December 16, 2002

El Halaby Stays on the Offensive against Samper Photo © 2002 Ron Beck

Yasser el-Halaby, the Egyptian freshman sensation who had been forced to miss the first several Princeton varsity matches this fall while an inquiry into his intercollegiate eligibility was successfully resolved, scored a convincing victory over Trinity sophomore and reigning Intercollegiate Individual champion Bernardo Samper at the No. 1 position in this afternoon's final round to clinch this year's USSRA Five-Man Team Championship for the Tigers, who dethroned the two-time champs on their home Kellner Courts in Hartford, CT by a final tally of four matches to one.

The win avenged Princeton's loss to Trinity, also by a 4-1 margin, in the same arena in last year's Five-Man final and gave coach Bob Callahan's crew their second such
title in the past four years.

The team format that held sway throughout the three-day, 16-team A Championship required the Nos 4 and 5 players to compete first on the two courts that were allotted for each meet, followed by the Nos. 1 and 2 players, and finishing up with the No. 3's. The decision not to simply ascend the ladder from No. 5 through 1 is borne out of a desire to ensure that the No. 1 match cannot wind up as a "dead rubber," with the team outcome already decided. Such a fate would have been inappropriate indeed in any match involving players of the caliber of el-Halaby and Samper, the Colombian national champion, who went through all of the 2001-2002 season without losing a single match in intercollegiate play in leading his Bantam teammates to the national championship in both the regular-season and postseason Potter Cup tournament, as well as this Five-Man team event.

Princeton, last year's Ivy League champions, had finished second to Trinity in all three of those competitions and its top player Will Evans had also been runner-up to Samper in the end-of-season individual tourney. But it had been a decidedly distant second, with Trinity consolidating its previously noted 4-1 Five-Man final with even more emphatic 8-1 decisions first on Princeton's home Jadwin Gymnasium courts in the dual-meet in mid-February and then at month's-end in the Potter event at Harvard. All of that recent history, however, seemed a long way away this afternoon, during which the Tigers, top-seeded by virtue of the absence of Trinity stars Michael Ferreira and John Smith from this weekend's action, stomped onto the
home turf of their nemesis, battered them into submission beneath a wave of
black-clad brilliance and triumphantly rode away like the invading armies of Greek mythology after they have sacked an enemy town.

Trinity head coach Paul Assaiante ruefully noted in a gracious post-mortem how much more motivation Princeton had evinced than his own team, and on how many fronts this under-rated element had presented itself---in how much earlier the Tiger players had arrived for a pre-match practice session, in how much more enthusiastic they had seemed during the player introduction ceremonies (a marked contrast to its counterpart on Jadwin's main exhibition court last February, whose funereal atmosphere had prompted Coach Callahan to comment to a friend that it sounded as though someone had died), in how much more fervently the players who weren't on-court encouraged and coached those who were.

This time Callahan, to his credit, had his troops sky-high for this High Noon summit, and they were to receive a major lift in the opening shift, courtesy their No. 5 man Eric Pearson, who rescued his team from what would have been a formidable two-match deficit that was potentially created when Trinity No. 4 Reggie Schonborn decisively defeated Dan Rutherford in three games to give the Bantams a quick 1-0 advantage. Pearson and his Bantam opponent Pat Malloy have both won some important matches for their respective schools during their varsity careers-without Pearson's five-game victory over Yale's Chris Olsen last February with the team score tied at four matches apiece the Tigers would not have taken last season's Ivy League crown, and as a freshman two years ago, Malloy came up with a clutch win over New York's Eric Christiansen in the last match on the court and the team score tied 2-2
in the Five-Man final.

This time Malloy rallied from two games to one down to force a fifth game in which he then surged to leads of 4-0 and eventually 8-2, the victory and a consequent commanding 2-0 Trinity lead on his racquet. Whether Princeton still would have ultimately prevailed anyway had it not been for Pearson's incredible comeback victory, in which he saved eight total match-balls before winning 10-8, is certainly subject to speculation: the Princeton wins at Nos. 2 and 3 from captain and 2001 Intercollegiate Individual champion David Yik and his senior classmate Evans were extremely decisive, as was el-Halaby's over Samper, and this trio of Tiger tallies,
which would have been sufficient to ensure the overall victory even with a
loss by Pearson, presumably were independent of the match at No. 5. But one
can never discount the dynamics of team momentum, especially among
collegians, and there is no doubt that Pearson's heroics infused his teammates with a dose of adrenaline that galvanized their triumphant efforts throughout the remainder of the afternoon.

Yik for one had been locked in a close battle with Trinity's Nickolas Kyme, the Bermudian who has played so well this entire autumn, including in the compelling defeat he had pinned on the Harvard Club of New York's Richard Chin in the semi-finals Saturday afternoon. He had eked out the first game and forged a small margin early in the second when word arrived of Pearson's exploits in the adjoining court. Buoyed by this uplifting news, he almost immediately thereafter sprinted away from Kyme and broke open what had initially been a tight competition. His eventual win put Princeton just one victory shy of the requisite three team triumphs and swung everyone's attention to the clash between the titans el-Halaby and Samper, who by then were in the second game of their match in the court vacated by Pearson and
Malloy.

Each of the two No. 1's had already encountered some adversity this season, Samper in unexpected loses to Yale freshman superstar Julian Illingworth on a racquetball-width (i.e. 20 feet wide instead of the normal 21) court in a tournament in Richmond and to his compatriot Alex Montoya in the Central America Games, and el-Halaby in falling behind Illingworth 2-0 before rallying to victory in the Ivy League Scrimmage last month and in dealing with an eligibility uncertainty that had been in the background ever since he arrived on campus this past September. The determinative vote earlier in the week among Ivy League administrators that completely cleared him for all future intercollegiate competition had to have had a liberating effect on this exceptional performer, who by his mere presence has cleared buoyed the confidence of the entire program. Now with an opportunity at hand to both return this coveted title to Jadwin's main trophy display chest after
its several-years sojourn in Hartford and simultaneously fire the first salvo
in what figures to be a riveting rivalry during the next few seasons with
Samper, el-Halaby would not be denied.

Rarely if ever in the history of American squash has a match between two college players, much less underclassmen, been played at such a high level. Samper brought forward the full arsenal that had so dominated the college ranks throughout his dream 2001-2002 campaign, and for long stretches of the four-game summit it was at least the equal of anything el-Halaby could throw at him in return. But the latter's otherworldly retrieving ability and deception, and as well his capacity to suddenly lift his attack another perceptible notch when he seemed already to be at full bore, accounted for quick flurries of point streaks that defined the course of every game and ultimately sealed the match-from 2-2 to 9-3 in the first, from 2-8 down all
the way to 7-8 in the second before a Samper winning drop shot and a stroke call against el-Halaby evened the match at one game all, to 7-1 in the third game, the winning of which gave him a two games to one lead, and a sprint to the finish line from 0-2 to 9-3 in the final fourth.

Samper had played his best squash during the early portion of that game, but once el-Halaby had opened up a small mid-game cushion, his spirit had finally been broken, and his tinned the last few somewhat anti-climactic points way, fatigued both mentally and physically by that time by the severe direction-changes his opponent's deception had continually induced and frustrated a well by el-Halaby's relentless ability to get to would-be Samper winners and often come up with punishing replies. el-Halaby's win rendered meaningless the Evans-Yvan Badan match at No. 3, in which the former, who has been sub-par all fall, including dead rubber Saturday losses to New York's Alec Decker and New Jersey's Vineet Asthana, made good on the early lead he had already established by the time the el-Halaby-Samper match ended and finished the Swiss-born freshman in three decisive games.

The Princeton caravan exited town leaving a transformed intercollegiate picture and a dethroned and thoroughly deflated Trinity squad in its wake. As Coach Assaiante himself spontaneously acknowledged, the dynasty that he and his players have built over the past five years has now for the first time come under serious threat from a college rival, which administered a wake-up call to which the entire program will have to respond with an upgraded degree of commitment and effort if they hope to extend their streaks of four consecutive Potter Cups and five straight NISRA championships. By late this winter, when the college season reaches its culmination, it will be known for sure whether this past weekend's results represented a painful but positive bump in what for years has been a smooth Trinity victory road or the first definitive act in the tumultuous fate that eventually befalls every sports
dynasty once the motivation that fueled their run has dissipated.

Final Recap
Princeton d Trinity, 4-1

(1) Yasser el-halaby (P) d Bernardo Samper (T), 3-1.
(2) David Yik (P) d Nickolas Kyme (T), 3-0.
(3) Will Evans (P) d Yvan Badan (T), 3-0.
(4) Reggie Schonborn (T) d Dan Rutherford (P), 3-0.
(5) Eric Pearson (P) d Pat Malloy (T), 3-2.

[complete results]