By age 11, Scott Stoneburgh was already good enough at tennis that he was playing on the under-12 provincial team and considering whether to focus on the sport full time. There was only one problem. “The people just drove me crazy,” he said. “The cheating that went on was outrageous.”
Conveniently, the young athlete had another option: squash. “There’s the competitiveness, but the community is spectacular,” he said of the local squash scene, to which he was first introduced at the former Valhalla Inn’s “incredible” squash club, not far from his family’s house near Cloverdale Mall. He also swam and played squash Saturday mornings at the Skyline Club near Pearson Airport with his dad Patrick, his uncle Norm—a star center with the Toronto Argonauts and an Etobicoke Sports Hall of Famer—and Scott’s two older brothers.
“It was one of those family bonding things,” he said. “I competed with my brothers my entire life. We all picked our sports that we could beat each other in. Mine was racquet sports.” There wasn’t a squash program at Michael Power High School, so the teen honed his skill by playing against local men’s teams. “It was hugely beneficial to be competing with the best players when you’re 14, 15 years old, and to have that exposure,” he said. “But it’s also life lessons, meeting new people. I grew up pretty quick.”
Stoneburgh drew on that experience when he captained the Canadian Junior World Championship team in 1988, an achievement he traces back to good coaching. “The coaches that I had taught me so many valuable lessons,” he said. “I learned how to compete at a very young age, and it has benefitted me greatly in my career in real estate and everything I do. Because I don’t get worked up; I know how to stay focused.”
At the Skyline, a “classic old Brit” named Jim Mason stressed “the three Fs—fun, friendship and fitness,” Stoneburgh recalled. “It was really good to learn from someone like that. It was as much about learning skills as it was learning how to be a good person and conduct yourself.”
Mike Way—who mentored former world No. 1 Jonathon Power and other squash luminaries, and is now head coach at Harvard—was still playing when Stoneburgh was coming up, and gave the student a run for his money. “We’d have friendly games that weren’t so friendly,” Stoneburgh laughed. “So if your social games are like that, when you get into a competitive situation in a tournament, you’re used to it.”
Completing the coaching trifecta was Jack Fairs, a multisport coach at the University of Western Ontario. Fairs nurtured the young athlete during an undergraduate philosophy and political science degree Stoneburgh admits was “a bit distracted. If it wasn’t for Jack Fairs, I wouldn’t have graduated. I wasn’t mature enough. He just was such a great mentor in looking after people.”
In London, Stoneburgh excelled on the squash court, leading Western to four Canadian softball titles and four straight top-four finishes at the U.S. intercollegiate championships. He dominated the national hardball scene, three-peating the Canadian Open Championship from 1991 to 1993, and taking home a provincial men’s softball title, a Canadian University softball title, and two gold racquet individual titles. For his on-court prowess and off-court leadership during his four years at Western, he received the school’s famed Purple Blanket Award.
After graduation, Stoneburgh made his mark on North American doubles squash as a professional. He and partner Anders Wahlstedt won the 1996 North American Open doubles championship and made it to the finals of the world championship. Like many of his partners, the powerful Wahlstedt—a top-10 world softball squash player—became one of Stoneburgh’s best friends. “Anders and I were a great team because we were close, and we looked out for each other,” Stoneburgh said. “Doubles is a lot about teamwork. It’s a lot about knowing what your partner’s going to do, and feeding off each other.”
One of Stoneburgh’s finest hours in squash was when he and Wahlstedt won the U.S. Open in 2001, defeating doubles powerhouse duo Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, who hadn’t lost a match in over two years. “It was just one of those (matches) where everything came together. It was a big rush,” Stoneburgh said.
It was also a bit of revenge, as it was a Waite backhand cross-court shot during the 1997 North American Open doubles final that foiled Stoneburgh and Wahlstedt’s title defense. “I had some epic times with Gary where I’d be getting low to take him out at the knees. Because you can’t let someone push you around,” Stoneburgh said. “It’s those life lessons—how do you keep your composure when someone hits you with the racquet, or hits you with the ball?”
Whether playing hardball or softball squash, Stoneburgh prefers the “very dynamic” doubles game because “there’s so much strategy to it. Just the geometry of it. The angles. It’s like playing a game of billiards, but at high speed.”
There is also the draw of playing with a partner. “I had the best partners,” Stoneburgh said. “I surround myself with people I really enjoy, and my partners were all some of my very closest friends, and they still are. I’m so fortunate in that way.” Partner Clive Caldwell—“a legend in the game”—was Stoneburgh’s best man at his wedding, and later a mentor in business. He could count on Jamie Bentley—with whom he first won the U.S. Open in 1998 and later played softball doubles in Bangkok, Thailand—to have his back. “If someone bumped me on the court, Jamie would drill them with the ball the next point.”
Stoneburgh also won the Saturn Club Pro Doubles and Montreal’s Smith Chapman tournaments on his way to the No. 2 spot in the professional doubles rankings. He made a living as a club pro and through his winnings at professional tournaments and pro-ams, while also managing the Toronto Racquet Club. Then in 1998 he got an offer to run the men’s squash program at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with the promise that while coaching he could complete his master’s in management. Stoneburgh called his five years as a coach “an incredible experience. I loved the community, which was a very international community, and working with young, intelligent, driven individuals.”
He took Big Red from the 17th-best team in the nation in his first year to ninth place in his second, earning Cornell the Barnaby Trophy as the most improved team in the National Intercollegiate Squash Racquets Association. Stoneburgh took over the women’s program in his third year, and both teams saw steady improvement in the Ivy League win column.
Coaching, Stoneburgh said, was “a different animal. Even just to teach someone proper footwork on the court. It’s like a dance step, like a ballet instructor.” He brought in other squash pros and former coaches like Mike Way to impart lessons to his students. “I don’t know if I was really a great coach. I tried to emulate what Jack Fairs provided for me at Western. But I was a great sparring partner,” he said. “I played hours and hours of squash when I was coaching. I would beat the top players, and it was great for the team to see how someone a little more seasoned could manoeuvre around the court as well as orchestrate a match.”
A memorable moment from Stoneburgh’s coaching career was when his Cornell team beat the visiting Western team for the first time over the two schools’ long history of annual matches. “It was a tear-jerker, because I was coaching against my coach,” Stoneburgh said. After completing his master’s, the coach left Cornell with his team sitting proudly in the fifth spot in the nation, and primed for even greater success.
Reflecting on his life and career, Stoneburgh can’t help but count his blessings. “I am so lucky,” he said. “My friends, my network is the squash community. Besides all the different athletic benefits I’ve experienced, my whole world has been created from this game.” He now works in real estate, and he and his wife Kelly keep busy raising their three children, Chloe, Paige and Jack.
But he still plays regularly, winning his first Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship in 2013 with partner Stephanie Hewitt, and three-peating the U.S. Century Doubles Legends title with Tony Ross. “I love competing,” Stoneburgh said. “Still today, I play a lot of tennis and squash tournaments, and I get up for them. I live for them. You give me a sport, I want to compete.” In 2015, he and Ross won the U.S. Masters Doubles (70+) title, proving that the Etobicoke kid with fancy footwork and a killer swing still has plenty of top-level squash left in him yet.