Toppling the Trinity Dynasty

There’s no more “waiting for next time” for the Harvard men’s squash team. After a year of preparation, the Crimson will have its last chance this weekend at making “next time” this time.

Ever since the Crimson lost 5-4 to Trinity in last year’s championship match, Harvard has believed that it is just a matter of time until it unseats the six-year reigning champions of college squash.

The Crimson came within a single point of being national champions a year ago when then-freshman Garnett Booth’s match shockingly turned on a series of questionable calls from the official against then-Trinity captain, Pat Malloy. Booth ended losing his match, which turned out to be a crushing blow for Harvard, as neither then-freshman Jason De Lierre nor James Bullock ’04 could get the Crimson a crucial fifth win.

But as much as the despair caused tears for Harvard last year, there was the hope that they were right there with the Bantams and that next year it would end differently.

Now next year has arrived and things look all too familiar in the landscape of college squash. Trinity comes into this weekend’s CSA National Championships as the No.1 team in the country—its winning streak now up to 122 matches. Harvard, once again, is No.2.

Add to this that the Bantams beat the Crimson soundly in their much hyped regular season meeting 8-1, and you begin to wonder whether all that much has really changed.

“It was a little bit disappointing,” said Booth of the Crimson’s struggles against Trinity in the past. “But we’re getting healthy now so we’re confident.”

Before it even has a chance to play Trinity for the title, Harvard will have to get through two other matches. In the quarterfinals on Friday, the Crimson will play No. 7 Cornell and if all goes as expected it will play No. 3 Yale on Saturday in the semi-finals. Harvard beat the Bulldogs 6-3 in the Ivy Championship match on Feb. 12.

Trinity, meanwhile, will face Dartmouth in the quarterfinals and then the winner of the Princeton-University of Western Ontario match in the semis.

Assuming that both Harvard and Trinity both get to the finals on Sunday, the Crimson will once again be faced with trying to find five wins against the deepest team in the country.

Just as was the case in their first meeting this season, Harvard will likely need to get four of those wins from the top of the ladder. Sophomores Siddharth Suchde and Ilan Oren, junior Will Broadbent, and senior Michael Blumberg provide Harvard’s best shot at staying competitive with the Bantams.

However, only Blumberg managed to get a win in the first meeting, and the ability of the Crimson’s other premier players to join Blumberg will go a long way to determining who leaves the Murr Center with the Potter Cup on Sunday evening.

“I know we lost 8-1 so everyone expects our morale to be down,” Suchde said. “This year we have more experience [than last year]. In the first match [against Trinity] we had just finished exams…but I think we have a much better chance now.”

Similar to the circumstances entering the first meeting between the two squads, Harvard’s best chance at getting a victory in the lower half of the draw likely comes from either Booth or captain Asher Hochberg.

Everything will have to break right for the Crimson to be victorious—something that hasn’t happened against Trinity in over six years.

—Staff writer David H. Stearns can be reached at stearns@fas.harvard.edu.