Toribara collects 5th national title

Taft Toribara, professor emeritus of environmental medicine, is a national squash champion--again. His latest victory brings him his fifth national championship.

Toribara, 81, came to Rochester in 1948 as part of the Atomic Energy Group, now the Department of Biophysics. Since his retirement in 1982, he has worked as a consultant to the Environmental Health Science Center.

From the start, he made time to use the Medical Center's Athletic Club. But it took 12 years (and a dwindling number of playing partners) to turn his attention from the basketball courts to the squash courts. He took up the sport in 1960, at the age of 43.

Even then, many of his opponents were his juniors--yet, Toribara recalls, "I started playing and in a short time I could beat them. The young players, all they would do is hit the ball and hit it hard. I decided to think about where to hit the ball."

Toribara started competing locally. Squash was then "considered a snob sport," he says; local competitions at a country club provided Toribara, a Japanese-American, with separate changing rooms from his white peers.

A racquet sport, squash is played on an enclosed court. In tournaments, players compete in one-on-one matches of three games. The United States Squash and Racquet Association is the governing body for the national tournaments.

In 1978, Toribara won for the first time, in the hardball tournament for the 55-60 age division (the highest division at the time). He repeated the feat the following year. Hardball, American-style squash, has since given way to softball, its English counterpart, as the most widely played form. In 1994, Toribara began competing in the softball tournaments, placing first in '94, '95 and again this February.

This year, competing in the 80-and-over division, Toribara drew a bye and sat out the first round. In the third and final round, he won all three games, defeating seven others in his division.

A self-defined "worry wart," Toribara says one benefit of squash is that it is a sufficiently engaging form of exercise that doesn't allow him time to worry.

"Once I get on the squash court, for that period I get mental relaxation."

Toribara also credits regular practice on the squash courts with sharpening his reflex reaction time.

When he turned 80, Toribara says, "I thought, 'Well, 80, that's old. I'd better not overdo it.' Now I'm taking it a little easier."

Even with his new relaxed pace he practices daily and plays a few games each week, usually against someone a few decades his junior. After all, he needs to be ready for next year's competition.

"As long as I'm moving around I might as well go to the tournament, see how I do against folks my own age."