By Rob Dinerman
Originally published on Daily Squash Report on December 8, 2025
In a remarkable achievement for the squash program at Princeton University, two of its recent alums — Youssef Ibrahim, Class of 2022, and Olivia Fiechter Weaver, Class of 2018 — advanced to the final round of the Milwaukee Hong Kong Squash Open this past week. Their joint accomplishment marked only the second time that graduates from the same college have attained that stage of a PSA Platinum tournament, the one precedent having occurred two years ago in the 2023 edition of this same event when former Harvard superstars Ali Farag andAmanda Sobhy also reached the draws’ respective final rounds. Ibrahim backed up his recent ascent to the China Open finals by defeating three-time and current U.S. National Champion Timmy Brownell, Dimitri Steinmann, former British Open Champion Miguel Angel Rodriguez (all in three games) and World No. 2 Paul Coll (before losing to World No. 1 Mostafa Asal), while Weaver rolled past Mariam Metwally and the Gilis sisters Nele and Tinne (also by 3-0 scores) to reach the semis, where she conquered Satomi Watanabe in four games before losing her final-round match to eight-time World Open Champion Nour El Sherbini. Just as the college careers of Farag and Sobhy (Classes of 2014 and 2015 respectively) overlapped, so did those of Ibrahim and Weaver, who was a senior in 2017-18, Ibrahim’s freshman year. Both were first-team All-Americans not only during that shared year but throughout their college years, as was the case with Farag and Sobhy as well.
In addition to Ibrahim and Weaver, there were 11 other recent U.S. college squash grads in the Hong Kong draws, four men — namely Brownell, Victor Crouin (both from Harvard), Aly Abou Eleinen (Penn) and Juan Vargas (Trinity College) — and seven women, including Harvard alums Sobhy, her younger sister (and first-round opponent) Sabrina, Hana Moataz and Marina Stefanoni, along with Simmy Chan (Columbia), Siva Subramaniam (Cornell) and Melissa Alves (Penn). The fact that more than 20 percent of the 64 combined players in a PSA tournament of this magnitude consisted of American college squash alums (who between them accounted for eight Intercollegiate Individual titles) is a compelling sign of how strong U.S. college squash has been during the past decade, with the current 2025-26 season promising more of the same.
Rob Dinerman has written five Histories of college squash, the most recent of which — A Century Of Champions: 100 Years Of College Squash, 1923-2023 — was released in March 2024.
