Chaudhry Withdraws from CSA Individual Tournament
by Rob Dinerman
February 26, 2010 - In
the wake of the unfortunate on-court incident that occurred at Yale
this past weekend in the immediate aftermath of the clinching match of
the annual Potter Cup competition for the intercollegiate national team
championship, Baset Chaudhry, the No. 1 player and co-captain of the
Trinity College squad that won this tournament for the record 12th
straight time, has decided not to play in the National Individual
Squash Championships, which are scheduled for the weekend of March 5-7
and which will be held at Trinity’s Kellner Squash Center.
Chaudhry, a Pakistani native who won this crown in both his sophomore
and junior years, will therefore not have the opportunity he must have
been greatly looking forward to throughout this season to culminate his
intercollegiate career in a blaze of glory by winning his third
consecutive Individuals title on his “home” courts.
The announcement of the decision, which came in the form of a Trinity
College press release posted on the Trinity College web site
www.trincoll.edu simultaneously with an accompanying statement from the
Men’s College Squash Association Executive Committee shortly
before two o’clock this afternoon, caps off a torturous five days
of meetings, conference calls and soul-searching debate in the
aftermath of the 6-3 Potter Cup final-round victory over Yale at the
Brady Squash Center on Sunday afternoon. With four wins already in the
books by the time that two of the three rounds (of three matches each)
had been completed, the Bantams needed just one more point to lock up
the A Division title and seal their 224th consecutive team victory, and
they got it when Chaudhry, leading two games to love over Yale No. 1
Kenny Chan, won the third game 11-4.
After concluding his convincing conquest of the out-classed Chan with a
forehand length winner down the open right side of the court, the
six-foot, five-inch Chaudhry immediately got into Chan’s face,
repeatedly barking harsh invectives for several terrifying seconds as
he towered menacingly over his much-shorter, physically overmatched foe.
Eschewing the handshake that normally occurs after a match has ended,
the Trinity star then abruptly turned and exited the court to embrace
his father, who was sitting in one of the front rows.
ESPN BRINGS WORLDWIDE ATTENTION
For better or worse, ESPN, the high-profile sports network
headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut, near Hartford, where Trinity
College is located, obtained a tape of this aberrational, unexpected
and morbidly fascinating sequence, which it then featured exhaustively
throughout the following day on its much-watched Sportscenter
presentation, even having NFL analyst Merrill Hoge use his telestrator
to chart the enmity-filled interaction.
As a result of the foregoing, the episode received exponentially more
exposure, both nationally and indeed around the world, than would ever
normally be associated with a college squash event, resulting in an
explosion of attention and condemnation that has overwhelmed the
coaches involved (namely Trinity’s Paul Assaiante and
Yale’s Dave Talbott, who initially demanded that Chaudhry be
banned from the Individuals, though he had dialed his emotions
back considerably by the time that he and Assaiante appeared on
ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” feature and were
interviewed by host Bob Ley late Monday afternoon) and convulsed the
CSA Executive Committee.
Following a written apology to Chan, to Yale and to the college coaches
issued by Chaudhry on Monday, many issues came to the fore during the
course of the ensuing debate, ranging from a reference to a provocative
gesture that Chan had made in Chaudhry’s direction after hitting
a winner during the second game, to recognition of what a model
student-athlete Chaudhry has been during his years as a collegian
(solid grade-point average with a distinguished academic record, model
citizen and a popular leader on campus off-court as well as on-,
involved in the greater Hartford community, a “poster child for
college athletics,” according to Assaiante), to the manner in
which college matches, especially in a postseason tournament, are
currently officiated, to concern that this one unfortunate incident
would be allowed to obscure what has actually been a praiseworthy
college season, one that has seen new clubs join the Association, the
formation of a grant program to help fund new team development and an
overall level of growth that resulted in a record 61 teams (and 585
players) participating in the team championships this past weekend in
New Haven.
Tuesday’s conference call among the coaches comprising the
Executive Committee, which is chaired by Princeton coach Bob Callahan,
resulted in a decision to give Trinity an opportunity to handle the
matter internally, pending an Executive Committee review.
After a two-day period of on-campus discussions involving key Trinity
College administrative figures (not only Coach Assaiante, but also
Director Of Athletics Rick Hazelton and even Trinity President James F.
Jones Jr. issued statements as part of the Trinity press release
announcing Chaudhry’s decision), and with a midnight
entry-deadline looming late last night, Chaudhry, to his credit,
determined, after what must have been an agonizing internal tug-of-war,
that it would be best for him to forego the Individuals competition.
Chan will be missing the tournament as well.
Ultimately, the misadventure that unfolded in the Payne Whitney
Gymnasium on February 21st constitutes one of those teachable moments
that in their own decidedly bittersweet way permeate the college
experience with its competing themes of passionate youth and emerging
maturity, as was alluded to in the opening line of the Executive
Committee’s statement earlier today when it termed
Chaudhry’s decision “an appropriate action and an
acknowledgement that sportsmanship is at the foundation of the sport of
squash.”
Coach Assaiante, who has been quite open about his anguish in the
interviews he has graciously granted this week, may have summarized it
best of all when in the closing passage of the Trinity College press
release he noted that “Baset is one of the most beloved figures
on campus and a scholar-athlete who has achieved faculty honors. He had
a youthful lapse of composure and now he has voluntarily agreed to step
down. It’s a classy thing to do, and we applaud him for it.”