (unofficial) Individual and Team World Junior Championship, and at the end of the 1980-81 season that followed she received her first significant Award (with many to follow), New York Squash’s Edwin Bigelow Cup “For Excellence In Play.”  Her final-round opponents in her septet of consecutive U. S. national singles championships were Gail Ramsay in 1982, Nancy Gengler in 1983, Karen Kelso (McConnell’s Penn teammate/classmate at the time) in 1984, Ramsay again in 1985, Sue Cogswell in 1986 and Demer Holleran in 1987 and 1988. There were two close calls along the way: Gengler led 1-1, 14-12 before McConnell rallied to 15-14 and then took the close-out fourth, and in 1986 Nina Porter took a two-games-to-love lead and almost won the third as well, but McConnell escaped with that game in overtime, won the fourth and fifth and then survived a five-game next-day final with  Cogswell, a three-time British Open finalist. The latter posed the strongest challenge to McConnell’s supremacy during her two seasons (1985-86 and 1986-87) on the U.S. women’s pro tour—winning five of their 12 total matches, nearly half of them five-gamers—before a freaky but lingering back injury (incurred when her foot got caught in the door of a subway that then accelerated) ended Cogswell’s playing career.

Although McConnell did not play in the U.S. Nationals after 1988, she teamed up with Holleran to win the U.S. National Doubles nine straight times from 1996-2004 and then won two more with Pochi Holdefer in 2005 (edging the Belknap twins, Berkeley and Mary, 15-13 in the fifth in the final) and 2006. McConnell’s attempt for a 12th straight U.S. National Doubles crown screeched to a half when she sustained a ruptured Achilles tendon in the 2007 tournament, but she eventually recovered enough to win the U.S. 40’s title with her older sister Patrice—and former two-time captain of Princeton’s national-championship early-1980’s teams—and the 2016 and 2017 U.S. Women’s Century Doubles with Sara Luther.

Throughout her lengthy reign in hardball singles during the 1980’s, McConnell physically overwhelmed her opponents, battering them into submission with her significantly superior power and speed, qualities that enabled her to generate too much heat for them to withstand. An outstanding all-around athlete, she also made the U.S. National Women’s Lacrosse Team in 1984 and achieved a top-15 ranking on the professional softball tour—currently named Professional Squash Association (PSA)—in 1988. She represented the U.S. six times in the biennial World Team Championships and won both a silver and bronze medal (individual and team) when squash was added as a sport in the quadrennial Pan American Games in 1995.

McConnell was the head pro at the Heights Casino club (as noted, her squash stomping ground) from 1993-98 and then moved to Colorado Springs to begin what became a 20-year tenure as an officer of the U. S. Olympic Committee. She served first as Manager of Athlete Development (1998-2001), then as Associate Director, Community Outreach (2001-04), then as Director, Training Facilities and Programs (2004-08) and finally as Director, Training Sites and Community Partnerships (2008-18). In 2018 she moved to Ireland to work as a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Consultant for Irish Sport Organizations and Local Sport Partnerships. Earlier this year (i.e. in 2024) she founded Diversity Sports Solutions to further focus on DEI in Sport.

McConnell is one of 14 elite athletes who shared their athletic journey, the transition away from their sports and the lessons they learned in the process in Soul Of An Athlete, which one of the reviews characterized as a must-read, not only for athletes, coaches, parents and sports enthusiasts but also “for individuals seeking inspiration, resilience and a roadmap to embracing life’s transitions with grace and determination.” Besides her 2000 induction in the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame, she was also inducted into the University of Pennsylvania Athletic Hall of Fame in its inaugural class in 1996—for her exploits in field hockey and lacrosse (two sports she had never played prior to entering college) as well as squash—and into the College Squash Association in 2001. She has also received a host of other honors over the years, among them the Women’s Leadership Program Award (at the J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions in 2021); the “ATHENA” International Award (from the Colorado Springs Business Alliance in 2017); the President’s Cup (from U.S. Squash in 2015); and the Diversity and Inclusion Award (from the Colorado Springs Independent, also in 2015). 

She is universally admired both for her achievements in multiple sports— especially all three forms of squash (hardball, softball and doubles)—and for the dedication she has demonstrated to community service after her playing career ended. When asked to summarize her overall squash experience, she responded, “I am forever grateful for the opportunities that squash has brought into my life as well as many lessons it has taught me along the way.”

Rob Dinerman is a squash historian who was the Official Writer for the MSRA Yearbook from 1985-94 and has written nearly 20 books about squash, all of which are arrayed on the robdinerman.com home page. His next book, on the first 100 years of college squash (1923-2023), is scheduled to be released in February 2024.