When Trinity, the winner of the last 10 men’s squash national championships, comes marching into New Jersey riding a 198-match winning streak to challenge the four-time defending Ivy League champion Tigers, all bets are off.
Coming off a 9-0 drubbing of No. 5 Harvard to win the Ivy title on Saturday, No. 2 Princeton is preparing to host No. 1 Trinity, a team it has never beaten — a team with the longest winning streak in intercollegiate sports.
Though the numbers appear daunting for the Tigers (10-0), head coach Bob Callahan ’77 insists that this year could be different.
“There’s nothing as exciting as a No. 1 versus No. 2. It’s what the entire men’s college squash community has been looking forward to all season,” he said. “This is probably the best team we have ever had in my 28 years of coaching, so we think this will be the year.”
Even if this is the Tigers’ year to beat Trinity (15-0), they say they know it won’t be easy.
Senior Mauricio Sanchez, Princeton’s No. 1 player, said, “I think it’s going to be really, really close. The winner will win 5-4 … This is our best chance.”
Sanchez will play a big part in the effort on Saturday, as he will likely face Trinity’s top player, Sweden’s Gustav Detter. On Sunday, Sanchez beat Harvard’s Colin West, 9-1, 9-2, 9-1. West beat Detter last week, 10-8, 9-4, 2-9, 9-2. In the past, both Sanchez and Detter have bested each other.
Callahan seemed excited by the prospect of the top two matches, which will occupy Sanchez and senior Kimlee Wong. “[The matches] will involve the four best players in college squash based on last year’s rankings,” he said. “It will be hard to see a higher level of college squash.”
All nine spots will be hotly contested.
“I’d love to watch the [other] matches,” Wong said. “It’s going to be an exciting day. Every matchup is going to be close, one through nine.”
Trinity has dropped three individual matches this season, while Princeton has dropped just two. Callahan said this statistic is not substantive.
“I think Trinity is favored in probably most of the positions down the line, but our players are pretty good. [Trinity’s] just a little bit better. We’ll need to get a number of things to go our way,” he said. “There’s no question the home-court advantage will help.”
Both Sanchez and Wong echoed this notion. Home-court advantage isn’t an advantage unless it’s packed,” Wong noted. If Facebook is any indication, the student body understands the scope of the match and will turn out en masse. A Facebook event describing the match, created by freshman Chris Callis, has nearly 300 confirmed guests and boasts of the match that “no tagline [is] necessary.”
As if the pair of winning streaks — Princeton has 11 straight wins — wasn’t enough, the international trio of Tiger seniors — Sanchez, Wong and Hesham El Halaby — will be looking to extend its legacy. Already, they have helped lead the team to four straight Ivy titles, an unprecedented feat.
Until the day of the match comes, though, the team as a whole is focusing on preparing itself for the Bantams.
“They’ve beaten us like six times in a row, so what I’m focusing on right now is just beating them once, at least,” Sanchez said. “I’m really excited for the match. This is the highlight of our season.”
Wong stressed the significance of the familiarity between the teams.
“We kind of know their players,” he said. “We have an idea of their lineup, so we speak among ourselves and let our team members know about them [to] prepare for the match. We only get to play Trinity twice. One is in the regular season, and one is the national championship, so we really need to get onto the court knowing them, even if we haven’t played them before … We’re doing our homework.”
Callahan was more cautious. He said he would focus on making sure the players are “well rested and well prepared and mentally as ready and confident as they can be … I’m making sure everybody is getting what they need this week in practice so they are playing well and ready to go.”
Wong, for one, seems ready. “Me, Mau [Mauricio] and Hesham … we usually do well against Trinity, and we have the strongest team in Princeton history, as [positions] one through nine are very deep,” he said. “I really do fancy our chances.”
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