500-Win Milestone For Coaching Legend Paul Assaiante At Trinity College by Rob Dinerman Dateline January 23, 2023
--- When Trinity College’s men’s squash team defeated Drexel 8-1 in
Philadelphia last Wednesday, the outcome represented the 500th win ---
against only 25 losses, a .953 winning percentage --- that the Bantams
have recorded during the head coaching tenure of Paul Assaiante, who is
now midway through his 29th year at the helm. His teams have won the
Potter Cup emblematic of the national college team men’s championship
17 times (including a record-shattering 13 straight from 1999-2011, as
well as in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018), a figure that is more than
double the eight that Harvard, Trinity’s biggest rival and closest
pursuer, has won in that time span, during which Assaiante’s troops
have reached at least the final round 22 times during the 23-year
period from 1997-2019 and compiled an almost unthinkable 252-match
winning streak in dual-meet and Potter Cup competition between a Potter
Cup final-round loss to Harvard in March 1998 and a midseason dual-meet
setback at Yale nearly 14 years later in January 2012. Trinity College
has also captured the New England Small College Athletic Conference
(NESCAC) all 17 times since squash was added to the list of its
official sports, and three of Assaiante’s players --- namely Marcus
Cowie in 1997 and 1998, Bernardo Samper in 2002 and Baset Chaudhry in
2008 and 2009 --- have won a total of five Intercollegiate Individuals
titles as well.
Assaiante’s characteristically self-deprecating comment upon being
informed of this milestone was, “I don’t remember many of the 500 wins
but I have a very clear memory of all 25 losses!” When asked to share a
few of the memories that stand out the most, he identified Trinity
freshman Gustav Detter’s comeback win over three-time reigning
Individuals champion Yasser El Halaby (who led 2-0 and had a match ball
in the third game) in a 2006 last-match-on-court 5-4 dual-meet win over
Princeton as his coaching career’s “most improbable” win; the 2009
Potter Cup titanic final-round last-match-on-court rally by Chaudhry,
who trailed Princeton No. 1 Mauricio Sanchez 5-0 (nine-point scoring)
in the fifth game before conjuring up a 9-0 match-ending charge as its
“most exciting” win; and the 2013 Potter Cup championship run,
culminating in a 6-3 final-round victory over a Harvard team that had
taken an early lead, as his career’s “most meaningful win, because we
were able to regain the championship after having surrendered it to
Princeton in 2012. I had always dreamed that we would lose the title
and then get it back, and that is what happened for us that day.”
As it happens, the journey that Coach Assaiante and his team took
during that comeback 2012-13 season was chronicled for posterity by a
Trinity College senior named Marc DiBenedetto, who had attended almost
every practice and traveled with the team on road trips as part
of an independent study class credit that resulted in his producing a
55-minute documentary entitled “All In,” which he presented to
Trinity’s men’s and women’s teams at the school’s Cinestudio that
spring, and which later attracted lots of viewers on
Youtube. Similar comeback championship-regaining team
accomplishments also occurred, as referenced, in 2014-15 and 2016-17,
with a successful title defense to follow in 2017-18, which latter
result enabled Assaiante to equal the 17 national titles that Harvard
men’s squash team had earned during the legendary Jack Barnaby’s
40-year coaching career from 1937-76. Dual-meet wins this past
weekend over Columbia and Cornell have already pushed Assaiante’s win
total to 502, and his current team, as has been the case virtually
throughout his nearly three decades in Hartford, is one of several that
can realistically contend for the 2023 Potter Cup when that event is
held on their “home” courts late next month.
