A two-time Haverford College squash captain despite having never played the sport before her freshman year and later an active and extraordinarily well-regarded volunteer coach at StreetSquash, Randee Johnson is a compelling example of what an impactful and positive role one’s leadership skills and personality can have upon the entire culture of a squash program, whether in college or afterward. Johnson also embodies the remarkable effect caprice can exert on someone’s life experience. She had never played squash – or any other organized team sport – during her prep-school years at Loomis-Chaffee, a prep school in Windsor, CT (near Hartford), where her only connection to varsity sports was as the manager of the boy’s basketball team. When she discovered she needed to earn one more athletic credit in the spring of her senior year, Johnson took a cardio class in the school gymnasium, during part of which, she and two friends took turns hitting squash balls haphazardly with borrowed racquets on otherwise empty courts and invented their own games (since none of them knew the rules of squash). At the end of that academic year, as a graduation gift, one of those friends gave each of the other two a squash racquet, not intending to encourage either of them to keep playing but just as a memento of the enjoyable times they had spent together that spring.

A four-time first-team All-American at Columbia University, where he won the 2017 Individuals crown, was a finalist in 2015 and led the Lions to their only Ivy League championship during his senior 2017-18 season, Osama “Sam” Khalifa is known today not only for his outstanding college career but also for his meteoric rise up the SDA pro doubles tour to the No. 1 end-of-season ranking in 2023-24, which culminated a season in which he won both the SDA Player of the Year Award and (with partner Chris Callis) the SDA Team of the Year Award. As a highly touted junior player, Khalifa was ranked in the very top tier and won junior championships in Europe in a number of the age-group categories, following in the footsteps of his older brother Amr, who himself won the college Individuals crown in 2013 and was runner-up in that event to current PSA No. 1 Ali Farag one year later. The Khalifas are only the second pair of brothers to win this prestigious championship. The Ezra brothers, Adrian and Dan, were the first, having reached eight consecutive Individuals finals (winning four) while representing Harvard from 1991-98.

A two-time first-team All-American and College Individuals finalist during the mid-1970’s at Fordham University, and later a highly ranked pro on the WPSA pro hardball tour that had such a memorable 15-year run from the late 1970’s into the early 1990’s, Bill Andruss also was the first American player to crack the top 35 of the world softball rankings and the first as well to move to Europe and dedicate several years to the softball game. He credits the dedication to a craft that he first acquired as a college squash player (and later an inductee into Fordham’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1982) through repetition, routine and practice for providing the crucial foundation, both for his achievements during his 10 years as a professional squash player and when he then transitioned into what became an extraordinarily successful 39-year career in real estate before he retired in 2024. Andruss played No. 1 throughout his years at Fordham, culminating in a senior 1974-75 season in which he first won the prestigious University Club of New York college invitational during the Christmas holidays in late December --- defeating defending champion and reigning College Individuals champion Juan deVillafranca 3-0 in the final --- and then reached the finals of the College Individuals at Princeton a few months later...

The Intercollegiate Individuals champion in 2022 (and a finalist two other times), Sivasangari “Siva” Subramaniam’s squash (and life) journey is even more remarkable for what she has accomplished off the court than on it. The resiliency she has shown--- and the adversity she has conquered --- has made her one of the most compelling figures in the history of college squash. A highly touted college recruit after winning both the British Junior Open Under-19 crown and her native Malaysia’s national senior championship in 2018, Subramaniam reached the College Individuals final as a Cornell freshman in 2019, upsetting No. 1 seed Sabrina Sobhy in the semis before losing to Sobhy’s Harvard teammate Gina Kennedy in the final. After losing to Hana Moataz in the 2020 Individuals semifinals, Subramaniam then faced Moataz again two years later in the 2022 Individuals finals after the entire 2020-21 college season had been canceled due to the Covid pandemic.

For Zerline Goodman, squash has always been about more than competition. A three-time All-Ivy performer during the early 1980s and later a top-30 PSA player, Goodman’s journey through squash has been a bridge to family, a source of lifelong values, and a wellspring of gratitude that fuels her profound desire to repay a game that has enriched her life. Goodman, Yale Class of 1984, began her collegiate squash career at Trinity College before transferring to Yale, where she played No. 1 for the Bulldogs throughout her sophomore, junior, and senior years. Her defining moment came during the 1982-83 season when she secured the deciding match in Yale’s dramatic 5-4 victory over Princeton, clinching Ivy League supremacy. Yet, beyond the accolades and victories, Goodman treasures the sense of purpose and focus the sport instilled in her—qualities that have guided her as a mother, a lawyer, and a committed advocate for squash. Family has been a cornerstone of Goodman’s squash story. Her love for the game deepened during high school, partly influenced by the tragic loss of her close friend, Cynthia Stanton.

It would be extremely challenging to imagine a top-tier PSA squash player who has maintained a stronger continuing connection to his college-years’ squash experience than has been the case with Ali Farag, Harvard Class of 2014, who has been the best squash player in the world over the past half-decade. The four World Open titles (in 2019 and from 2021-23), three U.S. Open championships (in 2017, 2019 and 2024) and three Tournament of Champions crowns (in 2019, 2022 and 2024) that he has won during that time frame are all tops on the Tour with room to spare, as are the 11 major championships he has captured when one includes his run to the winner’s circle in the 2023 British Open, whose final round he attained the four other times that the event has been held from 2019-24. Although Farag had reached the finals of the 2010 World Junior Open, won the 2011 British Junior Open and led Egypt to victory in the 2010 biennial World Junior Team Championships, he had no wish to go to college in the U.S., opting instead to spend his 2010-11 freshman year contentedly studying at the American University in Cairo. But the Egyptian Revolution, which occurred less than a month after his triumph in England, changed his thinking and he applied and was accepted at Harvard that spring.

One of the most accomplished U.S. Naval Academy alumni during the past half-century, and the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009-13, Admiral James Stavridis credits much of his success --- during both his 37-year career year in the Navy and subsequently, first as the Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University from 2013-18, and later in his current position as a partner and the Vice Chair of Global Affairs at the Carlyle Group, a large international finance firm --- to the four years (from 1972-76) that he spent as a member of Navy’s top-five ranked squash team. Although Stavridis, who had played in a number of regional junior tennis tournaments during his high school years in his native Arizona, had never touched a squash racquet prior to entering the Naval Academy, Bobby Bayliss, Navy’s head tennis coach, quickly perceived that Stavridis’s foremost athletic traits --- foot-speed, hand-eye coordination and a good slice on both sides --- were better suited to squash (although Stavridis also lettered on Navy’s tennis teams) and connected him with the Academy’s legendary squash coach, Art Potter, who would become a major figure in Stavridis’s life.

One of only two American squash players (along with Amanda Sobhy) to attain a top-four PSA ranking, Olivia Weaver (nee Fiechter) has had a consistent and praiseworthy rise through the world rankings in recent years. Her career-best Calendar 2024 performance was highlighted by her winning the U.S. Nationals (after reaching the finals in 2023), the Gaynor Cup and the Silicon Valley Open; reaching the semis of both the U.S. Open and World Open; and playing No. 1 on the U.S. team that earned a silver medal at the World Team Championships in Hong Kong. After capturing a total of nine U.S. National Junior and Junior Open titles (five in singles and four in doubles) and playing on U.S. Junior teams in international competition every year from 2011-14, Weaver went on to achieve first-team All-American honors in all four of her years (2014-18) at Princeton, despite the fact that her ability to play at her highest level was severely compromised during both her sophomore and junior years by back injuries — mostly frequent spasms in her left piriformis muscle, causing chronic discomfort and a pinched nerve — that inflamed her entire lower-back area and compromised its ability to fully rotate.