Chris Stevens, 1969-2022, Two-Time First-Team All-American at Princeton by Rob Dinerman
Chris Stevens in a Daily Princetonian photo after he won the
clinching fifth point in Princeton’s 1989 dual-meet win over Harvard
Ridley Lower School team photo, Chris Stevens bottom right
Ridley Alumni Squash Night, February 2020, Chris Stevens far right
photos courtesy Derek Finkle
Dateline July 25, 2022
--- DSR is sad to report the passing of Christopher Rupert Stevens,
universally known as Chris (and as Stevie to his close friends), on
July 19th at age 53. The Canadian-born Stevens was a leading member of
Princeton’s late-1980’s teams that won the College Squash Association
national postseason team championship in 1988 and reached the
final round of that competition in 1989, when Princeton finished in a
three-way tie for first place in the Ivy League as well. He then played
No. 1 for the Tigers and made first-team All-American in both his
junior and senior years (i.e. 1990 and 1991), following which he played
on both the WPSA singles and doubles tours and had a stint on the pro
softball circuit as well during the decade of the 1990’s. His career
highlights included an advance to the quarterfinal round of the 1994
North American Open singles and the 1999 Silver Racquet Doubles title
that he and Rick Wahlstedt won at the Racquet & Tennis Club.
Stevens also served at various times as an assistant squash pro at the
Merion Cricket Club in suburban Philadelphia, as well as at a number of
New York clubs, among them the Uptown Racquet Club, the New York
Athletic Club, the Printing House Fitness & Racquet Club and the
Union Club.
But it was at Princeton that Stevens made his biggest mark after a high
school career as a squash player and cross-country runner at Ridley
College --- a Toronto-area prep school in the Niagara Peninsula not far
from Buffalo --- that was impressive enough for him to be inducted
years later (i.e. in 2017) into Ridley’s Athletic Wall of Distinction.
Stevens’s remarkable freshman 1987-88 season at Princeton began with
him rallying from two games to one down to win the deciding match in
his team’s important early-season 5-4 road victory over Franklin &
Marshall in front of a very vocal and hostile F&M crowd that
included many members of its football team. When Stevens’s match ended,
the team ran into the court, not so much to congratulate him, according
to team captain Keen Butcher, but more in the interest of group
protection. “We high-tailed it out of there as fast as we could,” team
member John Pruett remembered.
In the postseason six-man team event a few months later, which was held
at Princeton’s “home” Jadwin Gymnasium courts --- in which there were
A, B and C Divisions, with each school’s Nos. 1 and 2 players competing
in the A draw, the Nos. 3 and 4 players in the B and the Nos. 5 and 6
players in the C --- Stevens reached the final of the B Division. This
result, supplemented by his fellow freshman Bob White’s advance to the
C final and an all-Princeton A final in which Jeff Stanley defeated
Butcher, enabled Princeton to amass an overall total of 58 points to
second-place Harvard’s 49. It was the first time since the “Triple
Crown” 1978-79 season nine years earlier --- when the Tigers won the
nine-man regular-season college title, the post-season six-man college
competition and the USSRA Five-Man National Team Championship ---
that Princeton won the Intercollegiate six-man team event, and it broke
Harvard’s seven-year grip on this championship.
The following season, the Crimson’s seven-year-long undefeated record
in nine-man dual-meet competition would be punctured by Princeton as
well in an 8-1 win in which Stevens accounted for the clinching fifth
point with a furious rally from an 11-4 fifth-game deficit against
Harvard star Jonny Kaye that came down to a simultaneous-match-point,
at which juncture Kaye had a clear opening for a cross-court winner but
his shot instead clanged the tin. The win over Harvard represented the
first of three crucial dual meets in a compressed seven-day span, with
Penn and Yale to follow in close order. In the Penn match that promptly
followed, Stevens lost the first two games against Quaker star Peter
Lubowitz but charged through the next three games, thereby adding an
important point in Princeton’s eventual 5-4 win. On that occasion it
was Derek Finkle, Steven’s former Ridley College teammate (and the
person who persuaded Stevens, who had initially decided to go to
Cornell, to change his mind and matriculate at Princeton instead) who
won the deciding match, even though his right forearm cramped up near
the end of the last game to the point where afterwards his hand
remained locked around his racquet for several minutes.
Even after Finkle was finally able to liberate his hand, the fingers
were involuntarily jumping spasmodically around, causing one teammate
to quip that it looked like a scene from “Scanners,” a science-fiction
movie that was getting high ratings during that time frame. Stevens
then scored one of only two Princeton points against Yale, again (for
the third straight time) after trailing two games to love, a phenomenon
that was reflected in Daily Princetonian reporter Feisal Naqvi’s
reference to Stevens having made “his now-expected comeback” in Naqvi’s
write-up of the Yale meet. Despite the loss to Yale, Princeton did back
into a three-way tie for the 1989 Ivy League pennant when Harvard
defeated Yale in the last match of the dual-meet season. In a new
format for determining the postseason champion in which the A/B/C
play-downs were replaced by a straight-draw tournament (which was named
the Potter Cup to honor Navy’s longtime coach Arthur Potter) featuring
the eight top-ranked teams, Princeton reached the finals with wins over
Cornell and Penn before again losing to Yale.
With Stanley’s graduation that spring, Stevens moved into the No. 1
position in the Princeton lineup, where he remained throughout his
junior and senior seasons, earning first-team All-America honors both
years. His best results during the 1989-90 season were in that year’s
Potter Cup, in which he defeated both 1989 U. S. Nationals winner
Rudolfo Rodriguez of Penn and Yale’s John Musto. Stevens and Bob White
were elected co-captains for the 1990-91 season. They were close
friends (and roommates during their senior year) but opposites in terms
of personality and playing style, since White was measured, analytical
and organized, while Stevens did everything at warp speed --- including
doing a tremendous number of sprints at track and leaving everyone far
behind in a timed three-mile run --- which earned him the affectionate
nickname “Turbo” among his teammates. Scott Dulmage, who had some epic
matches with Stevens in Canadian junior squash tournaments --- and who
defeated Stevens in the final round of the 1986 U. S. Junior Nationals
--- often said how relentless Stevens was and how often he would roar
back just when he seemed down and out. That latter quality was on full
display in Princeton’s 5-4 wins over Yale during his senior year in
both the dual meet and the semifinal round of the Potter Cup, in each
of which Stevens triumphed over Musto in the deciding match, fending
off a match point against him in the Potter Cup tilt.
The next-day final against Harvard also came down to the No. 1 match,
in this case between Stevens and his Canadian compatriot Jeremy
Fraiberg. A number of the Princeton team members massed right behind
the court and spent the last game holding hands, just as the New York
Giants players had done a few weeks earlier prior to the decisive field
goal attempt in the closing seconds of the Super Bowl against the
Buffalo Bills. The Giants got their wish that day, when Bills kicker
Scott Norwood’s 47-yard attempt went wide right, giving New York a
20-19 victory. But the Princeton attempt to grab some of the same magic
failed, as Fraiberg prevailed in four brutally contested games. At the
team banquet that spring, Stevens, White and their fellow senior Niko
Guethe were named co-recipients of the George C. McFarland Jr. Squash
Award, given annually “to that member of the Princeton men’s varsity
squash team who, through enthusiasm, ability, sportsmanship and
leadership has contributed most to the sport and his team.”
After his playing and coaching years came to an end, Stevens returned
to Canada at the outset of the 2000’s and spent the final
two-decades-plus of his life holding down a series of jobs (most
recently with a construction crew) and courageously battling the
unrelenting challenges of mental illness, which on multiple occasions
landed him in the hospital for lengthy periods of time. Despite these
extended stretches of adversity, Stevens remained close to his
long-time friends and never lost hope that he might someday regain his
health and even return to playing squash. During his final few years,
Stevens turned to artwork as a form of therapy and a constructive means
of self-expression, and he sent a number of his drawings and paintings
to his friends and family members.
Even though more than three decades have passed since Stevens’s final
college match, his teammates from those years remained loyal to him and
hopeful for him right to the very end. One of them, Jim Obsitnik,
expressed the hope to his teammates in a 30-person Princeton-squash
email chain after learning of Stevens’s passing that, “Chris is in a
better place now and is resting and at peace after his difficult time
on earth,” while Finkle, who knew Stevens the longest of anyone on the
chain as his teammate and close friend at both Ridley and Princeton,
promised his former teammates, “We will share a toast to Turbo at our
next get-together.”
