Carlisle, PA — Dickinson College recently announced that they will add varsity men’s and women’s squash teams to their athletic offerings in the 2014 – 2015 season.
Dickinson, a school of approximately 2,400 students, currently offers 12 varsity women’s sports and 11 varsity men’s sports. Dickinson competes in the Centennial Conference, which includes CSA member schools Franklin & Marshall and Haverford.
According to Dickinson’s Athletic Director Les Poolman, squash is a great fit for the small liberal arts school. “We traditionally have a number of students who have played squash prior to enrolling at Dickinson. With the addition of international squash courts, we will increase our appeal for future students.”
Presently, Dickinson has two American squash courts, but they are in the process of expanding their athletic facility. Next summer, Dickinson will complete an expansion to its Kline FItness Center that will double its size. As part of this expansion, five new international squash courts will be added.
Poolman will look to lay the foundation for varsity squash this coming season. A number of students are already practicing on the school’s American courts.
Even Dickinson’s faculty is excited about squash. “I had never played squash before arriving at Dickinson and am now utterly hooked. I’m excited to see the college make concrete steps toward building a squash program here,” says Cotten Seiler, an associate professor of American studies at the college. “We’ll be better able to draw students from top schools and inner cities and, of course, from the 142 countries that play squash.”
In the past fifteen years, a number of schools have added squash as a varsity sport, including Drexel University and Columbia University. With the exception of Stanford’s women’s team, Dickinson pushes the CSA’s varsities farther west from their traditional East Coast boundaries.
Dickinson plans to start a search for its first varsity squash coach in the spring of 2014.
