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[College Results] [Photogalleries]

Princeton Seniors Come Through Again
By Rob Dinerman © 2003 SquashTalk Feb 10, 2003 © 2003
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Freshmen, Princeton #1 Yasser el-Halaby and Harvard #1 Will Broadbent (photo © 2003 Debra Tessier)

The class of '77, which was captained in its senior year by current Princeton head coach Bob Callahan, won the Ivy League in '75 and '77 and finished in a three-way tie with Harvard and Penn in '74. This Ivy League crown was the 12th in the 72-year history of the Princeton program and the fifth in Callahan's 22-year tenure. The Tigers have also won nine CSA regular-season titles and will be going for a tenth this coming weekend when they face five-time defending champion Trinity in Hartford Saturday afternoon.

Though slightly out-manned in most of yesterday's match-ups, 2001 Ivy League champion Harvard battled gallantly, taking two of the four matches in the opening "evens" shift and pressing Princeton throughout; indeed, had the Tigers not come away with all five of the tiebreaker games sprinkled among the Nos. 1, 4, 5, 7 and 9 matches, the meet outcome, or at least the deceptively dominant-looking 7-2 margin, might have been quite different.

Evans handily defeated Crimson star James Bullock 9-3, 6 and 3 at No. 2 in the only match of the day that didn't require either a fourth game or a tiebreaker session to resolve.

Princeton #2 Will Evans handled James Bullock in 3. (photo © 2003 Debra Tessier)

Evans has had plenty of trouble over the years with Bullock, who held match-balls against him in their pre-season Ivy Scrimmage matches both this year and last before losing both 10-9 in the final game, and Bullock had scored a big 3-0 win over Yik in the 2002 Harvard-Princeton dual meet. But Evans for each of the past two seasons has played his best squash during the last six weeks of the season, after he returns from his holiday visit to his native New Zealand, as witness his advance all the way to the final round of the Intercollegiate Individual tournament last March after an inconsistent autumn, and he was at the very top of his game on this occasion as well.

Evans's parents traveled all the way from Auckland to watch their son in this important meet, as did the parents of Yik from Vancouver, Rutherford from Calgary and El-Halaby from Egypt. The parents, siblings and other family members of all of the players in the Princeton varsity program were all invited to a dinner hosted by Coach Callahan as part of an annual tradition established a few years ago and always scheduled on the eve of that year's home match against a Big Three rival (Yale last year). This year's celebration held special significance given the career-long
exploits of the class of 2003 and the history its members stood on the cusp of
making.

Well over 100 people attended this year's festivities and there is no doubt
that their presence had an inspirational effect on the players the following afternoon.
As noted, Evans's teammates encountered considerably more difficulty with their respective opponents than he had endured against Bullock. The back problems experienced for the previous 10 days by Rutherford had sidelined him for the Dartmouth meet one day earlier (a 9-0 shut-out despite his absence and that of Pearson due to a strep throat) and made him somewhat of a question mark coming into his match with Crimson co-captain Dylan Patterson.

The key to this match was the ending of the second game, after Rutherford
had taken the opener 9-2. The second seesawed evenly along until Patterson got himself a game-ball at 8-7. Rutherford has toughed out a lot of close
battles over the years, and he managed to salvage that game 10-8 to take a
commanding two games to love lead. The doughty Patterson eked out the third game 9-7 and hung in through the fourth, but Rutherford's early advantage was just
enough to get him over the top, and he finished the match off with a 9-6
fourth-game win.

Balancing off this pair of Princeton opening-shift victories was a four-game victory by Harvard's Asher Hochberg over Aaron Zimmerman at No.6 and a thriller that wound up in Gaurav Yadav's column over Tiger sophomore Nate Beck at No. 8 in what was clearly the most exciting match of the day.

Beck's father Ron played an important role on that '74 co-Ivy League champion
Princeton squad, and he himself seems to have developed a penchant, even
at this early stage of his intercollegiate career, for playing unbelievably
close matches in Big Three competition. Just last season, he and Yale's
Chris Wyant each held more than 10 match-balls before Wyant finally prevailed
10-9 in the fifth, and one week after that adventure Beck provided a crucial
five-game victory over Harvard's Ryan Abraham to give Princeton their
clinching fifth team victory in the 5-4 win without which Harvard, not
Princeton, would have won the 2002 Ivy League title.

Now in this match against Yadav, Beck won the first two games fairly decisively and held a pair of match-balls at 8-5 in the third before ceding that game 10-8. He then got to two more match-balls in the fourth (one at 8-7 and another at 9-8), but when Yadav extricated himself from those predicaments he was home free in the fifth, which he led 6-0 and wound up winning 9-1.

As a result of Yadav's heroics, the team score stood at 2-2 instead of in
Princeton's favor at 3-1. Indeed, there was plenty of cause for concern in the Princeton camp. el-Halaby figured to defeat Harvard's fine freshman Will Broadbent at No. 1 (which he did in three games, though not before trailing 8-5 in the first), but Crimson No. 3 Michael Blumberg was likely to (and did) give Yik all he could handle, Pearson's health and ability to handle Harvard No. 5 Ziggy Whitman was very much in doubt (especially in view of the antibiotics in the former's system in response to a week-long case of strep throat) and at No. 7 Dent Wilkens was facing a Crimson opponent, co-captain Thomas Storch, who had beaten him in three games in the 2002 version of this dual meet.

When Princeton No. 9 Rob Siverd complemented el-Halaby's triumph by saving
a pair of game-balls against him in the third and final game of his match against Indrek Vainu, Princeton led four matches to two, but a 20 minutes after Siverd's match ended, Pearson had a 2-0, 8-5 match-ball opportunity yield to a determined Whitman rally to 9-8, game-ball. At this juncture, Yik trailed Blumberg, two games to one, Wilkins and Storch were knotted at a game apiece and Pearson was clearly showing the effects of his illness. Just one week before, Yale's Julian Illingworth had squandered a 2-0, 8-4 match-ball edge on el-Halaby and gone down to a defeat without which Yale would have defeated Princeton instead of losing 5-4.

The current situation held the dangerous potential of repeating last week's
scenario in reverse, especially given Pearson's ebbing stamina, Storch's
history with Wilkins and Blumberg's well-deserved reputation as a formidable
competitor.

But, as he has frequently done over the course of his four-year Tiger career, especially on his home Jadwin Gymnasium turf, Pearson was able to reach back and come through in the clutch. He knocked off three straight points to finish the match 10-9 and thereby clinch the meet and the Ivy League crown for Princeton. Wilkins would go on to out-duel Storch in a close and pivotal 9-6 third game prior to rolling through the 9-1 fourth, and in the day's final match, Yik rallied to defeat Blumberg in five.

A relieved Tiger crew will now take aim against Trinity, whom they defeated 4-1 in the final of the USSRA Five-Man Team tournament this past December, while a
disappointed Harvard squad will try to salvage its 2002-2003 season when it hosts Yale this weekend in the CSA regular-season finale.

RECAP (Princeton 7, Harvard 2)

1. Yasser el-Halaby (P) d Will Broadbent (H) 3-0 10-8, 0, 3
2. Will Evans (P) d James Bullock (H) 3-0 3,6,3
3. David Yik (P) d Michael Blumberg (H) 3-2 6, 7-9, 7-9, 7,4
4. Dan Rutherford (P) d Dylan Patterson (H) 3-1 2,10-8, 7-9,6
5.Eric Pearson (P) d Isaac Whitman (H) 3-0 3,1,10-9
6.Asher Hochberg (H) d Aaron Zimmerman (P) 3-1 3, 5-9, 6, 1
7 Dent Wilkins (P) d Tom Storch (H) 3-1 10-8, 7-9, 6,1
8 Gaurav Yadav (H) d Nate Beck (P) 3-2 1-9,4-9,10-8,10-9,1
9 Rob Siverd (P) d Indrek Vainu (H) 3-0 5,6,10-8

See more photos - [Harvard vs Princeton photogallery]

The galleries were full of supporters this weekend(photo © 2003 Debra Tessier)

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