An Analysis Of The U. S. Women’s Team’s 14th-Place
Finish
In The 2008 World Team Championships By Rob Dinerman
December 10–
The 2008 World Team Championships, which concluded this past weekend in
Cairo, Egypt, were a damning memo on the current state of
women’s
squash in United States. The 11th-seeded squad placed 14th out of the
19 entered countries, well below its 10th-place standing in Amsterdam
in ’04 or its 11th-place finish in Edmonton two years ago,
even
though neither of those mid-2000’s rosters had anyone in the
WISPA top 15, much less a top-tier star like Natalie Grainger, the
current WISPA No. 3 and a prominent member of two 1990’s
South
African teams that placed in the top four. Grainger’s
imposing
presence represents virtually a guaranteed win at No. 1 but her
supporting cast did not represent the best that the United States
presently has to offer. If the recent results in Egypt proved nothing
else, they proved that unless the top American players are committed
enough to the cause of representing their country (as is true of
virtually every other squash-playing country in the world and was not
true of the U. S. effort just now), then U. S. Squash, which presently
utilizes a significant amount of its budget towards funding USA teams
in this type of international competition, needs to either re-think
whether it makes sense to enter such teams at all going forward or
become resigned to the type of dreary results that were produced in
Cairo.
Those mid-2000’s American entries that
did
relatively well in Holland and Canada were paced by Latasha Khan,
winner of seven U. S. Nationals during that time before being displaced
by Grainger the past two years after the latter received her American
citizenship in early 2007. Khan, 35, is still playing at or near the
top of her game, having just a few weeks ago defeated WISPA No. 18
Samantha Teran and taken 2004 World Open champion Vanessa Atkinson to
five games in the Carol Weymuller event in Brooklyn. Khan’s
teammates in those tournaments included three-time U. S. Nationals
finalist (in ’02, ’04 and ’05) Meredeth
Quick,
two-time Harvard captain and eight-time U. S. Juniors champ Louisa Hall
and ’98 Intercollegiate Individuals winner Ivy Pochoda, all
of
whom were quite young at the time with excellent collegiate records and
solid resumes in national and international play, all of whom should be
in their playing primes right now, and none of whom (nor were either
Khan, whose presence alone might have resulted in an upgrade to or near
the No. 10 team position, or ’04 and ’05
Intercollegiate
Individuals champion Michelle Quibell) were willing to play in Cairo
this autumn.
This scenario is in marked contrast to prior team
try-outs
for the prestigious World Team Championships, which used to be
“for blood” as recently as the outset of this
decade, more
so in fact for the women (where there were fierce controversies and
even a lawsuits threatened regarding the composition of the team) than
for the men. As messy as those conflicts occasionally became, and as
badly as some of the contestants (or their parents) sometimes acted, at
least that group evinced a powerful desire to compete on behalf of the
United States. It makes little sense to “build experience for
the
future” in players who by the time the future
“arrives” have already moved on to other academic
or
business pursuits, and claims of not being as fit as would be
desirable, not having the time to devote to a trip of this
several-weeks dimension, not being thrilled with some of the decisions
that the national squash organization has made in the past, etc.,
eventually ring hollow against the reality of a U. S. team that, even
with Grainger’s formidable firepower, really wasn’t
capable
of finishing much higher than it did.
The foregoing is not in any way an attempt to
diminish
Grainger’s actual teammates in Egypt, namely former Princeton
captain Claire Rein-Weston (winner of the Team Trials held in New York
in October to determine which three players would accompany Grainger),
the precocious teenage multi-titled Junior champion Olivia Blatchford
and former Brown stand-out Hope Prockop --- each of them played
admirably and valiantly, often in the face of superior opposition.
Rein-Weston, described by one teammate as “having the heart
of a
lion,” displayed that trait throughout the tournament;
Blatchford
showed lengthy glimpses of the talent and potential that have so many
college coaches already jockeying to convince her to attend their
respective schools; and Prockop played exceptionally well in her win
over her Italian opponent that helped assure the U. S. a top-15 finish.
There were two matches that had a real possibility
of
landing in the U. S. column before getting away, namely the 2-1 losses
to Japan (which cost the team a chance for a top-12 placement) and in
the 13th-place playoff with Germany. On each occasion Grainger
predictably prevailed against her over-matched opponents (Chinatsu
Matsui and Kathrin Rohrmueller respectively) at No. 1, only to have the
team come up short in the Nos. 2 and 3 slots. In the first match,
Blatchford looked to be in good position to defeat Kozue Onizawa after
she evened matters by taking the second game, but she lapsed a few
times in the close-out 11-5 fourth game, while Rein-Weston also stood
at one game apiece against Misaki Kobayashi, who however then took the
third game and managed to convert her small mid-game lead in bringing
home a very competitive 11-7 fourth. Then in the concluding duel with
Germany, Prockop failed to approach the level she had achieved one day
earlier against Italy, and Rein-Weston, after losing a pair of
agonizing 11-9 opening games, eked out the third in a tiebreaker
against an opponent, Pamela Hathway, who seemed on the verge of fading
at that stage before surprisingly regaining her early-match form in the
11-5 clinching fourth game.
The next holding of this biennial event in 2010
may well
represent the last time that Grainger, currently 31 years old, can
realistically be expected to still be playing at the top echelon in
World Team Championship play. The opportunity to represent
one’s
country in a competitive forum of this magnitude should far out-weigh
any sense of entitlement or any lingering resentment caused by prior
squabbles with the national governing organization. Perhaps the biggest
change that needs to occur to foster a better result in the near or
foreseeable future will have to take place not so much on court but
rather in the hearts and minds of the top players on the American
squash scene, who ideally would regard such an experience as a
privilege to be embraced rather than as a burden to be gamely endured
or, when possible, avoided.