Buoyed by possibly its best recruiting class in several decades, Cornell men's and women's head coach Scott Stoneburgh is confidently awaiting the start of the forthcoming season. A quintet of returning seniors will anchor his squad, which lost only one senior, Darryl Chow, from last year's regular starting line-up that ended up ranked No. 7 but just missed the No. 5 standing it would have earned had it won one more match in the Potter Cup match against Dartmouth, which barely eked out a 5-4 victory to cost Cornell two ranking positions.

Serediak from Saskatchewan - new Cornell frosh

Those seniors, consisting of last year's No. 1 and all-American Tim Nagel, captain Jeff Porter, Hong Kong native and last year's No. 2 Neal Soo, plus starters Dan Galbraith and Kenny Greer, will be joined by a like number of incoming freshmen and transfer students James Chung, a South Korean who spent last year at Tufts and played on a strong Phillips Andover team, and Connecticut native Scott Sill, who had been at Denison.

Darryl Chow, whose Cornell playing debut coincided with the coaching debut of Stoneburgh four years ago, played in the middle of last year's line-up and is the only member of that starting line-up who will not return.

His absence will be more than counter-balanced by the arrival of an
exceedingly talented crop of freshmen, the best of which may well be current
Canadian junior champion Matthew Serediak, the Regina native who will be
representing Canada at the No. 1 position in the World Junior Team
Championships in India this December. His Toronto-based compatriot William
Cheng barely failed to make the national junior squad, but has received personalized coaching from ISDA doubles star and recent British Open
40-and-over winner Willie Hosey for the past several years and is just ready
to blossom.

New Yorker Ben Bernstein is a top American junior who took last year off after graduating Columbia Grammar and Prep school in June 2001 to spend the year training under famed British coach Neal Harvey, and Matt Greenberg, a Philadelphian and Penn Charter graduate, was training in Europe throughout this past summer. Another Philadelphia product is Ben Stokes, who attended Episcopal Academy, Penn Charter's main rival,and who also has a shot at making the top ten.

Serediak, Bernstein and Cheng should all strongly challenge Nagel and Soo
for their spots at the top of the ladder, and returnees like the rest of the
seniors, junior Torontonian Geoff Fong and sophomores Mike Delaney of
Massachusetts and Atlantan Brad Mosier should have their hands full retaining
their positions as well in a squad that could run as much as 15 solid players
deep.

Mosier was the only player to win his Princeton and Yale dual-meet matches last winter at the No. 7 spot, and he and his teammates seem well set to do battle with Dartmouth, whom Cornell defeated two years ago before narrowly losing last year, and Williams for the head of the second tier after the top four, Trinity, Princeton, Yale and Harvard.

Coach Stoneburg, who will also be coaching the women in this his fifth
season at the helm of the men's program, is very excited about the new influx
of talented freshmen, whom he feels will be a perfect complement to the
senior group massing for one last run at intercollegiate glory. He even feels
that they could push any team in the country right now and an upset over a top four team isn't out of the question if everything comes together at the right time.

As importantly, he is optimistic that his array of freshmen will aid his recruiting efforts going forward, as often happens in the intercollegiate arena, and that a new and bright era in Cornell squash is about to be ushered in.