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Americans Poised to Improve on 17th place finish

By Rob Dinerman July 12 .
Photos by Vaughn Winchell, Ron Beck © 2001 (top: Walker, middle: Karlen, bottom: Lewis)

ASSAIANTE SETS FORTH OBJECTIVE SELECTION CRITERIA
Bolstered by a major infusion of talent and turnout from the renowned college Class of 2000 and riding the momentum and interest generated by the best finish in more than a decade the last time the event was held two years ago, the USSRA will conduct its try-out for the American team in the 2001 World Squash Championships at the Westchester Squash Club in Mamaroneck, NY during the four-day period from August 9-12.

Eight contestants, who have emerged by fulfilling the strict selection criteria laid out by USA Coach Paul Assaiante and the USSRA Selection Committee, will vie for the four available team positions, though all eight will likely get the opportunity to represent the U.S. in international team competition this autumn.

The reason for the foregoing phenomenon lies in a scheduling oddity in which the Pan American tourney, scheduled in El Salvador from October 3-14, concludes less than a week before the World event begins in Melbourne, Australia.

Understandably concerned about such a tight and substantial turnaround, Coach Assaiante plans to strongly discourage those qualifying for the four coveted spots available for Melbourne from first playing in the Pan American event and thus risking "leaving their legs in South America," as he puts it, and it is therefore likely that the four who fail to make the team will at least have a consolation prize of representing the United States in El Salvador.

One refreshing aspect of the upcoming try-out is that the merit system will fully prevail. This has not always been the case in American team selection over the years. A particularly glaring exception, also as it happens for an Australia-hosted world team championship, occurred in 1979, when a contestant who placed dead last(out of eight players for four available spots) was actually awarded a position on the team when a fifth team spot was mysteriously "created" and he was selected to occupy this impromptu slot ahead of those who had defeated him!

Other similar(though usually not quite as brazen)controversies have frequently surrounded subsequent decisions on this delicate and occasionally political topic, and Coach Assaiante, now in his fourth year in this prestigious position and with a background of several decades of playing and coaching during which he has always been respected for fairness and integrity, was resolved to have this year's team membership determined through a process whose equity no one could question.

To that end, the criteria to participate in the team trials were widely circulated more than a year ago---the top eight "eligible" rankees would be invited to attend, and to be eligible one had to play in a minimum of three PSA/NA satellite tournaments AND play in the S. L. Green tournament, also known as the U. S. Championships in Seattle this past February. Demonstrating the trend to younger stars and, perhaps, to the quality of the USSRA Junior and NISRA Intercollegiate programs, no fewer than five of the eight-Tim Wyant, Beau Rivers, Preston Quick, Dave McNeely and Peter Karlen-are either current (in Karlen's case) or very recent (in the case of the other four, all of whom graduated in 2000) college stars.

The fact that the other three members---S.L. Green winner Damian Walker, his co-finalist Richard Chin and '98 S.L. Green finalist Mark Lewis---are all age 30 or over is testimony both to the staying power of these three performers but also to the somewhat disturbing paucity of American players in their mid- and late-20's who have the time and/or interest to seriously pursue the international game This is definitely an issue the USSRA will have to address at some point, for this enormous void, coming at a time of one's life when a squash player theoretically should be in his (or her) prime, is a matter for major concern for a sport that is trying to grow.

Based on their play during the 2000-2001 season, and mirroring as well the results of the 2001 S. L. Green tourney, the players have been ranked 1-8 as follows: Walker, Chin, Wyant, Rivers, Quick, Karlen, McNeely and Lewis. Those seasonal rankings will count 55% towards an individual's overall score, with the remaining 45% to be based on his performance during the team try-out. In the trials themselves, the players will be divided into two four-man pools, which Coach Assaiante will try to make as evenly matched as possible. There will then be a round-robin, with each contestant playing all three others in his pool. Then the top finisher from one pool will play his counterpart from the other pool to determine the No. 1 and No. 2 overall finishers and the fourth-place finishers from each pool will play eachother for the No. 7 and No. 8 slots. As a hedge against one pool being stronger than the other, the second- and third-place finishers from each pool will then "cross-play" i.e. the second-place finisher from one pool will play the third-place finisher from the other pool, with tiebreakers if necessary of games won and lost.

When all that is completed and the first- through the eighth-place finishers of the team trial have thus been determined, each player will have a point score for his finish and point score for his ranking. The two point scores will be added up (factoring in the 55%-45% element ), with the four players with the highest overall point scores going to Melbourne.

There will be at least one weekend-long team practice in September, between the trials and the actual world competition, but the exact team order will be determined not by anything that occurs there but rather by how players perform in the individual tournament, which fortuitously occurs right before the team event. Especially in a gruelling sport like softball squash, the level of one's game can vary from one month to another and Coach Assaiante, eager to have the U.S. Team improve on its encouraging seventeenth-place in '99 after years of being mired in the low- and mid-20's, wants to have a line-up that best affords his team the chance to further improve its standing.

Assaiante himself has experienced great coaching success at the Intercollegiate level, having taken the reins of a mediocre program at Trinity College prior to the 1994-95 season and developed what is rapidly becoming a dynasty that has gone undefeated in both the regular season and the NISRA Tournament Championships for the past three years. A strong showing on the world squash stage would give a global perspective to Assaiante's intercollegiate coaching accomplishments, and he clearly is eager to seize this opportunity to make his goal a reality this October.

….Stay tuned for day-to-day coverage of the team trials next month and the actual championships in the fall.

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