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.