DSR Remembers Steve Germansky, 1948-2012
by Rob Dinerman for DailySquashReport.com
Dateline January 11th --- Daily Squash Report is sad to have recently learned of the passing of Steve Germansky, 64, on December 26th. As much as any player of his era, Steve was the quintessential personification of the commercial-club hardball player whose enthusiastic embrace of the sport drove the meteoric ascent of its popularity during its golden (and all too temporary) age of explosive growth during the 1970’s.
Prior to that time, squash in the America had been largely confined to Ivy League schools and private clubs, severely limiting access to the game for anyone who wasn’t a member of those exclusive entities. When entrepreneurial squash visionaries like Paul Monaghan in Philadelphia and Harry Saint in New York opened the first commercial-club courts during the early 1970’s, they were banking on the hopeful but to that point undemonstrated premise that enough people would be attracted to the game to validate their investment, and that “squash for the masses” would prove a viable business model. Saint’s initial salvo was the Fifth Avenue Racquet Club, a seven-court facility on the top floor of a garment-district building on West 37th Street, and the smashing success that this venture enjoyed led to the 14-court Uptown Racquet Club on East 86th Street in 1976, the 10-court Broad Street Squash Club near Battery Park in 1977, the eight-court Lincoln Squash Club across from Lincoln Center in 1981, and onward from there.
Fifth Avenue was ground zero in Saint’s courageous and transformative experiment, the impetus for all that fueled the beehive of squash activity that Manhattan swiftly became, and among the large group that embraced the opportunity that the club offered, none did so with more enthusiasm or fervor than Steve Germansky. He won the 1977 Metropolitan D championship --- whose 120-entry draw shows how many others had similarly seized upon the chance to embrace a game that had been beyond their reach just a few years earlier --- within 18 months of taking up the sport, making up in athleticism and desire what he lacked in experience and finesse, and utilizing a rugged strong-arm style that earned him the affectionate nickname “The Monster” among his fellow club-mates. Fifth Avenue became known for its welcoming environment, where players would often hang out for awhile before or after their games, and Germansky could often be found holding court discussing the most recent league match or tournament or expressing his opinion on the prevailing real-world topic of the day.
He could be counted on to enter whatever league match or MSRA event was available, and he also became known as something of a mentor to those behind him who had recently taken up the game --- noted referee and long-time player Larry Sconzo, for one, fondly remembers the way when he first started playing, Germansky often practiced with him even though he was a much lesser player and attended each of Larry’s matches when he won the Met D several years later. And when Diana Nyad, a Fifth Avenue member back then who took up squash in the mid-1970’s, attempted her first Florida-to-Cuba swim in 1978, Germansky was in her support boat; Sports Illustrated’s article chronicling the expedition has a photograph of Nyad being pulled out of the water at about the midway point, with Germansky among those lifting her into the boat.
By that time, he had risen to the No. 2 position in the Met C rankings, and the 1978-79 MSRA Yearbook has an article describing one of his wins that notes that “Steve is big but surprisingly fast, has excellent court sense and is an experienced competitor.” He approached all of his games the same way and by all accounts he lived his life with equal gusto. He was an honorable man on and off the court, a successful attorney who previously had served in the army as a Military Policeman; several court reporters who worked with him wrote in after his death expressing gratitude for the respect Germansky showed them, citing his “intellect, wit and kindness,” and paying tribute to his “roll-up-your-sleeves no-nonsense approach to the practice of law.”
Germansky played for several years in the B's but his job and family obligations (wife Laurie and children Andrew and Sara all survive him) forced him to downsize his involvement in the game by the early 1980’s. His presence in squash during those seminal years to many epitomized the beauty and depth of the public squash game during its compelling though now-distant surge to prominence here in the United States.
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