Opinion From The Cheap Seats: American Players Taking a Hit in College Men’s Squash by Ted Gross January 26, 2016
In
Sunday’s battle for the top spot in college men’s squash, Trinity edged
Rochester 5-4, but the story was that there were no American players on the
court for either team.
On Saturday, number-three-ranked Harvard fielded 2 Americans and 7 international players in its loss to Rochester.
So
on the current top three teams in men’s college squash, you have 25
international players and 2 American players in the lineups.
My
guess is this isn’t how the Heights Casino parents, among others,
envisioned things playing out when the juniors and colleges switched from hardball
to softball, but that’s another story.
Trinity is of course
a private institution, but if I were a Connecticut resident and
taxpayer I wouldn’t be happy with the squash program’s (in my opinion)
shameless recruiting of international talent.
If I were a Harvard alum I wouldn’t be pleased with the current direction of that program either.
I wonder what former Harvard squash coach and current men’s tennis coach Dave Fish thinks.
In
Harvard’s Saturday tennis match against San Diego State, 5 of the 6
Harvard singles players were Americans. San Diego State’s lineup, like
Trinity’s and Rochester’s in squash, was entirely international.
I
respect Fish for not caving in to the pressure, which other American
college coaches apparently feel, to win with foreign players.
Another tennis program I respect is Stanford. Out of the 13 players on the men’s roster, 12 are Americans.
Clearly though,
there is something wrong with the US junior squash system. We
supposedly have multiple former world number ones living and coaching
in the States, along with record-breaking numbers of juniors doing this
and that, yet only a couple of Americans can earn lineup spots on the collective
top three college men’s teams.
One more thing: Let’s
take it easy on glorifying college squash coaches for their on-court
success. Yes, a good coach gets credit for running practice
effectively, for motivating his team and for the occasional words of
wisdom that may help a player come back from 2-1 down.
But if the other team trots better horses out of the barn, forget it.
Great
coaches can emerge in complex team sports, such as basketball and
football, where winning without fielding the best players is possible.
But there are no 'great' coaches in college squash, because success, in my opinion, depends mostly on recruiting.
And if the Trinity, Harvard and Rochester coaches disagree, let’s see you go all-American.
