Big Weekend Wrap-up Feb 24th in USA Squash

BIG WEEKEND: Waite Wins In Singles And Doubles, Trinity Defends College Crown

The Champs were in trouble, big-time trouble, and everyone jammed into the doubles gallery at Heights Casino knew it. Top seeds Gary Waite and Damien Mudge, winners in 21 of the 22 pro tournaments they have entered as a team since the spring of '99 and in all eight of the ISDA ranking events on this season's schedule, had already lost the first game of their final in the 64th David Johnson Doubles tourney with fourth seeds Michael Pirnak and David Kay 15-14, with first Waite and then Mudge contributing tins to their pair of squandered game-points. They had then successfully lobbed their way to a big early second-game lead and knotted the match at a game apiece, but now, after finally catching their opponents at 13 after trailing the entire third game, they had seen Pirnak back up his "not-set" call by rolling out a perfect forehand reverse-three-wall in front of a flummoxed and physically sub-par Waite to give Pirnak/Bentley a double-game-point for a two games to one lead.

If ever Waite and Mudge looked vulnerable and on the verge of having their dream for an undefeated entire 2001-2002 campaign go up in flames, it was right now. The top seeds had encountered significant resistance early that morning in their semi with third seeds Blair Horler and Clive Leach, a power-hitting duo who had been their co-finalists twice this season, in Philadelphia and Greenwich, and who won the third game handily after coming within a point of taking the first. Waite had then traveled from Brooklyn Heights to the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan, where he played at noon in the final of the USSRA National Hardball Championships, where he defeated Marty Clark in three following Clark's pre-final Saturday wins over Tom Harrity and Rob Hill, who between them had won the five previous editions of this event.

Though Waite was in complete control of that 15-7, 10 and 8 final with a doughty but out-classed Clark, his eleventh-hour decision to go for a "double" this weekend by participating in the Nationals meant two extra matches (byed to the semis, he had then won in four at that stage over Rob Dinerman Saturday afternoon after the latter's hectic four-game quarter-final win over ISDA power-hitter Jeff Mulligan), which may have contributed to the upper respiratory problems that crept in during the weekend. So by this Sunday afternoon finale, Waite found himself dehydrated and sapped by his illness and playing in his sixth match in less than 48 hours against a pair of opponents who were younger, fresher, hungrier, healthier and inspired by the decisive four-game fashion in which they had defeated second seeds Willie Hosey and Viktor Berg in the balancing semi-final several hours earlier.

Pirnak, who was especially sharp in the semi-final victory, had teamed with Berg to win last year's Johnson and is therefore understandably very confident in the cozy confines of this venue. Kay, who was appearing in the first ISDA final of his six-year pro career, has already enjoyed success this season with previous partners Chris Walker and Scott Dulmage, taking Waite/Mudge to five games twice wit the latter partner last month.

Now 29 years old and in the prime of his career, he has in recent years complemented his formidable strength and racquet weaponry with a level of conditioning and concentration he had lacked early on, and is fully ready for the kind of breakthrough that appeared to be taking shape this afternoon. Time and again, he and Pirnak had worked Waite over with both pace and short shots to the front left-corner, to the point where Mudge had begun to "cheat" to that side to help his beleaguered partner, sometimes at a cost, since on several occasions Kay had wrong-footed him be feinting in that direction and instead rifling the ball to the right side which Mudge had vacated to cover the left.

Waite and Mudge had lived dangerously in their Horler/Leach semi, which might have gone very differently had Leach not inadvertently hit his partner on the opening game's simultaneous-game-point. This time they had lost a first-game one-pointer and were on the cusp to dropping the third in a tiebreaker as well in the wake of Pirnak's dead nick, which made the score 14-13. But a possibly over-anxious Kay went for a risky three-wall nick off the back wall and tinned it, following which he was denied a let on a Waite crosscourt that semi-nicked off the right wall but which he appeared to have a swing at and a chance to keep in play.

This controversial and split-decision call enabled Waite and Mudge, miraculously, to hold a 2-1 lead in a match throughout which they had been noticeably out-played. Pirnak's and Kay's opinion was hotly contrary to the official judgment, but they recovered to lead 10-7 in the fourth, again carrying the play to a struggling Waite, who seemed to have lost a good five miles per hour stroke to stroke. Mudge was as solid as ever, moving beautifully and crushing the ball, but the three-point deficit facing himself and Waite in the wake of the last of a series of Kay crosscourt drive nicks that Waite couldn't get to accurately reflected the advantage Pirnak and Kay had gained. They seemed certain to take that fourth game and abundantly capable, the unhappy turn of events at the tail-end of the third game notwithstanding, of winning the impending fifth.

In view of this backdrop, the eight-point match-ending surge with which a seemingly reeling Waite/Mudge closed out their hectic weekend was as unexpected as it was devastating. A couple of loose shots from Kay and Pirnak, a three-wall from nowhere off Waite's racquet, and suddenly Mudge, as he had done several times in the past month, was grabbing the match by the throat, implausibly adding even more pace to his heretofore already frightening production and covering the front like a cat. Waite, the finish line to his over-scheduled weekend suddenly in clear view, summoned his champion's reserve and came up with the requisite energy to lift his game that one needed extra level, while a match they had mostly been clearly controlling floated away from Kay and Pirnak like a cloud.

Before they knew it, 100 minutes of praiseworthy and superior effort had dissolved in five minutes of madness and mayhem and a hoarse Waite and relieved Mudge were making their victory speeches in front of an admiring but head-scratching crowd that was as shocked by the speed and finality of the last surge as its victims had been. It is the mark of a champion to be able to somehow find a way to win even under adverse circumstances and even against a highly talented opponent with all the momentum and playing at the top of his/their game.

Another sign of a champion is the ability to dominate the opposition throughout an entire season and then play up to that standard in the crucible of the post-season tournament, as the Trinity Bantams were able to do in capturing their fourth straight Art Potter Trophy (awarded to the Nine-Man Team Champions) on Harvard's Murr Courts while Waite was successfully surmounting his travails several states south. For the five four-year seniors, co-captains Lefika Ragontse and Rohan Bhappu, Nick Wimmer and the Juneja twins, Rohan and Gaurav, the pair of 8-1 triumphs over the host Crimson crew in the semis and Ivy Champion Princeton in the final were the culmination of college careers during which the Bantams didn't lose a single team match, going 66-0 in dual-meet competition and extending to five the streak of consecutive NISRA regular-season titles, while dropping only two of the 144 total matches that comprised their 16-0 slate in 2001-2002.

In the rematch with a Tiger team they had defeated by an identical 8-1 score at Jadwin Gymnasium eight days earlier, the Bantams again dominated the bottom of the line-up while encountering plenty of resistance from Princeton's sturdy top five, whom head coach Bob Callahan has deemed the best in school history. Trinity freshman Bernardo Samper, who should be seeded No. 1 for the Pool Cup Individual Championship at Jadwin this weekend, defeated Will Evans in three, but both Michael Ferreira against defending Pool champion David Yik at No. 2 and Nickolas Kyme against Tiger captain Peter Kelly (his straight-set conqueror one week earlier) were forced to fifth games, Kyme in fact rallying from down two games to one to win the fourth 9-7 and the fifth 9-4 against the tiring Kelly, whose undefeated season-long record vanished under Kyme's late charge.

And 2001 Pool runner-up Ragontse, still tired and a little deflated from his route-going semis loss to Harvard's Michael Blumberg, was eventually run into the ground in his rubber match with Princeton's Danny Rutherford, who had defeated Ragontse in the USSRA Five-Man Team event (won by Trinity for the second straight time) in the fall and took him to a fourth-game tiebreaker in the dual match in mid-February. A wonderful season for head coach Paul Assaiante and his extremely talented roster, a number of whose starters will now take aim at the Pool Trophy, which for the last three years has been won by the Yik brothers, Peter in 1999 and 2000 and David last year.