Top Male Athletes Of The Decade: No. 1 Yasser El Halaby ?06
December 30, 2009 | Men's Squash
It was quite a statement. In the world of Princeton athletics, the name of Bill Bradley should not be invoked lightly, let alone to talk about athletes who haven't even attended one class at the school yet.
Now, as Princeton crowns its No. 1 male athlete of the last decade, the honor goes most deservingly to the young man from Egypt about whom Callahan gushed a little more than seven years ago.
Yasser El Halaby would go on to be a four-time individual national collegiate squash champion, something no other male player in the sport has ever achieved (in fact, the only woman to win four championships is Gail Ramsay, now the Princeton women's coach).
Along the way, El Halaby transformed squash from a somewhat obscure sport into a must-see at Jadwin Gym and himself from the No. 1 player on the team into something of a rock star.
El Halaby went 54-6 in his career, including 20-0 in the individual postseason tournament. For his 20 wins in the individual championships, his game record was 60-4. He won all four of his championship matches 3-0, and he won eight of his 12 games in the national finals by either 9-0, 9-1 or 9-2.
As a junior and senior, El Halaby faced an opponent in the final who had defeated him during the regular season. His junior year saw him beat Julian Illingworth of Yale 9-6, 9-2, 9-1 after Illingworth had won their previous match.
He saved his best for last, though. He came into the tournament his senior year as the No. 2 seed after a regular-season loss to Harvard's Siddharth Suchde, but he came back to wipe out the top-seeded Suchde 9-2, 9-0, 9-6 in just 39 minutes.