2-10 Princeton Women Shock Harvard: Report

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Thursday, October 31, 2002, © Rob Dinerman

Bates College head men's and women's coach John Illig, co-president along with Yale men's coach Dave Talbott of the newly created College Squash Association (CSA), has announced the names of the four eight-team divisions of the postseason Howe Cup nine-player team competition to determine the intercollegiate national champion. Coach Illig, now entering his seventh year at the Bates helm, also noted that there will be two 32-player draws for the individual title and that each of those flights will be named after outstanding woman college champions as well.

Prior to this season, intercollegiate men's squash was played under the auspices of the National Intercollegiate Squash Racquets Association (NISRA), while the women's organizing body was the Women's Intercollegiate Squash
Association or WISA. They merged last spring into the CSA, though Talbott
presides over the Men's Division and Illig over the Women's Division.

The Howe Cup was named at its inception in 1973 in honor of the famous
Howe sisters, Betty Howe Constable and Margaret Howe, who between them
dominated American women's squash throughout the decade of the 1950's, during
which they won seven of the 10 Women's Nationals. Constable also coached the
Princeton Tigers to victory in the first four editions of the this team championship, as well as eight of the first nine, 10 of the first 12 and 12 overall, the record by a wide margin, though Bill Doyle led the Harvard women to this crown in the first five of his seven years from 1993-99.

Previously the entire end-of-season "play-offs" had been under the aegis of the Howe Cup, which for the past five years has had A, B, C and D divisions, but beginning with the 2002-2003 campaign, only the top eight ranked teams will compete for the Howe Cup, emblematic of the national championship, with three other eight-team tournaments, the Aggie Kurtz Cup, the Dale Walker Cup and the Patty Epps Cup, honoring former longtime and distinguished women's head coaches at Dartmouth, Yale and Franklin & Marshall respectively, reserved for the Nos. 9-16, 17-24 and 25-32 ranked teams. All four events will be run as straight draws, though there will also be consolations and "back" draws to determine specific 1-8 placement in each flight.

Kurtz is the only person ever to be awarded the prestigious Achievement Bowl more than once, as she was selected for this honor in both 1976 and 1990. Constable was the honoree in 1978 and Walker, whose Yale teams won the Howe Cup in 1986 and 1992, was the Achievement Bowl recipient in 1989. Kurtz and Constable were both elected to the College Squash Hall of fame in the mid-1990's, as were former Penn coach Ann Wetzel, who coached for many years at Penn, and Betty Richey, who along with Constable and Wetzel got women's intercollegiate squash launched in the early 1960's. Two of the most coveted individual women's college awards were designated in honor of this pair of pioneer women, namely the Wetzel Award for the senior who had never played squash before college who progresses the most during her intercollegiate years, and the Richey Award for the player who best demonstrates a combination of good sportsmanship and high performance.

Coach Epps has headed the women's program at Franklin & Marshall for the past 24 years before finally recently stepping aside to concentrate on her positions of assistant athletic director and women's tennis coach, which until last spring she had been filling while also coaching the squash team! In addition to leading F & M to the No. 2 team ranking in the early 1990's and a host of top-ten placements, Epps served as WISA President from 1983-89, played an important role in the incorporation of the Women's Division into the USSRA and in 1999 became the first recipient of WISA's Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her many coaching and administrative accomplishments on behalf of women's college squash.

Since 1965 there has also been an Intercollegiate Women's Individual Championship in addition to the team event, and Illig announced that now it will have honoree counterparts to the men's individual championship, which for decades had been named in honor of its first winner (in 1932) Beekman Pool.

This season the top 32 ranked players will compete for the Gail Ramsay Cup, while players ranked 33-64 will attempt to win the Demer Holleran Cup. The individual titles that current Princeton coach Ramsay, a Penn State alumna, consecutively won from 1977-80 make her the only collegian ever, male or female, to capture this event all four college years, while Holleran, a three-time champion for Princeton whose only loss came in her junior year at the hands of Harvard's Diana Edge in the '88 final, has gone on to annex a total of USSRA women's singles hardball and softball and women's and mixed doubles crowns that far surpasses that of anyone else and to establish herself as the greatest American women's squash player ever.

Ramsay and Holleran are also the only women ever to both win an individual intercollegiate championship and coach a college Howe Cup team champion, Holleran having led the University of Pennsylvania squad to its only title in 2000 while Ramsay's Princeton teams won in 1998 and 1999. There is no doubt that women's intercollegiate squash now has a breadth of talent and intensity that would have been unimaginable as recently as a few short years ago, and with the consolidation of college squash under the CSA and its Executive Director Preston Quick, there should be an exciting and extended competition for these various trophies, whose allure will only be enhanced by the legacies of the famous historical figures in whose honor they have been named.

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