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[College Results]

Princeton the foil for Trinity's Sixth Title
By Squashtalk staff © 2003 SquashTalk Feb 20, 2003 © 2003  

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Trinity's Assaiainte Conducted His Team to another National Championship (photo © 2003 Debra Tessier)

Thirty seven teams took the courts at Princeton and Penn last weekend for the National College Squash Championships, competing in five separate divisions. Each division was hotly completitive, with a record number of matches extending to a 5-4 team score. (It would have been forty teams, but for the late scratches of the Penn State, Fordham, and Air Force teams.)

Early on Friday at Princeton's expansive Jadwyn Gym, in one of the weekend's first matches, history was made when the University of Utah, a first time entrant in these championships took the court garbed in red against University of Virginia, also first time entrants. That contest was won by Virginia, but each match was highly competitive, setting the stage for an interesting weekend of razor-thin margins all across the board.

At all levels, there was drama and excitement. The Vassar College Brewers were just as jubilant when they emerged with an emotional 5-4 win over Cal Berkeley on Sunday morning for 27th placement, as Trinity was to win their fifth championship over Princeton and Harvard was to top Yale and finish third.

Amidst all of the subplots in the five divisions, attention was certainly focused on what was happening in the First Division Potter Division National Championship Flight. At a few minutes before four on Sunday afternoon, Trinity College won this year's championship, taking home a fifth straight crown in front of a crowd four-hundred strong.

When Trinity head coach Paul Assaiante was asked what, if any aspect of the 2003 Potter Cup nine-man postseason championship his team won this past weekend stood out from the four straight such titles that had preceded it, he paid tribute to the Princeton squad, whom his troops had just vanquished 6-3 in an extraordinary final on Princeton's home turf at Jadwin Gymnasium.

"To have been able to withstand what that team threw at us and still emerge victorious makes this one really special," he explained. Indeed, the Ivy League champion Tigers guided by their veteran head coach Bob Callahan played magnificently throughout what became a weekend-long swan song for, and tribute to, the outstanding Princeton class of 2003, a quartet consisting of Will Evans, David Yik, Dan Rutherford and Eric Pearson, the Nos. 2-5 players respectively in this year's line-up, who wound up with two consecutive Ivy League titles and three in their four varsity years.

But as good as this group, along with freshman sensation Yasser El-Halaby and the
supporting cast have been over the years, none of their previous achievements can compare to the quality of their performance first in a 7-2 semi-final dismantling of a Yale team that had come within a single point of defeating them in the dual meet three weeks ago, and then in a memorable final one day later with the Trinity juggernaut that since end-of-season losses to Princeton in the regular season and Harvard in the Potter Cup final in February '98 has now won 15 straight Potter Cup meets (three a season for the past five years) and 91 straight meets overall.

Last week Trinity's women's team had swept through the Howe Cup competition for the women's national intercollegiate team championship by winning all three of their meets 9-0 (which no previous Howe Cup winner had ever accomplished) and the Trinity men appeared positioned to possibly do the same after taking an 8-0 lead over Harvard in the semi-final round.

But Bernardo Samper let up badly in his second game at No. 1 against Harvard's
Will Broadbent after easily winning the first and was never able to regain control in dropping the next three games.

Samper's lost momentum may have played a role in his decisive loss to El-Halaby in their (and their respective teams') third and rubber match of the season (Princeton 4-1 in the USSRA Five-Man Team final in December, Trinity 8-1 just seven days prior to this Potter Cup final in the dual meet for the regular-season CSA championship), but the wins at Nos. 2 and 3 by Evans and Yik respectively over Trinity's Michael Ferreira and Nick Kyme were a sign of the strength of the top half of the Tiger line-up that had been their forte all season.

Princeton's sweep of the top three positions in the Potter Cup final with the four-time defending champion Bantams would have extended even further if Rutherford had been able to cash in the two games to one advantage he held over Swiss-born Trinity freshman Yvain Badan at No. 4. And Pearson, who had so often won the "swing" match in 5-4 Princeton victories, especially over Yale, over the years, battled fiercely at No. 5 against Reggie Schonborn, as did Tiger sophomore Nate Beck at No. 8 against Pat
Malloy. But Badan came back to win the last two games against Rutherford, and
Schonborn ground out three extremely close games over Pearson, Malloy
rallied from a one-game deficit to defeat Beck in a competitive four and
Nadeem Osman, Johnny Smith and Carl Baglio were much too strong to be denied
their wins at the Nos. 6, 7 and 9 slots. Ultimately, the possibly unprecedented depth of the Trinity line-up carried the day, but the Princeton effort was, according to Callahan, "focussed, gutsy, and one of our best ever." If the Princeton players had been swimmers, every one of them would have recorded a personal-best time.

"We stole a few matches out there," said the pleased and relieved Assaiante, as he enjoyed the moment.

As for the Yale team that had come within a few match balls earlier in the season of taking the Ivy crown from Princeton, the 3/4 playoff loss to Harvard by the score of 5-4 Sunday afternoon had to be a disappointing end to the season. The Yale injury toll mounted throughout the Nationals weekend and they had to play the final match against Harvard minus two of their top players. With their lineup depleted, they lost the 2nd through 6th positions as opposed two four days earlier when they had topped Harvard in dual match play. Despite strong individual play, the final 5/4 loss to Harvard dropped their talented lineup into a #4 end of season ranking position.

Meanwhile in the Hoehn (second) division, Brown beat Williams 5-4 to win the ninth place trophy; in the Conroy (third) division, F&M topped Colby 6-3 for the 17th place trophy and in the Conroy (fourth) division, GWU topped Hamilton 6-3 for the 25th place. In the Hoehn division, Williams had topped Amherst in a close 5-4 match earlier in the weekend, while Bowdoin ,who ended the season at #15, dropped a pair of 5-4 heartbreakers to Amherst and Denison, punctuated by a bevy of 4 and 5 game losses in the middle of the lineup.

The surprising and inspired GWU squad, in their first year of varsity competition, took home the most improved team award. Princeton's David Yik won the year's outstanding sportsman Award, joining his older brother Peter Yik in that elite company.

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