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Princeton University Athletics
Coach's Notes... Season Off To Successful Start
December 05, 2003 | Men's Squash
Dec. 5, 2003
Princeton Men's Squash Newsletter
December 1, 2003
Dear Alumni, Parents, and Friends,
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family from Princeton Men's Squash! I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend filled with good cheer and at least a second helping of pumpkin pie!
The Princeton Men's Squash team headed home last Wednesday for a well deserved vacation after a very busy and successful fall season. Already this season, the team has trained and competed in England for ten days, participated in a two-day Ivy League Round-Robin, and just returned last weekend from our opening match at Cornell. I only have good news to report as the squash team begins its journey towards hopefully another successful season!
The men's team, winner of three of the past four Ivy League Championships, three of the past four National Individual Championships, and the 2003 National Five Man Team Championship, sadly said goodbye to the strongest class in Princeton Men's Squash history last spring. We will deeply miss Will Evans, David Yik, Dan Rutherford, and Eric Pearson for all they have accomplished and for all the leadership they have shown us. At the same time, I am excited to welcome our entering freshman class - Vincent Yu, Michael Gilman, Parker Sutton, Brendon Bascom, Tim Callahan and Preston Comey, who may prove to be one of our strongest classes ever! In addition to the freshmen, I am pleased to have back two wonderful seniors leaders, Will Osnato and Aaron Zimmerman, as well as four talented juniors and sophomores, Dent Wilkens, Nate Beck, Rob Siverd, and Will Boothby. In addition, Yasser El Halaby, our defending National Champion, is back for a second year, along with our strongest group of JV players ever. No wonder I have so much fun coming to work every day! This year everyone expected us to go through a "rebuilding year" as Dent Wilkens who played #7 for us in 2002, plays #2 in 2003. Our team doesn't agree with that assessment and we are working hard towards being a legitimate Ivy League contender! On paper we are expected to finish well behind Harvard and Yale, maybe even behind Penn and Cornell, but our goal is to win the Ivy Title. We will do everything we can to succeed. I have attached a copy of our match schedule and I invite you to cheer us on whenever possible!
Season to date...
On October 24, twelve excited squash players flew off to London for our quadrennial trip overseas. After a day to settle in, we headed off to Oxford University for our first full day of sightseeing and competition. What a beautiful place Oxford is and what a wonderful team. Oxford was not sure their team was quite strong enough to compete with us, so they brought in three "ringers" to play #1, #2, and #3. What a great surprise to see our old friend and former #1, Peter Yik '00, waiting for us on court! Peter is currently working for Lehman Brothers in London and plays a terrific game of squash! Yasser El Halaby and Peter have been trying to play for over a year, and they finally got their chance! What a dazzling display they put on, as no shot seemed irretrievable and nicks came from everywhere! After a close first game which El Halaby won 10-8, Yasser went on a tear slowly wearing out our former Intercollegiate Champion before winning 3-0. It was great fun and everyone rose to their feet in appreciation of the wonderful exhibition! We wound up winning the overall match 10-2 and slept very soundly on the van ride home!
The next day we headed off to Cambridge University where we spent a wonderful day sightseeing, shopping, and playing squash before winning our match 11-1. The highlight of the day was attending "Formal Dinner" with our Cambridge friends at Caius College, where the dining hall reminded us of a scene from a Harry Potter movie!
The rest of the week went quickly as we practiced each morning from 9-11 am followed by a sight seeing trip (or sleeping) before we headed off to our evening match. We won or tied all of our matches, beating the Connaught Club and Bishop Stortford, and tying the Redbridge Club and the Lamb's Club.
As we boarded the plane to the U.S., the team reminisced fondly about the wonderful people they had met, and the wonderful sights they had seen. You can be very proud of the team as they did a terrific job representing Princeton University! I also want to thank all of our squash alumni who came out to support the team including Jeff Oakes '75, Arif Sarfraz '76, John MacIntosh '89, Tom Haines '98 and John Kreitler '88!
After a few days of getting re-adjusted to the time change, we headed off to Yale University on October 8 for two days of practice matches with Harvard, Yale and Penn. Our first match was with Harvard, who had the strongest recruiting class of anyone this past year bringing in the world #6 high school player from India as well as the world #12 from Israel. We surprised ourselves by only losing 3-6! Yasser showed why he is the #1 junior in the world by winning 3-0, while Rob Siverd at #8 and Preston Comey at #9, won as well.
After an hour break we took on the University of Pennsylvania, ranked right behind us in the national rankings. This was an important match as many teams expected us to potentially lose to a number of teams ranked below us. We wound up winning 7-2 but the score was deceiving as we won two matches 10-8 in the fifth game! On Sunday morning we played Yale, who had upset Harvard the night before. Yale was missing a few of their players but were still very strong. Our team actually went ahead 2-1 in games in all four of the first matches on court! I started to think that this might turn out okay... until Yale came back to win three of those four matches and seal the victory 6-3. Yasser had another great match beating Yale's star player, Julian Illingworth, in four games.
Last weekend we headed off to Cornell to open our season against #5 Cornell and #6 Western Ontario. Cornell had just beaten Penn the night before 6-3 and felt they had a legitimate chance to beat us. As the large crowd formed behind the courts for introductions, I was a little nervous, knowing that five of our players were playing in their first ever match for Princeton!
I shouldn't have been nervous, as the team responded beautifully winning all ten matches (nine of them 3-0 in games)!
We also beat Western Ontario 7-2 and headed home feeling excited about the outcome and looking forward to the challenges ahead.
We will play two of our three home matches this season on December 6-7. Brown on Saturday, 12/6 at 12 noon followed by Franklin and Marshall College on Sunday, 12/7 at 1:00 p.m. Please come by and cheer on the team as we make our home debut! The women's team will also play two matches on Saturday December 6 against Brown at 2PM followed by F&M at 4pm.
Please come cheer on the team as we take on the best in college squash, and please enjoy our weekly newsletters. If you would rather not receive our newsletter, please reply to this e-mail by writing "Unsubscribe" in the Subject line.
Have a great holiday and I look forward to seeing you soon!
All the best,
Bob Callahan Princeton Men's Squash Coach