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February 6, 2001---

Saturday, February 2nd, marked a crucial moment in the 2001-2002 NISRA Intercollegiate squash season, as the three-time National Intercollegiate Squash Racquets Association (NISRA) defending champion Trinity Bantams hosted Harvard in a battle of unbeatens and Princeton and Yale renewed their storied rivalry at Jadwin Gymnasium in New Jersey.

It is exceedingly rare for the top four teams in the college game to meet each other on the same day, and there was understandably great anticipation leading up to the event. Would Trinity be able to extend the career-long undefeated skein of its senior class, which stood at 60 consecutive matches, and hold off arguably the greatest obstacle to another championship and the last team to conquer it (at the 1998 NISRA finals, by an agonizing 5-4 margin)? Or would Harvard star and team captain Pete Karlen, who had been sidelined by a foot injury for nearly a month, make a dramatic return to action and lead his Crimson squad to an upset victory?

Would Princeton's strength at the top of its line-up, led by defending NISRA Individual champion David Yik, carry the day? Or would Yale's imposing depth enable the Bulldogs to win enough of the matches in the bottom half of the nine-man line-up to bring them the five wins they needed?

Karlen's Comeback Try Fell Short

The answers to the foregoing turned out to be "yes," "yes and no." "yes" and "no, but almost." That Karlen, who suffered a bad sprain of the lisfranc ligament and inflammation of the joint capsule of the big toe of his right foot while playing a qualifying match in the U. S. Open on January 4th, was able to play in both this Trinity showdown and the Dartmouth match three days earlier, is a tribute to his recuperative powers and determination; the injury was initially thought to be quite possible season-ending.

He played at the No. 4 position battled Trinity's Nick Kyme to a virtual standstill in the first-game, which went to a tiebreaker, before Kyme won that game 10-8 and the last two games at 6 and 1. Karlen's valiant effort notwithstanding, it quickly became evident that Trinity had much too much firepower for even the No. 2 ranked Crimson to handle.

The Bantams had already sent an intimidating message in early January of just how tough they would be to beat by roaring through the USSRA five-man team championships, also hosted in their home courts at the newly-dedicated George A. Kellner Squash Center, and on this afternoon they unleashed all their firepower on an outstanding but out-gunned Harvard contingent. Other than the three games they lost at the No. 5 position, where Vancouver native Michael Blumberg defeated Rohan Bhappu 3-1(9-7 in the fourth) for the only Crimson victory, Trinity swept through the other eight matches without dropping a single game, and the dominance the Bantams displayed was so complete that in six of those matches they limited their Harvard opponents to ten total points or fewer in the nine-point "hand-in" system that governs NISRA dual-meet competition.

While Trinity Head Coach Paul Assaiante was guiding his immensely talented group to a compelling victory, his Yale and Princeton counterparts, Dave Talbott and Bob Callahan respectively, were engaged in a frantic battle of wits and will in exhorting evenly-matched squads locked in a deathgrip for nearly four torturous hours in front of packed galleries on a raucous Saturday afternoon.

With the Yale women's 7-2 win over Princeton, their first such victory in 15 years, as a backdrop, the four "even" matches (i. e. Nos. 2, 4, 6 and 8)took to the courts. Shadowing the entire afternoon was the near certainty that Yale's squad, while lacking a true superstar at the top, was so balanced and had so many solid players on near-equal ability, that they would be likely to win most of all of the matches in the bottom half of the nine-player line-up.

Will Evans' Inspired Play has placed him at #1

Countering Yale's depth was the fact that Princeton top five of Will Evans, the aforementioned Yik (who, though NISRA Individual champion, was actually playing at No. TWO this afternoon!), Danny Rutherford, captain Peter Kelly (the only senior in this otherwise all-junior quintet) and Eric Pearson, was so powerful that, even if the Bulldogs managed to sweep the bottom four, they might not be able to attain a single breakthrough in the top five and hence still lose 5-4.

The point where the fulcrum swung was so delicate and changeable that the last three times these teams had met, the final score was 5-4, with both teams being on the winning and losing ends of this irreducibly narrow margin, and the losing squad having to contemplate at least one five-game loss which, if reversed, would have brought them victory. And that is what was fated, almost by pre-ordination, to happen in this confrontation as well. Yik quickly whitewashed out-classed Yale freshman Joshua Schwartz while at No. 4 Kelly was winning, also in three, over Ryan Byrne.

Yale responded with a three-game win by Albert McCrery over Rob Sivard at No. 8 and a four-gamer by No. 6 man Aftab Mathur against Dent Wilkins, though, by the time this match had ended, Evans, the first "odd" man on court due the swiftness of Yik's victory, had almost completed his win at the top slot over Yale's Anschul Manchanda, who had several game points in the first game but dropped it at 10-9 and never recovered.

Rutherford escaped from a big deficit in game 2

In one of the real "swing" matches of the day, Yale captain Peter Grote led Rutherford 1-0, 7-4 in what was shaping up as possibly the breakthrough win in the top five that Yale knew it needed. At this juncture, Princeton led three matches to two, but Grote seemed likely to take a 2-0 lead over Rutherford, Christopher Wyant was well ahead in the No. 9 match, Gavin Cumberbatch had taken an early lead at No. 7 over Princeton's Aaron Zimmerman and Chris Olsen was up one game to love over Pearson at No. 5.

A Yale sweep of these remaining four matches seemed entirely possible, and even three out of four would have given the Bulldogs their victory. But Rutherford, who has toughed out a number of close intercollegiate matches in the past, saved several game-points, took that vital second game in a tiebreaker and made this reversal stick by sprinting through the final two games to give the Tigers a commanding 4-2 lead, with the three remaining matches at Nos. 5, 7 and 9 still underway. Incredibly, all three had to be resolved by a fifth game, as for 45 heart-wrenching minutes the score remained four matches to two and each remaining match neared its ultimate devolution.

Princeton freshman Nate Beck, whose father Ron wielded a sturdy racquet on championship-winning Tiger teams nearly three decades ago, was down 2-0, 8-0 to fellow freshman Wyant, whose older brothers jack and Tim starred for their Princeton and Harvard teams respectively. But Wyant was unable to cash in on a host of match-points, losing that game in a tiebreaker and the fourth in regulation, and falling behind 8-4 in the fifth, the individual and team match resting on Beck's racquet.

Beck saved 10 match points but later failed to convert 10 of his own.

The final surge, however, belonged to Wyant, whose ability to face down both the memory of that squandered third game lead and the substantial fifth-game deficit confronting him is a remarkable testimony to his fortitude and conditioning. By the time the match ended 100 tense minutes after it had begun, each mentally exhausted player had seen more than ten match points slide agonizingly away, Wyant had an unbelievably hard-earned 10-9 victory, Yale had pulled the team score to 3-4 and their prospects were almost immediately bolstered by the junior Olsen, who had saved several individual and team match-points in a fourth-game rally from 5-8 to 10-9 against Pearson that forced a fifth game, the last thing either Pearson or Coach Callahan wanted in view of the recency of Pearson's return to action following a late-November injury to his right knee Pearson had suffered a potentially serious strain of the medial collateral ligament shortly after Thanksgiving weekend which could have ended his season if there had been a tear.

Eric Pearson's mature court control gave him the deciding win.

As it was, Pearson was sidelined until after New Year's Day and, though the healing process had gone well, his level of conditioning had not fully returned. There was real concern in the Princeton camp as to whether Pearson, both physically and mentally after those squandered match points would be able to recoup sifficiently to win the fifth. It was felt that the Yalie Cumberbatch would likely wind up winning his upcoming fifth game with Zimmerman (as in fact he did), so a loss by Pearson might spell disaster. The duo battled to 2-2, then 4-2, Pearson, following which there was a slew of "hand-outs" with no change in the score. But throughout the match, Pearson was benefiting from the positional advantage he held for most of the match, even though his edge wasn't always reflected in the score.

Jadwin's courts "play slow" in the sense that the ball doesn't fly around (as tends to happen on the more active Yale courts at Payne Whitney Gymnasium) and the player who controls the tee is therefore much less vulnerable to being passed, while his opponent has to do much more of the retrieving. The consequences of Olsen's necessity finally came crashing down upon him in the middle of the fifth game, as his energy eventually gave out and Pearson mustered a final run to 9-2 and thereby finally give the Tigers the fifth match which had been withheld for a seeming eternity.

Cumberbatch's late win was bittersweet.

Cumberbatch closed Zimmerman out shortly thereafter, but it was too little, too late to save the doughty but vanquished Bulldog cause. Princeton's 5-4 victory sets the Tigers up for a likely Ivy League title-determining showdown on February 10th at Harvard, and a NISRA Association-determining match at home against Trinity on February 16th, while the now 5-2 Yale squad (which previously lost 9-0 to Trinity), will face Harvard at the Payne Whitney on February 24th in a match that could still bring them the Ivy League championship if they win, but only if Harvard beats Princeton in Cambridge this Sunday afternoon, in which case a "matches-won" tiebreaker system will determine the 2002 Ivy League champion.

Princeton (6-0, 4-0) 5, Yale (5-2, 3-1) 4

No. 1 Will Evans (P) d. Anshul Manchanda 3-0
No. 2 David Yik (P) d. Joshua Schwartz 3-0
No. 3 Danny Rutherford (P) d. Peter Grote 3-1
No. 4 Peter Kelly (P) d. Ryan Byrnes 3-0
No. 5 Eric Pearson (P) d. Christopher Olsen 3-2
No. 6 Aftab Mathur (Y) d. Dent Wilkens 3-1
No. 7 Gavin Cumberbatch (Y) d. Aaron Zimmerman 3-2
No. 8 Albert McCrery (Y) d. Rob Siverd 3-0
No. 9 Christopher Wyant (Y) d. Nathan Beck 3-2