Twenty-Six Years In, Ramsay Reflects on Continued Success
4/13/2020
Gail Ramsay’s résumé at Princeton is proof that something can be both impressive and not so unusual.
She just completed her 26th season, making her one of 14 coaches in Princeton athletic history to lead a team for at least that long. Two of the other 14 are still leading teams at Princeton, in women’s lacrosse coach Chris Sailer (33 seasons) and men’s track and field coach Fred Samara (44 indoor seasons, 42 outdoor), the all-time dean of Princeton coaches.
Two others retired only in the last few years, in Susan Teeter, who led the women’s swimming and diving program for 33 years, and Peter Farrell, who was the head women’s track and field coach for 38.
Ramsay’s program has won nine national titles, including five team titles and four individuals, adding to a Princeton total that now stands at 206.
Above, the 2009 Tigers won the Ivy and CSA national titles.
With the program’s reach, the sun really never sets on the Princeton women’s squash team. When it’s noon in Egypt, the home of newly recognized All-America Raneem El Torky, it’s 8 p.m. in eastern Australia, home of freshman Anna Goodman, 3 a.m. in Vancouver, home of sophomore Andrea Toth, and 6 a.m. in the Northeast, home to 10 members of the 2019-20 team.
It’s a reach that looks like the university’s overall, with the Class of 2023 representing 50 countries, 49 states and D.C. (No Vermonters in the current freshman class, since you were wondering).
So while it’s not unusual for a coach to guide a Princeton program through decades, win at the national level and recruit at the international level, what Gail Ramsay has been able to do at Princeton still stands out.
The Collegiate Squash Association, whose titles Princeton competes for every year, thinks so. Since 2002, the nation’s top players have competed for the CSA individual championship in the Ramsay Draw and for the Ramsay Cup, named after Gail Ramsay completed a career sweep of four titles as a player at Penn State and coached Princeton to those nine total national titles. Since the individual tournament began in 1965, no player had won four individual championships until Ramsay did, and only one has since, with Harvard’s Amanda Sobhy completing her career sweep in 2015.
The tournament took Ramsay’s name a year after Tiger alumna Julia Beaver ’01 won her third straight title.
“It’s a tremendous honor to have that draw named after me,” Ramsay said. “It’s quite a recognition and confirmation, in a lot of ways, of what it was like for me, just as other athletes are trying to compete hard and do the best they can and achieve. It’s always an honor and a humbling experience for me. It would be great to have a Princeton woman win that championship while I’m coaching, but for me it’s really more about their experience and how they approach it, and developing their games and them as athletes throughout their four years at Princeton.”
Ramsay’s track record of doing just that at Princeton is unquestionable. It’s been more than a decade since Ramsay became the program’s all-time winningest head coach, surpassing Betty Constable, who led the team from its first season in 1971 until 1991. Only former colleague Bob Callahan ’77, who won 316 matches over 32 seasons leading the men’s program, has won more squash matches than Ramsay as a Princeton coach. At 264 wins, Ramsay could surpass Callahan in about four seasons.
Ramsay’s teams have won Ivy League titles in all three decades she’s led the program, in 1997, 2007, ’09 and 2013. The CSA national team championships came in bunches a decade apart, winning back-to-back in 1998 and ’99 and then three in a row from 2007-09. The 2020 season concluded with a national runner-up finish with a lineup that included just one senior overall and none in the top six.
The season saw Princeton tie a program record with four All-Ivy League honorees, as many as Princeton won in 1992, 1997 and 1998, putting the last three occurrences of four All-Ivy honorees during the Ramsay era. Caroline Spahr, one of those 2020 All-Ivy honorees, was Princeton’s third consecutive Ivy Rookie of the Year, the first time a run of that length has happened in program history and the eighth time a Tiger has won the honor. The last seven of those have come under Ramsay.
So, as she passes the quarter-century mark, Ramsay keeps on delivering results for the program. All she’s got to do is scour the world to keep it going.
“I think there’s some challenges the international student-athletes have, just getting the right information on how to be ready and focused for the process of being recruited,” Ramsay said. “For me, it’s finding where the hot spots are and finding the two or three athletes who are really going to be successful here at Princeton, both on the court and off the court, which is really the biggest challenge.”
The search brings together top squash players from across the world with those from the megalopolis in which Princeton sits in the middle. It’s brought together Woodrow Wilson School students and econ majors with those who came to Princeton to study anthropology and engineering.
“It comes down to a pretty small group of people to recruit and I have to help them find their way here," Ramsay said. "The American scene is quite deep in athletes and they’re very often excellent students, and they hit their goals early and they’re in good position by the time their recruiting years come up, so it’s competitive with our American group of players.”
I keep trying to find those people who would really appreciate the experience that Princeton offers academically and the opportunity to play as a Princeton Tiger.Princeton coach Gail Ramsay
As Ramsay recalled her memories from her time with the program, she highlighted alums who are still a couple months from embarking on plans, like senior Morgan Steelman, soon to be off to graduate school across the pond at Cambridge, and those who are well into making their way in the world, like Beaver, now the director of the Division of Oncology for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Having also touched the lives of Tigers in all stages of realizing their professional goals, Ramsay is on her own such path, having served as a club coach and coming to Princeton in 1994 from coaching at Williams.
“I think Princeton Athletics, in our sport particularly, has always been the pinnacle of places to work and coach,” Ramsay said. “I actually at one point was thinking, if I continue coaching, I would love to end up at Princeton, and that was fairly early in my non-college coaching years.”
The program Ramsay took over had started under Constable, who won 12 national titles before alumna Emily Goodfellow ’76, the 1975 CSA individual champ and part of the 1974 CSA team title winner under Constable, led it for three years.
It’s been up to Ramsay to keep that going, and while she’s been able to see some of the same faces year after year with the same goals for their Princeton programs, she’s also seen newer colleagues come through and continue the tradition of an overall Princeton athletic program that won its 500th Ivy League title this winter.
“I think the basic thing is that Princeton attracts the best of the best,” Ramsay said. “(Princeton coaches) find the athletes and the students who will appreciate the opportunities they get here and the resources that are available to them and the overall experience on the team, and I think the continuity of having the same coach who is successful really draws attention to our programs. I think we have amazing coaches who are so dedicated and committed to Princeton, but mostly to the success of their athletes, not just on the court but in the classroom and their futures too.”
