Bugging Out About the Wonders of Squashing

When my freshman year roommate informed me over the phone that she played squash, the first words out of my mouth were, “Oh, don’t you wear goggles?”

Louisa kindly laughed and explained that yes, squashers wear goggles and that the sport was sort of like racketball. I admitted that my only exposure to the sport was watching it played in the movie A Separate Peace, set at a preppy boarding school in the Northeast shockingly similar to Phillips Exeter Academy.

Once my roommate and I arrived in Cambridge and got into the flow of Harvard life, I realized that she was, in fact, not just any squash player. Louisa Hall was the No. 1 junior player in the nation.

By the way, she’s now a junior co-captain of the team, ranked the intercollegiate No. 3.

Noting that she had claimed the No. 1 spot on the Crimson ladder, my roommates and I walked across the river to the beautiful Murr Center for our very first squash experience. Somehow, we got there too late to watch her play, but we got our act together for the next home match and watched Lou dominate.

And so began my love affair with squash.

Critics of squash say it’s exclusive and flat out silly, trapping the two players in a glass box and making them hit a tiny ball against the same wall. True, squash is a bit isolated, but it’s filled with premiere squashers from around the world, not just country clubs. Let’s not forget that this sport—yes, it’s a sport—is pretty freakin’ hard to play, testing an athlete’s mental game along with endurance and power. Louisa would set out on six-mile runs even during the season to stay in peak condition.

Though many players were competing well before the junior circuit, picking up squash in college is not unprecedented. Last year, the men’s squash team graduated its No. 8 player, Tomo Hamakawa, who walked on to the team as a freshman.

If you actually go watch our squads compete, you’ll also be amazed by the sportsmanship that is ingrained in squash.

Every match starts with the captains announcing their lineups, and the players greet their opponents and the opposing coaches. While the top nine spots count towards the match score, often times ten to thirteen players compete for each team just for practice.

The mens and womens teams watch each other, like many other varsity sports, but the players also pick one freshman in each match to cheer for exceptionally loudly when announced by the captains.

The players run the matches themselves, with the coaches sitting back to watch their kids battle it out on the court. There’s really not much help they can offer at this point anyway, so their time is better served chatting with other coaches or parents that drove in for the day.

The even-seeded players serve as judges for the odds, and vice-versa, relying on the competitors to be remarkably honest. They re-play any points that are hotly contested.

While the competition is fierce and rivalries develop between individual players, nothing stops them from simple human consideration. One impressive example occurred last year, when Pete Karlen ’02 loaned his opponent his tiger balm in the midst of a particularly grueling match.

And oh yeah, one more thing—our teams are actually good. They’re in the running for the national title every year. And while some duels can extend to five games, others are 15-minute laughers, like the spanking sophomore Lindsey Wilkins delivered against Brown two weekends ago. It’s the norm for the Harvard men and women to sweep matches or claim 8-1 victories against any team ranked lower than fourth in the nation.

Last year, after the Crimson men whooped Williams 8-1, co-captain David Barry ’02 laid it out simply:

“Take anything that makes a good squash player, and we are better than them in every way,” Barry said.

Not only that, the cream of the Harvard crop vies for spots on the U.S. national team. The squashers enter competitions outside of the friendly confines of college and finish impressively.

So whether you’re a newbie or an uninformed critic, you should give this sport a chance. You just might find yourself singing its praises while Harvard squashes the competition.

—Staff writer Brenda E. Lee can be reached at belee@fas.harvard.edu.