CSA
Men's Finals 2011
25-27 Feb, Boston & Cambridge, Usa
Final:
Trinity 5 Yale 4
With the final tied
at 4-all Jamaica's Chris Binnie won the deciding tie 3/1
to give Trinity a 13th straight title ...
Finals – Day
3 – Sunday, February 27, 2011
Final: (1) Trinity bt (2) Yale 5-4
3/4 Playoff: (3) Princeton bt (4) Rochester 5-4
5/6 Playoff: (6) Harvard bt (5) Cornell 5-4
7/8 Playoff: (7) Dartmouth bt (8) Franklin & Marshall 7-2
Lucky Thirteen for
Trinity Yale narrowly misses adding Men’s title to
last week’s National Women’s team title win Sarah Cortes reports
By the thinnest margin yet, Trinity came through once again
victorious and secured its 13th straight title in the 2011
Men’s College Squash National Team Championships.
With the score at 4-4, spectators at Murr stared transfixed
at the splendid livestream on their smartphones.
Technology-less fans pitifully craned their necks and hoped
for x-ray vision to see through the solid wall of bodies
presented by the thick crowd, while those in front had to
politely resort to actually watching the match before them,
sneaking glances at the livestream when they though no one
was looking.
At the other match locations, mothers, fathers, teammates
and even the coaches were spotted “cheating” on the
Dartmouth and F&M players by stealing glances at the
Trinity-Yale live videostream in their palm devices. During
the nailbiting 9th and final match, other matches underway
temporarily halted as players themselves dawdled between
their own games in matches already underway in hopes of
witnessing potential Trinity-Yale carnage.
Trinity started the match riding an oft-referenced 242-match
winning streak, having gone 19-0 this season. Yale ranked
#2, having lost only to Trinity (6-3) a few weeks ago, and
looked to avenge that loss. Today’s lineup was somewhat
different than that in January’s match, with players on both
teams moving up and down the ladder like an unsuccessful
speed dating shuffle. With those changes, the possibility
that Yale would end Trinity’s streak on this snowy day was
in the air. Indeed, as Yale pulled out wins to level the
match score at 4-all, coaches on both sides must have
reluctantly dusted off their gracious concession speeches.
The deciding match fell to Chris Binnie for Trinity and
Richard Dodd for Yale. Dodd nearly took the first but must
have started daydreaming about his potential to make
history, as he fell 11-9. As Dodd closed in on game ball in
the second, Binnie stayed focused and sensibly pulled out
the game, but victory seemed far from certain. Indeed, Dodd
took the third to bring the score to 2-1, and Trinity never
seemed so beatable. Binnie, preferring to leave the facility
intact, came to his senses and put hopes of a Yale victory
to rest by pulling away in the fourth, at which point the
crowd at Murr rushed roaring onto the court.
The
other matches in the A Division were equally close. In
Franklin & Marshall’s match against Dartmouth, the 7-2 score
didn’t reflect the closeness of the match, since 4 of
Dartmouth’s wins were eked out 3-2, including more than 1
tiebreaker. Hansi Weins holds the distinction, as a
foreign-born coach, of fielding the most “American” team in
the Potter Division. His sole player admitting to foreign
education, Maycock from Bermuda and Wycliffe, stands out in
a sea of lads from the likes of Exeter, Tenafly and
Greenwich.
Depending on your point of view, Hansi might either
demonstrate that foreign recruitment over the past decade
has raised the level of squash for native-born Americans and
so benefitted everyone, or that complaints of unfair
practices in foreign “amateur” recruitment are greatly
exaggerated. Or, just that Hani is doing something worth
taking a closer look at.
Considering that Dartmouth had rolled over F&M 9-0 at their
regular match earlier in the season, today’ result
represented a victory of sorts for John While’s team. F&M’s
relentless improvement from match to match and its debut in
the A Division (Potter Cup) this year, while Penn and
Western Ontario languish in the B Division, mark its
trajectory for next season.
Trinity & Yale set up final showdown by Sarah Cortes
The blitzkrieg of squash continued unabated yesterday, as
there was no refuge from the hundreds of matches at what
seemed like every squash court in town.
From Belmont Hill to Harvard , from the Union Boat Club to
Northeastern University to MIT, the 63 college men’s teams
battled out 9 matches apiece in 32 team pairings, about 300
matches involving almost 700 players, when you count the 2
alternates dragged around for contingencies.
Upsets to the seeding similarly were as scarce as free court
space in a snowstorm, although four teams did manage to beat
both the odds and their opponents by thin margins. Notably,
the following four matches were upsets:
(19) Bowdoin bt. (18) Amherst 8-1 – C Division
(35) MIT bt. (39) California 5-4 - E Division
(40) Vanderbilt bt (37) Kenyon 5-4 - E Division
(44) Bucknell bt. (41) Vassar 7-2 - F Division
In the G (Hawthorn) Division, female players opened eyes as
Hannah Gottfredson from the University of Southern
California (USC) showed Zachary Miller from Siena how it’s
done with a convincing 3-0 win, 11-2, 11-8, 11-4.
Speaking of snow, a steady snowfall blanketed he region
after play completed, ensuring a beautiful backdrop to
Sunday’s Potter (A) Division matches:
(1) Trinity v. (2) Yale 12:00pm, Harvard
(8) Franklin & Marshall v. (7) Dartmouth 3:00pm,
Northeastern University
(4) Rochester v. (3) Princeton 3:00pm, Harvard
(5) Cornell v. (6) Harvard 3:00pm, Harvard
Top seeds through to
semis by Sarah Cortes
63
teams of 11 college men each descended on Boston and
Cambridge today for the 2011 Men’s College Squash National
Team Championships - a total of approximately 700
competitors have commenced the season-culminating play at 5
locations around Boston.
Competition is divided into eight divisions with draws of 8
teams each. With only a few matches left uncompleted at
press time, Kenyon, 37th seed, was the lone upset against
Boston College, seeded just a hair higher at 36.
The other over 60 matchups remarkably uniformly followed
seeding, and it remains to be seen whether play on Saturday,
the second day of the tournament, may see some shakeups in
the order.
Franklin & Marshall, coached by John White, rose into
the A division this year for the first time, a feat
unthinkable only a few years ago. F&M displaced
University of Pennsylvania, coached by Jack Wyant.
Formerly obscure University of Rochester is obscure
no more, under Martin Heath, its presence in the top tier
clearly established. Harvard’s star continues to fade
in the face of the expansion of the number of teams and the
firmer inroads into international recruiting by colleges all
over the United States.
Trinity continued its dominance, taking a step closer
to a 13th consecutive victory under Paul Assaiante.
CSA
Men's Finals 2011
63
teams of 11 college men each descended on Boston and
Cambridge today for the 2011 Men’s College Squash National
Team Championships - a total of approximately 700
competitors have commenced the season-culminating play at 5
locations around Boston. 
