CSA 05-06 Previews

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Men's 05-06 Season Outlook:
The University of Washington returns for it’s second year of competition of the softball era.  Last year’s team won the five-man “emerging teams” bracket and the top three players from that team return this year to lead what we hope will be a nine-man squad throughout the year. 

Despite an incoming freshman class of 7,000 (yes, those of you at Haverford and the NESCAC schools—that really is the size of our freshman class!), we have not had anyone with significant squash experience turn up to fill out the squad.  Once again, as last year, we’re busy teaching racquetball players a different swing . 

The squad is led by co-captains Saumil Gandhi from India and Norman Wilson from South Africa, with Julian Wolfson from Montreal rounding out the top three.  The international flavor of the team continues with  Gaurav Mehta from India, Tilak Pun from Nepal by way of Singapore, and Arjun Bandhari from India.  The Americas are represented by Mauricio Cerna, a freshman from El Salvador.  Evan and Adam Dengler, converted racquetballers, are from Hawaii (not international, just far away).  Newcomers Rob Shaw from the Seattle area and Brad Fulkerson from Spokane round out the team. 

The biggest challenge facing the team is that our closest opponents, Utah, Cal and Stanford, are each about 900 miles away.  This makes it tough to schedule matches.  The team plans a five-match weekend at the Navy Round-Robin and a similar weekend at the Stanford Round-Robin, followed by the Nationals.  We’d love to have some teams come out here—four beautiful international courts and we’d provide the lodging!