A common adage in sports is that one must beat the best to be the best. Looking to prove this rule true, the men's squash team sets out to be the best when it takes on No. 1 Trinity, a squad which has won four consecutive national championships.
The team heads into Saturday's match in Hartford after adding another spectacular year to its record books. Undefeated and crowned Ivy League champs for the 12th time in its history after defeating Harvard last weekend, 7-2, the team has good reason to celebrate – though it should not pop the cork just yet. Its toughest and most crucial match comes against perennial rival Trinity, a merciless opponent.
Princeton comes into the match as underdogs, an unfamiliar place for an undefeated team that lost only eight matches in its seven Ivy League contests this season.
Yet on Saturday the Tigers might find inspiration in their first-place finish at the National Five-Man Championship in mid-December. In the finals of that tournament, Princeton defeated a Trinity squad, 4-1. Though Trinity played the match without two of its best players, Michael Ferreira and John Smith, the Tigers defeated their opponents quite handily on that chill December afternoon.
Freshman Yasser El-Halaby, who has been the team's goto guy throughout the entire season and, it seems, their missing link to greatness, convincingly defeated Trinity's reigning Intercollegiate Individual Champion Bernardo Samper, who is also the Colombian National Champion. After running through the 2001-02 season without losing a single match, Samper learned once again at the hands of El-Halaby what it was to lose, and the Tigers must once again lean on its young freshman if it stands a chance.
The bad news for the Tigers, however, is that Samper will most likely be bumped to No. 2, where he will face senior Will Evans. In Samper's place would play the nation's No. 3 player Michael Ferreira, who most recently defeated Harvard's No. 1, Will Broadbent (No. 10 in the nation), 3-0. That match will surely be the highlight of the afternoon.
But that is not to say that each of the other eight varsity matches won't be special in their own right. Facing Trinity is like facing an international smorgasbord with only the most expensive delicacies on the plate. A quick scanning of its roster finds players from as far as Colombia, Indi, and South Africa. Its players are pure talent.
At No. 1 will most likely be Ferreira, from England; at No. 2 Samper, from Colombia. Nickolas Kyme, from Bermuda, the Swiss Yvan Badan and the South African Regardt Schonborn will most likely round out the top five. The key to the match, for the Tigers at least, will be to dethrone Trinity's best.
"We really need to win four of the top five and then get one win in the bottom five," junior No. 6 Aaron Zimmerman said in thinking of the key to upset the Bantams.
Trinity's bottom four players are equally as impressive, though. Jonathan Smith, a senior from England, will take the court most likely at the No. 6 position, with Nadeem Osman, Pat Malloy and Carl Baglio rounding out the bottom three. Of Trinity's nine players, only Malloy is American, a testament to the international talent of the Trinity squad.
Saturday's match, for all intents and purposes, is the National Championship. It pits the first and second-ranked teams in the nation against each other in the ultimate squash match-up. Though next weekend Princeton hosts the Intercollegiate Squash Association Championships, whichever team takes Saturday's match will, regardless of the results in the ISA championships, be named at least co-national champions.
"Harvard and Yale are really our biggest rivals, and the Ivy League championships is really our biggest goal," Zimmerman said. "But it would be great if we could beat Trinity."
Sunday the Tigers march to Annapolis, either bedecked in the glory of a champion or cast in the shadow of a runner-up, to take on Navy. Either way, Princeton will be playing in front of an honorable crowd, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld '54 will be present to watch the Tigers make easy work of the Midshipmen.
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