A GUIDING BEACON: How Millbrook Squash Drove Zerline Goodman '80 to Succeed on and off the Court

Squash may not be the most prominent sport at Millbrook, but it has made a lasting impact on students who have wielded their racquets at the Reese Squash Center. Perhaps the greatest embodiment of this impact can be seen in Zerline Goodman ’80. An accomplished attorney and professional athlete with a thriving family, Goodman credits her achievements to Millbrook and the game of squash.

“Millbrook set me up for success,” Goodman says. “Everything that has happened since Millbrook has been related to the feeling of being able to do something great. The confidence that Millbrook instilled in me…I know that if I work hard, it’s going to happen. Squash has been my guiding beacon.”

Millbrook squash proved seminal to Goodman’s journey through life, but it could have just as easily been another sport. Goodman entered Millbrook in 1976 as a soccer-loving day student who would “practice right up until the bus was leaving” every day. She eventually convinced her parents to let her become a boarder so she could play even more.

In addition to soccer, Goodman excelled at squash and tennis. Auspiciously, her soccer and tennis coach, Noah Hotchkiss, pointed out that Goodman was spreading her talent thin across the three sports.

“He was the one who said to me, you’re a really good soccer, squash, and tennis player, but you could be great at one sport. Pick one, and really focus on it!”

She followed Hotchkiss’s advice to the sport that would come to define her life, but in squash, Goodman was not choosing a path of comfort and ease. The facilities were not up to the high standards of today’s Reese Squash Center.

“The original single squash court—it wasn’t heated. There was one electric heater up in the gallery. You’d have to play in a hat and gloves to start until it got warm enough in there. But I always played with a glove on my left hand.”

On top of the subpar conditions, Goodman was pursuing her athletic dreams at a time when the world of high school athletics was a male-dominated domain—a situation exacerbated by the fact that there were only six girls in her graduating class. “It was early in the days of women’s sports, and people didn’t really have any expectations for us,” she recalls.

Fortunately, Goodman was playing at Millbrook, where visionary faculty were willing to take time to inspire a budding female athlete. Hotchkiss was not the only coach who made a substantial impact on Goodman.

“Tom Dolger was an English teacher and my squash coach in my Vth form year. He was a spectacular guy—really smart, studied the game of squash, and wanted us to get fit. He had us jumping rope; he was ahead of his time.”

The Millbrook environment gave Goodman everything she needed to become one of the top squash players in the country. However, it was a tragedy in the Millbrook community that inspired her to work even harder.

Another Millbrook squash standout and Goodman’s former teammate, Cynthia Stanton ’78, died in a private plane crash in early 1979. Squash helped Goodman deal with the pain of losing Stanton.

“[Cynthia] was a good friend of mine, and I really looked up to her. I was on campus waiting for her to arrive when she died in a plane crash. It was tragic. My coping mechanism was to get on the squash court and hit the ball over and over and over again. The great thing about squash is that you don’t need a partner. I got

10,000 hours. The combination of the endorphins, time alone, and focusing got me through that and then got me to a place where I was competing at the top level.”

One of the best squash players in the country by her VIth form year, Goodman was taking monthly flights to Boston to train with five-time U.S. Professional champion Mo Khan. She was also being recruited by other preparatory schools in New England, including Choate. But she loved being a big fish in a small pond, and no institution could pull her away from Millbrook.

Goodman spent her first year at Trinity College where she played on the team and focused on her academics. She transferred to Yale her sophomore year. There, she was the number one player until she graduated, earning four All-American and three All-Ivy honors and winning a national championship in her junior year.

Following her success as an undergraduate at Yale, Goodman attended law school at Union University in Albany, New York, while working full-time for New York State Governor Mario Cuomo. Somehow, she also found the time to continue playing squash, joining the college medical school’s team—a previously all-male squad. Being the only female on the team required some creativity in terms of locker room logistics, and her teammates would lead her to the courts with a towel over her head. She had at least one awkward encounter with her evidence professor, who was exiting a hot tub. She continued to play and travel through the men’s locker room to do so, but she never sat in the front of his class again.

After earning her law degree, Goodman moved to New York City to set up shop. Rather than work for a law firm, she hung out her own shingle. She was willing to take just about any legal work she could get her hands on to get her practice off the ground, learning the ropes as she went. Her law practice morphed over the years to focus on residential real estate, including some work in Dutchess County, and she regularly spends time in the area. Playing squash on the court her parents built at their house in 1991 is part of what brings her back.

While her law career grew busier and more focused, squash remained an integral part of her life and, as fate would have it, orchestrated yet another milestone. She traveled to Florida to try out for the 1989 Maccabi Games, and there she met another squash player, Michael Rothenberg, who was trying out for the men’s team. As if a thunderbolt had hit, she immediately knew he was her person. A year later, they were married.

Goodman competed for Team USA at the 1989 and 1993 Maccabi Games, earning a silver individual and a silver team medal, and at the 1992 Pan-Am games in Rio de Janeiro, earning another silver medal. She also continued playing squash at home, competing on the women’s squash tour, traveling, and playing in tournaments, and winning one US National Championship.

In addition to competing in squash, Goodman and her husband were heavily involved in organizing for the sport. Zerline managed promotions and ticket sales for the Tournament of Champions (ToC) for over a dozen years. In the days before digital ticketing, she was hands on with tickets, taking phone orders, handwriting ticket sales, and manually organizing seating charts. Goodman was also the brains behind moving the ToC to its current location—Grand Central Station—using a mobile glass court. The move inspired other squash tournaments to set up similar events at landmarks worldwide, including the Louvre in Paris and the pyramids in Egypt.

Over the years, Goodman has remained an influential figure in U.S. squash. Using skills developed as an attorney, she established the structure and regulations for the College Squash Association (CSA) and served on their board of directors from 2017-2023 as chair of the Rules and Regulations Committee. She was recently elected to the Board of US Squash, where she serves as Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee. She continues to serve as the Chair of the Adjudication Committee for the CSA. Goodman’s passion for squash, which she inherited from her family and cultivated at Millbrook, is a thread connecting all the highlights in her amazing story.

“I wouldn’t have met my husband if not for squash. The boards I sit on are all squash-related. My kids all play squash. My son is a squash pro, and my daughter was captain of the Trinity women’s squash team, the number one team in the country at the time. My youngest daughter won a gold medal at the Maccabi Games. It’s been very front and center. I never would have played if not for Millbrook.”