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Ragonste comes from behind to beat Karlen in NYC
by Rob Dinerman

Jan 3, 2001 © 2002 Rob Dinerman and SquashTalk, photos: © 2001 Vaughn Winchell, may not be reproduced without express permission.

RAGONSTE CAPTURES UNIVERSITY CLUB INTERCOLLEGIATE INVITATIONAL FOR SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR - Loren Doline Take Inaugural Women's Event

Trailing two games to one and 6-2 in the fourth game of the final round, Trinity senior Lefika Ragonste surged to victory over top seeded Harvard captain Pete Karlen and thereby annexed the 2001 edition of this college invitational, which is hosted annually by the University Club of New York during the period between Christmas and New Year's.

In engineering this match-defining rally, the graceful Botswana native, a psychology major who plays at the No. 5 position in Trinity's powerhouse line-up, avenged the four-game defeat his teammate Nadeem Osman had suffered at Karlen's hands in their semi-final several hours earlier, successfully defended the crown he had won in 2000 and sent an intimidating message to the rest of the intercollegiate field of how difficult it will be for any team to prevent the Bantams from winning their fourth consecutive NISRA Championship.

STRONG, DIVERSE DRAW
The men's draw drew 41 entries from more than a dozen different programs, one of the largest turn-outs in the decades-long history of this event, even though many of the foreign-born leading college lights, including Trinity's top four stars (Bernardo Samper, Michael Ferreira, Jonathan Smith and Nick Kyme), had gone home for the Christmas break and therefore didn't participate. Three of the four quarter-final match-ups involved Trinity players, with Ragonste winning in three over Hamed Anvari, the Dartmouth No. 1, Patrick Malloy falling in four to the fine shooting touch of Indian-born Williams star Parth Doshi, the aforementioned Osman displaying his excellent wrist action and unbelievably elastic stretch and reach in a 3-0 win over Crimson junior Dylan Patterson and Karlen methodically and convincingly out-executing Yale freshman Josh Schwartz in the only Trinity-free quarter of the draw.

Karlen then displayed his intensity, toughness and ball control in his Saturday morning semi with Osman, who was unable to match either the consistent tightness of his opponent's backhand rail(lofted with praiseworthy height, depth and volley-defying width)or, more importantly, the freedom from the tin that characterized the Crimson star's play through the final two games after a split of the opening pair. In fact, Osman's bid for the final was doomed by tinny patches that surfaced fairly early in both the third and final fourth, which ended quietly on the last of a series of well-placed Karlen backhand straight drops off a loose Osman rail.

The balancing semi, a rematch between last year's finalists, also was decided in four games, with Doshi intelligently varying pace with his biting short game and Ragonste's lithe movement and touch reminiscent of former tennis stand-out and '83 French Open champion Yannick Noah, a similarity enhanced by the expressive face framed by neatly arranged dreadlocks that characterize each man's appealing self-presentation. Doshi is so dangerous when presented with a loose ball up front that Ragonste wisely kept the play deep, though a rare lapse in this thoughtful stratagem cost him the third game after he had swept to a 2-0 lead.

There was fine sportsmanship on display throughout their 75-minute encounter as well, notably on match-point, when Doshi, after rallying from an 8-5 deficit to 7-8, called a close retrieval down against himself on the match's final point, thereby relieving the referee of a difficult decision and earning a well-deserved round of applause for both contestants from an appreciative gallery.

Each of the first three games of the all-senior final was hard-fought, high-paced and close, with Karlen, who entered this summit with a 1-2 career mark against Ragonste, dropping only the second. He then roared off to a 6-0 lead in the fourth game, just three points from victory, when a series of both tactical and physical adjustments completely altered the course of the action. First Ragonste dramatically reduced the pace, replacing his drives with lobs that caused Karlen, either from impatience at being so close to the finish line but unable to sprint to it or as a reaction to the cramps that started to take visible effect at just this unfortuitous juncture, to tin Ragonste's way right back into the match. In fact, after the latter had evened the match by excavating himself from that 0-6 hole and winning that game 9-7, Karlen had to take a ten-minute break to administer to this debilitating malady, which had caused him to withdraw midway through last year's tournament and which in this final had noticeably limited his movement towards the disastrous end of a fourth game that had previously appeared securely in his grasp.

Mindful of his opponent's depleted state, Ragonste aggressively shot his way to a 4-0 lead in the fifth game before HE cramped up in his left thigh, necessitating another play stoppage, during which, in yet another example of the meritorious level of sportsmanship that characterized the entire virtually dispute-free weekend, Karlen provided his opponent with some of the balm he had used to staunch his own cramps several minutes earlier, and play was able to resume. A tactical duel ensued during the closing exchanges, with both men mindful of the possibility of their physical woes resurfacing at any time and thus determined to be as efficient as possible. Ragonste eventually assumed an 8-5 lead and three times served in vain for the match before finally edging the doughty Karlen out 9-7 on a well-struck backhand rail.

Harvard Grabs Doubles Crown
Barely two hours after that deflating conclusion to the final, and remarkably in view of the ravages of his two singles matches that day, Karlen then surmounted his disappointment, dehydration and fatigue by teaming up with Dylan Patterson to win a marathon doubles final against Osman and Carl Bagglio, who led 13-11 in the fifth before falling to a 7-1 match-closing Crimson run and an 18-14 final tally.

Even that outcome contained a cautionary note; Karlen and Patterson are both experienced doubles players who grew up playing the game extensively at Apawamis and Heights Casino respectively and were in fact finalists in last year's University Club event, while the South African-born second-semester freshman Osman had never played doubles in his life before this tournament. Nonetheless, their victory was a great source of pride and vindication for both Patterson and especially Karlen, who had gone toe to toe through three exhausting battles and for five nearly uninterrupted hours with members of the Trinity program and who was able to emerge from his brutal day-long travails in possession of one gold and one silver medal.

Doline Grabs Debut Women's Event
There was also a debut women's event, which had 13 entries, four of which survived a set of round-robins to play semi-final and final rounds. Yale freshman Loren Doline utilized her greater mobility and superiority on the backhand wall in subduing Williams undergraduate Claire Whipple in an entertaining but straight-set final. The appearance of both Doline and several other freshmen in the top five of the Yale line-up is a heartening sign for that program and especially for its head coach Mark Talbott, now in his fourth year at the Eli helm after a nonpareil WPSA singles and doubles career, during which he established himself as unquestionably the greatest American player of all time. Doline's conquest at the University Club may turn out to be the first definitive marker of a program that seems to be clearly on the upswing.

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