University can’t squash club team’s growing success

Of all the sports named after a gourd, squash is by far the best.

Barring a nationwide pumpkin toss craze, that distinction is not in danger. But without some cooperation from Club Sports and school administrators, Georgetown is in danger of wasting the potential of what could be the most successful club team on campus.

“I think that with a little bit more school participation, this team would grow dramatically,” Georgetown Club Squash member Pete Fromson (COL `10) said. “It would be easy for the school to have a top tier team pretty quickly.”

That’s a bold statement for a team in just its third year of existence, but the squad has the results to back it up. In each of the first two seasons since team president Frank Hamilton (COL `10) and captain Sam Clarke (COL `09) formed Georgetown Club Squash, the team has won its division at nationals. According to Clarke, this season they will likely graduate from an “emerging team” to a top-tier, varsity equivalent (the College Squash Association operates independently of the NCAA).

“We’ve taken enormous steps each season so far,” Clarke said. “Georgetown attracts a demographic of kids that have played in the past, which is really important to our continuing success.”

The “demographic” Clarke is referring to, although he doesn’t say so explicitly, generally consists of students from upwardly-mobile households who went to northeastern prep schools-he and Hamilton both attended Choate Rosemary Hall and the rest of the team hails from a smattering of Andovers, St. Pauls, Deerfields, and the like. So while the average person may not know the difference between racquetball and squash-yes, there is a difference-many Georgetown students probably do, and that allows the team to attract new players each year. But they aren’t just attracting new players anymore-they are attracting better ones.

“The top two players on our team this year are both freshman,” Clarke said. “That’s a pretty good sign of how much this team can improve in just one class.”

Those two players, Chris Ahn (COL `12) and Patrick Trousdale (COL `12), represent the direction that the club hopes to take in the future as it sets its sights on national powerhouses like Harvard, Yale, and Trinity. The team took a big step in that direction this year when they enlisted the help of coach Mark Lewis.

“In the past, we’ve been a little disorganized,” Fromson said. “But getting Mark has really changed all that.”

Lewis brings a world-class squash pedigree with him to the Hilltop. A graduate of Trinity College-a school whose squash team boasts a ten-year unbeaten streak, the longest in college sports history-Lewis has served two stints on the U.S. National team and is the former coach of the U.S. Junior National Team.

The team practices with coach Lewis twice a week at Yates, but Clarke is there every night with any team members looking to get extra practice. On Tuesday night, Lewis and Clarke (yes, like the iconic explorers) took to the court mid-practice for a one-on-one game. Lewis, who was at one point the second-ranked player in the country, has clearly lost a step or two over the years, but he deftly turned Clarke this way and that with an array of shots that were impressive even to the most uninformed observer.

“In squash, there’s a premium placed on strategy,” he explained afterwards. “In racquetball, the better you are, the shorter the rallies become. In squash it’s the complete opposite because of the softer ball. You have to work your opponent into a position where you can score.”

Lewis had plenty more to say about squash, noting that in 2003 Forbes rated it the “healthiest sport,” above rock climbing and swimming and preaching the importance of “dynamic strength,” the ability to make shots while off-balance or contorted in odd positions. Meanwhile, the rest of the team cycled in and out of the courts, doing everything from sprints to various squash-specific drills. With Lewis onboard, the club has the look of a dedicated varsity team at practice.

The squad has grown so much in the first two seasons that it seems as if nothing can contain its potential-that is, except for the four walls of their own home court. The team currently practices on the racquetball courts in front of the cardio equipment at Yates. Only one of those courts is an actual squash court, and even that one is a foot too narrow. The dimensions of the other courts are so far off that Lewis won’t even let his players utilize the side-walls for fear of developing bad habits.

“That’s the one thing we really struggle with,” Clarke said. “When we play teams in their own standard-sized courts we sometimes get confused by the angles because we practice in a court that is too narrow.”

That’s where the University comes in. For the past year or so, Clarke and Hamilton have been working with Club Sports and school administrators to allocate the necessary funds to build a new, standard-sized court. The funds have been gathered, and the school promised the team it would have its new court by November. But now in early December, the school is literally thousands of miles from keeping that promise.

“We are told that the materials have all been gathered, but that they are currently in Belgium or something,” Clarke said. “I’m not really sure what that’s all about.”

The club has been competing with and beating properly equipped teams for two years now, so it’s hard not to imagine what they would be capable of with the proper facilities. For now, they will have to continue to over-perform against more established teams.

Their next chance to do that will be this week in Connecticut, where the team will take on #23 Wesleyan and #22 Northeastern. Georgetown, currently ranked 43rd, plans to join them in the top 25 in the near future. Under current conditions, that’s a perfectly realistic goal. But with just a little bit of help, it’s a near certainty.