by Rob Dinerman, College Squash Historian
One of the most accomplished U.S. Naval Academy alumni during the past half-century, and the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009-13, Admiral James Stavridis credits much of his success — during both his 37-year career year in the Navy and subsequently, first as the Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University from 2013-18, and later in his current position as a partner and the Vice Chair of Global Affairs at the Carlyle Group, a large international finance firm — to the four years (from 1972-76) that he spent as a member of Navy’s top-five ranked squash team.
Although Stavridis, who had played in a number of regional junior tennis tournaments during his high school years in his native Arizona, had never touched a squash racquet prior to entering the Naval Academy, Bobby Bayliss, Navy’s head tennis coach, quickly perceived that Stavridis’s foremost athletic traits — foot-speed, hand-eye coordination and a good slice on both sides — were better suited to squash (although Stavridis also lettered on Navy’s tennis teams) and connected him with the Academy’s legendary squash coach, Art Potter, who would become a major figure in Stavridis’s life. Potter (who is literally a first-ballot College Squash Association Hall of Famer, having been inducted into the Hall’s inaugural class in 1990) was gruff and no-nonsense, but he also cared deeply about his players and was determined to coach them in a way that prepared them not only for the squash dual meets on Navy’s schedule but also for the larger life challenges that awaited them.
As one significant example, every day’s practice began with a challenge match — in marked contrast to most squash programs, in which challenge matches are contested no more than once or at most twice per week — and this somewhat harsh policy conveyed to his charges the important lesson that every day they would spend at sea in the years to come, whether during peaceful times or especially in combat, would constitute a “for real” challenge match, and that there was no such thing as a “practice match” in real life. The three-part mantra — pride, hustle, desire — that Coach Potter drilled into his players made such an impact on Stavridis that he literally wrote those words on his locker, and before every home match he would touch the gray metal door of the locker and repeat them aloud prior to taking the court.
Stavridis strongly feels that the larger philosophy embodied in that trilogy — namely that what counts most of all is what is in your heart — continues to this day (nearly a half-century after playing his final college match) to be a major part of his approach to life. It has often surfaced not only during his Naval career —- in his talks to his crews as a Navy ship captain, as a strike group commander at USS Enterprise, as the commander of the United States Southern Command (from 2006-09) and even during his four succeeding years as the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO — but even currently at Carlyle, where he runs a course on leadership and mentoring for the firm’s newly selected partners. In addition to the success he has enjoyed during his military, academic and business careers, Stavridis is also an accomplished author whose novel The Restless Wave is a gripping story of the sea in which, according to one review, “Stavridis’s sweeping knowledge of history and life in the Navy shines through on every page, imbuing this work with authenticity and power.”
Stavridis still plays racquet sports (whether squash, tennis or pickleball) several times per week and hearkens back with great appreciation to his college squash career, about which he recently stated, “As a small, slight guy (only 5’ 5”), I’ve always felt like the underdog to bigger and smarter competitors, but I like to think that my attitude of hustle, pride and desire has carried the day for me both on courts and in life. I learned those values from playing squash at Annapolis 50 years ago.”
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Rob Dinerman has written 18 books about squash, five of which are Histories of the sport at various top-tier colleges. All of those books are arrayed on the home page of the robdinerman.com site, including his most recent college-squash book A Century Of Champions: 100 Years Of College Squash, 1923-2013, which was released in March 2024.
