Twice Delayed Cup to El Salvador
Oct 19 2005, by Rob Dinerman
Squashtalk Independent News; © 2005 SquashTalk LLC

After undergoing a number of changes both of date and tournament site throughout the summer months, the 2005 Pan Am Federation tournament, scheduled to run from October 25-30, will be hosted at the Maya Country Club in El Salvador. Both individual and team competitions will be held in this somewhat brief five-day span, as will a softball doubles tourney for the first time in the history of this hemisphere-wide event.

WOMEN'S EVENT

Ricky Weisskopf from Bates College will be competing for hosts El Salvador at the Pan Am Fed Cup.

Only three women (one short of the usual four) will be competing for the United States, namely U. S. team veterans Carlin WIng, Louisa Hall and Ivy Pochoda. The latter, who won the 1998 Intercollegiate Individual title as a Harvard senior shortly before decamping to Amsterdam, where she spent a half-dozen years playing on the WISPA tour and writing a book, has recently returned to her native New York. Hall has become a perennial on U. S. teams over the past few years, including the team that won the Pan American Games gold medal two years ago, and her former Harvard teammate Wing has solid international playing experience as well.

Though they won the Pan Am gold two years ago, this squad lacks both Meredeth Quick and Latasha Khan and is therefore less formidable., at least on paper. Lineups are not generally available at this juncture, but contenders for the gold are also likely to include the perennially strong squads from Canada and Mexico.

MEN'S EVENT
The USA men's team, for the first time in well over a decade, is entirely composed of American-born players under the age of 30, possibly a hopeful harbinger of a bright future for U. S. men's squash on the international scene. In fact, two team members, current S. L. Green champion Julian Illingworth and Christopher Gordon, are barely into their early 20's, while Beau River and two-time (2003 and 2004) S. L. Green winner Preston Quick were both members of the vaunted collegiate class of 2000. Ben Desombre will coach the women's team, while the men's squad will be headed by Chris Walker.
This young, strong team will take on potentially strong teams from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Canada, depending on the lineups fielded by each country.

America's collegiate ranks, both present and recently past, will be represented as well in this tournament, a sign of how strong intercollegiate squash has become: in addition to Illingworth, a Yale senior, Bernardo Samper, who graduated from Trinity just last spring after a sparkling intercollegiate career in which he led the Bantams to four national team titles and captured the

2002 Individual crown, is expected to play for his native Colombia, while Bates College sophomore Ricky Weisskopf, one of only two freshman to receive all-American honors last year and the first Bates player ever to receive this designation, has been selected to compete for El Salvador, the host country.

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