By Chris McClintick
At the gala Saturday night dinner, US Squash honored Lawrence J. Sconzo, Jr. with the 2015 W. Stewart Brauns, Jr. Award.
For almost forty years, Larry Sconzo has been one of the nation’s most prominent referees. He joined the old Fifth Avenue Racquet Club in New York in fall of 1976 and by the spring of 1977 was refereeing matches at the club. He soon became a sought-after referee for all sorts of league, national, amateur, professional singles and doubles tournaments all around the continent.
He has refereed an estimated five thousand matches in his career. He marked the legendary 1984 match at the Canadian Professionals in Toronto where Mario Sanchez beat Jahangir Khan, Khan’s first loss on a squash court in more than four years. Since 1980 Sconzo has refereed thirty-six consecutive finals of the Johnson, the annual flagship doubles event at the Heights Casino.
The W. Stewart Brauns, Jr. Award, begun in 1989, is named after one of the most dedicated and involved leaders of our game who was a tournament director, head referee, committee chair and a founder of the World Squash Federation. Appropriately for Larry Sconzo, Stew Brauns was a leading referee in the middle of the twentieth century and marked many historic matches including the finals of many of the early U.S. Opens.
