In recent weeks, though, the upcoming competition has been overshadowed by behind-the-scenes sparring over the selection of the team itself. (see report on the trials) An appeal of the selection process had been made by the family of Julia Beaver, who had secured legal counsel to handle their appeal.

The basis of her appeal had been a claim by the Beavers that Latasha Khan and Shabana Khan had not put in their best efforts in the trials. The USSRA executive committee, however, after exhaustive and careful review of both videotapes of the trials and historical information on the play of both Khans, decided that the appeal was without merit.

USSRA Rejected the Appeal

Coming off a #9 finish in Stuttgart last year in the world championships, the US women have a good opportunity to score well in the PanAm Games this summer; though they will have a fight on their hands to improve on their finish in Germany last year. During last year's competition, neither Shabana nor Latasha Khan, the USA's highest ranking WISPA players, were on the team. So with all of the strongest USA players available this year, a stronger team on paper could be put together.

However, Controversy brewed all spring over the selections and selection process for the USA women's team. This activity came to an interesting climax at the USA trials last weekend at the Chatham Club in Chatham NJ. In extremely closely contested play, Belknap, L Khan and S Khan were selected to join Demer Holleran on the team, with Julia Beaver losing out in a game's won tabulation tie-breaker.

The USSRA has been pushing the USA squash community rapidly toward a more open and transparent approach towards the teams' selection. This is absolutely necessary both for Squash's position vis-a-vis the olympics and the USOC. Additionally, it offers the promise that women's squash will open up more in the coming year, such that players who developed outside of the traditional "hotbeds" -- Philadelphia, Wilmington, Brooklyn NY, and the Ivy League schools, feel that they have an even chance for these international events. The new process is the correct one in order to bring squash out of the protected, and in some people's view rarified, environment that it incubated in for some years. Congratulations to the USSRA for the new approach and to the women for their participation. The difficulty in this case is attributable to the extremely close results of the competition.

The trial process has led to some interesting results in both the womens and mens teams this spring.

The trials taking place this weekend were the outcome of this new approach. They constituted a round robin playoff between the invited players, with the results to be determined first on matches won in the round robin, and then based on number of games won as a tie-breaker -- as it transpired the tie-breaker needed to be invoked. A number of themes developed to the delight of the interested observer:

Third representing opening up of womens squash, the Khans of Seattle, ranked #23 (Latasha) and #27 (Shabana) by WISPA present the strength of west coast, non-ivy-league squash.

As of Monday June 14th, the matches had been played and the results tallied. Demer Holleran had been excused from the trials and was an automatic team selection. Ivy Pochoda had ruled herself out by her three losses on Friday and Saturday, but the rest of the team is not yet announced by Coach Sharon Bradey and Team Manager Beth Rasin. However Berkeley Belknap was sure to be selected based on her 3-1 record for the weekend. Also, Latasha and Shabana Khan ended up ahead of Julia Beaver, based on a games-won tie-breaker system. Beaver appealed the results of the trial and the USSRA executive committe and women's selection committees spent two weeks in review prior to confirming the results of the trial.

With the appeal now out of the way, Sharon Bradey will be able to focusing on team preparation.

June 29 1999