More
than 150 members of the extended Harvard squash family streamed
into the Harvard Club Of New York this past Saturday afternoon
and evening to attend the Friends Of Harvard Squash Alumni
Day, which was co-chaired by Rick Sterne ’68,
Jon Masland ‘90 and Hope Nichols Prockop ’91,
three of the organization’s officers, and expertly
coordinated by Richard Chin, the long-time head pro of the
host club. The energy and spirit that suffused this five-hour
mixing of the generations of Harvard squash was remarkable
to behold, and it is a testimony to the title-filled history
of this revered program that practically everyone present
had played a prominent role in forging the record-shattering
Crimson legacy, either by serving as team captain, or winning
a decisive victory in a season-defining dual meet or coaching
a team to an undefeated season.
The latter phenomenon seemed
especially pertinent, for the multi-front event program (which
started with a hit-around with members of the current varsity
squads, followed by cocktails courtside and a buffet dinner
in the third-floor Biddle Room) noticeably and promptly evolved
into an extended ceremony honoring and celebrating the three
living former Harvard coaches, namely Dave Fish ’72,
captain of championship tennis and squash teams and men’s
squash coach from 1976 (when the legendary Jack Barnaby’s
retirement ended 44 glorious years at the helm beginning
right after his graduation from Harvard in 1932) through
1989; Steve Piltch, women’s coach from 1986 through
1992 and men’s
coach from 1989 through 1992; and Bill Doyle, coach of the
men’s and women’s team from 1992 through 1999
(seven women’s and six men’s Ivy league titles
in those seven years).
Before Fish, Piltch and Doyle spoke,
some of their former players gave “introductory” speeches:
Mark Panarese ‘78 on behalf of Fish, Jenny Holleran ’90
and Jeremy Fraiberg ’92 on behalf of Piltch and Libby
Eynon Welch ’95 and Andy Walter ’97, the last
male Harvard alumnus to play on four undefeated national-championship
teams, on behalf of Doyle. Each of these five alumni/ae was
team captain of Crimson team championship varsities and Holleran,
Fraiberg and Welch all won the Individuals crown during their
senior years as well. Their speeches were filled with praise,
affection, gratitude and respect for their respective mentors
and for the lasting, indeed ongoing, contribution their coaches
had made not only to their squash careers but to their overall
Harvard experience and subsequent lives. Those players also
each gratefully acknowledged their realization, in some cases
belatedly, of the degree to which the three honorees, like
Cowles and especially Barnaby before them, were not so much
coaches as educators, in Piltch’s case literally so,
as when he left Harvard in the summer of 1992, it was to
become head-of-school of the prestigious Shipley School in
suburban Philadelphia, a position he continues to fill today.
The
coaches themselves, who in some cases appeared nearly overwhelmed
by the applause and appreciation being showered upon them,
gave speeches that, for all the differences in the eras in
which they coached and in the players they mentored, contained
remarkably similar themes (this was true of the remarks that
current men’s/women’s coach
Satinder Bajwa had made during the cocktail hour as well)
---- all three cited the importance of “process” over “outcome” as
a major element of their coaching days at Harvard, all spoke
movingly about the continuing relationships they formed with
their former charges and all emphasized what an honor and
how humbling it had been to be allowed to tread the hallowed
ground on which such immortals as Barnaby and his predecessor
Harry Cowles had stood.
To put the Harvard squash tradition
in its proper perspective, it must be understood that, while
Trinity men’s teams under the enormously successful
Bantam coach Paul Assaiante haven’t lost a team meet
since Harvard last defeated them in the ’98 Potter
Cup (i.e. postseason nine-man team championship) final, the
Crimson’s
championship tradition extends over not one but nearly EIGHT
decades, back to when three-time U. S. Nationals champion
Germain Glidden ‘36, two-time U. S. Nationals champ
Beekman Pool ’32, Barnaby himself and ’40 U.
S. Nationals winner Will Patterson ‘36 were performing
under Cowles’s tutelage in the early 1930’s.
Signs of the unique quality of that longstanding tradition
were present everywhere one ventured in the Biddle Room Saturday
night ---- in the presence of Charles Ufford ’53, who
won the Individuals his junior and senior years and who even
now conveys an immensely dignified and courtly aura; of Matt
Hall ’67, who played on the championship teams of the
mid-1960’s and whose daughters Colby ’02 and
Louisa ’04, both present Saturday evening, (in Louisa’s
case after flying from her current base in Texas) each captained
championship squads nearly four decades later (just as Holleran’s
father, Romer, class of ’65, had done at Harvard as
Hall’s teammate); of Fraiberg ’92 and his sister
Jordanna ’94, BOTH of whom won the Individuals during
Jeremy’s senior year, the only brother/sister duo to
achieve that feat ever, let alone in the same season; of
David Boyum ’85, a former WPSA top-10 player, and his
sister Ingrid ’87, both of whom captained undefeated
teams; of Daniel Ezra ’98, who was No. 3 on Harvard’s
ladder when he won the Individuals in ’96, joining
his older brother Adrian ‘94, a three-time entry on
that exclusive list.
There were so many memorable moments
that these and so many others in attendance generated during
the years they spent proudly wearing the Crimson uniform
--- Fish’s
last team surprisingly and convincingly out-playing heavily-favored
Yale 6-3 in ’89 and thereby extending Harvard’s
consecutive unbeaten skein over Yale to 28-0 and giving their
beaming-with-pride coach the best possible good-by present
while preserving his career undefeated (13-0) dual-meet record
against Harvard’s foremost rival; Doyle’s ’94
squad, trailing Yale 4-1 in New Haven’s unfriendly
confines, rallying to a 5-4 triumph with both the Ivy League
and National titles at stake when Tal Ben-Shachar saved three
match-balls against him and edged Jamie Dean 18-17 in the
fifth game of the last match of court, perhaps the most dramatic
of the 21 dual-meet wins that Harvard has recorded during
current Yale coach Dave Talbott’s coaching career,
now in its 25th campaign; Holleran successfully going for
broke in the ’90 Individuals final against Eli star
Berkeley Belknap with a tin-defying backhand reverse-corner
serve-return winner on simultaneous championship-point at
17-all in the fifth.
Piltch wryly referred in his speech
to the slogan stenciled onto the shirt given to everyone
who attended Barnaby’s 80th birthday in autumn of ’89
being “The
Older We Are, The Better We Were,” but the truth is
that Harvard’s rosters were filled with student-athletes
who WERE really good, in some cases breathtakingly so, as
when in ’73 (another year in which a 4-1 deficit turned
into a 5-4 victory, this time over Penn) the final rounds
in the end-of-season A, B and C tournaments (with each teams
nos. 1 and 2 players entered in the A draw, Nos. 3 and 4
in the B flight, etc.) were effectively reduced into a premium-priced
team challenge match, with all six finalists wearing the
Crimson colors. In 1991-92, six Harvard players made the
10-man first-team all-American slate, and four of them occupied
the semifinal slots of that year’s Harry Cowles Invitational,
which Fraiberg won over Adrian Ezra in the final. And in
1983, the final of the U. S. Nationals was between Boyum
and Kenton Jernigan, Harvard’s No. 1 and 2 players,
with Jernigan prevailing for the first of his three-straight
titles in this event.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, one major
element that many of the speeches emphatically referenced
was the degree to which at Harvard the No. 9 player was regarded
as just as important and valued a team member as the No.
1 player, a phenomenon that was fully embraced by players
and coaches alike and one which not only infused the varsity
program with a team and community atmosphere rarely found
in an “individual” sport like squash but also
may in substantial measure have played a role in the many
Harvard dual-meet triumphs in which the deciding match wins
were provided by the bottom half of the Crimson lineup.
Intermixed
with the celebratory atmosphere was a strong awareness, especially
given the presence of so many members of the current varsity
on hand, that the defining stretch of this 2007-08 intercollegiate
season looms directly and imposingly ahead. The essence of
the entire season will be compressed into a stunningly brief
and hectic period in which the Harvard men will face Trinity
this Wednesday, Penn and Princeton over the weekend and Yale
next Wednesday (all four season-defining matches in one torrid
Wednesday to Wednesday span), with the Potter Cup weekend
just two days following the Yale meet. In such an environment,
the importance of any injury to or sub-par performance by
any members of this year’s starting nine will be magnified
as they go up against the best that the top tier of the intercollegiate
field has to offer. The pressure on coach Bajwa and his youthful
charges on both the men’s and women’s teams will
be considerable, but so will the opportunity, especially
now that those players received a first-hand sense Saturday
afternoon and evening of the grandeur of the tradition that
they have the privilege of representing.
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