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Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Men's Squash Claims League Title As Top Player Looks To Repeat History
February 23, 2006 | Men's Squash
Feb. 23, 2006
PRINCETON - Senior Dent Wilkens was playing broomball at the time that Harvard No. 3 player Ilan Oren was finishing up a 3-0 win at Yale. Little did Wilkens know how important Oren's win would be to him, as that match clinched an eventual 6-3 win for the Harvard men's squash team over Yale and also clinched Princeton a share of its 13th Ivy League championship.
Wilkens, one of three seniors in the starting lineup, found out later in the evening. Head coach Bob Callahan found out while he was working on the player seedings for next weekend's national individual tournament. The 6-3 Harvard win ensured that three teams would end league play with matching 5-1 records. Interestingly, each of the three teams sharing the title won the critical match on the road; prior to Harvard's win at Yale, the Bulldogs had defeated Princeton 5-4 in Jadwin Gym and Princeton defeated Harvard 5-4 in Cambridge, Mass.
"it is nice to finish the year with a piece of the title," said Wilkens, who was perfect in the regular season for Princeton. "I think, more importantly, it gives the rest of the team something to build on as they work towards next season and another run at the national title. I have great respect for both Nate [Beck] and Yasser [El Halaby], and I'm honored to finish my Princeton career sharing an Ivy title with both of them."
The title is the 13th overall for Princeton and the second for all three seniors, each of whom were starters for the 2002-03 team that won the outright league title. Similarly, the 2005-06 team had a trio of freshmen it relied on throughout the season in Mauricio Sanchez, Kimlee Wong and Hesham El Halaby, each of whom will be in the top draw of the national individual championships next weekend.
Of course, the Princeton player everybody will be watching will be the older El Halaby brother. Yasser won each of the last three national titles and has dropped only three of 48 total games in those three championship runs. No male player has ever won four national titles, but if El Halaby is to do it, he'll have to do it as the No. 2 seed for the first time in his career. The top seed next weekend will be Harvard No. 1 Siddharth Suchde, who completed a perfect season and defeated El Halaby earlier in the year. Suchde has taken one of the three games from the Princeton senior tri-captain in the past national championships, but he has also been eliminated by him in each of the last two tournaments.
El Halaby will begin preparation for next weekend by attempting to qualify for the prestigious Tournament of Champions in New York City. El Halaby became the first amateur ever to qualify for the top-level tournament when he did so in 2004 by winning two matches.
Regardless of this weekend's results, Callahan looks forward to watching his senior standout compete for history next weekend. And he was happy to see Harvard make a little history for Princeton Wednesday night.
"I'm really happy for our team to have a rewarding finish to the season and an Ivy League title," Callahan said. "These guys worked hard and I couldn't be happier for them to get the title."