Make sure you follow all of the action taking place this weekend in Philadelphia at the National Collegiate Women’s Team Championships and the National Collegiate Club Team Championships.

Links to the live draws, live streams, and other information can be found here:

National College Women’s Team Championships

National Collegiate Men’s/Co-Ed & Women’s Team Championships

Week Eleven Varsity Match Results: February 2 to February 8

View all results here: CSA Women and CSA Men’s&Co-Ed

* – New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) Championships at Williams College

Varsity

• No. 21 St. Lawrence men upset No. 16 MIT in a tough 5-4 match. While MIT’s middle of the ladder remained strong, St. Lawrence dominated the top and bottom taking wins at 1,2,3,8, and 9. 
• No. 19 Amherst men took down No. 18 Bates 8-1 in the quarter final game of the NESCAC Championships. Despite several close matches, Amherst came out on top. 

NESCAC Champions 

Men

Trinity College –  2023 NESCAC League Champions

Women

Trinity College –  2023 NESCAC League Champions                              

Club Teams

• Fordham University hosted Boston University, Drexel University, Johns Hopkins University, Lehigh University, and New York University for a round of successful matches. 

Please follow the CSA on Twitter (@CollegeSquash) and Instagram (@college_squash) for additional updates. 

2023 National Collegiate Squash Championships will begin this week, Friday, February 18.
2023 National Collegiate Women’s Varsity Team Championships
2023 National Collegiate Co-Ed & Women’s Club Team Championships 

The College Squash Association (CSA) Women’s and Club Team Rankings are now final after all teams in those divisions completed their last regular season matches by this past Sunday. The Men’s Team Rankings are very close to their final form, barring any unexpected results from the final few matches this week.

With the National College Women’s Team Championships and Club Team Championships commencing on Friday this week, the CSA will use these final rankings to populate the tournament draws. The championship draws will be posted on this website and on Club Locker later today.

Trinity College’s Lady Bantams carry an undefeated record into the championships looking for their first Howe Cup title since 2014. That Trinity team was the last team other than Harvard to win the Women’s Team National Championship. Harvard, the 2-seed this season, is on the hunt for their eighth straight Howe Cup championship.

After clinching a Top-8 position on Friday evening against Penn’s women, Virginia caused some reshuffling within the top eight teams with an upset win over Cornell on Sunday.

The final NESCAC Women’s Championship results also led to some reorganization of the standings order around spots 13 through 17, with Williams and Bowdoin each benefitting by one spot.

Brown University’s men’s and women’s club teams are the top seeds heading into the National Collegiate Club Team Championships held at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center starting on Friday. Most of the matches among the 28 men’s and co-ed teams and 11 women’s teams will take place on Saturday and Sunday this weekend.

Chasing Brown on the women’s side will be Boston College and University of Chicago’s inaugural women’s team. George Washington University and Georgetown University are two squads eager to try to unseat Brown in the Men’s Club A Division bracket.

Tournament Pages
National Collegiate Women’s Team Championships
National Collegiate Men’s/Co-Ed & Women’s Club Team Championships

The full set of updated rankings can be viewed here below, while fans can also find the current rankings on the College Squash Team Rankings page all season.

* – Not participating in the National Collegiate Team Championships

Week Eleven Varsity Schedule: February 9 to February 15

View the full schedule – CSA Women and CSA Men’s&Co-Ed

* – New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) Championships at Williams College

Matches of the Week 

CSA Match of the Week has been wrapped up for the season as we head into Conference Championships and National Collegiate Championships. 

Conference Championships happening in Week 11: 

NESCAC Championship

Men: Tournament Page

Women: Tournament Page 

Spotlight Matches

Women
No. 9 Penn vs. No. 8 Virginia
No. 4 Drexel vs. No. 5 Cornell 

Men
No. 7 Drexel vs. No. 8 Cornell
No. 19 Amherst vs. No. 18 Bates

Club Teams

• Once again, Fordham University offers a valuable location for competing club teams this weekend, including Boston University, Drexel University, Johns Hopkins University, Lehigh University, and New York University

Please view the full Club Teams Schedule – CSA Women and CSA Men’s&Co-Ed

Order of Play 

The order of play for week eleven (February 9 – February 15) is: 

3-Court System
1,2,3 / 5,4,6 / 8,7,9

5-Court System
2,1 / 4,3 / 6,5 / 7,8 / 10,9

Live Scoring will be available for many matches during the week on Club Locker – Men and Women. 

Please follow the CSA on Twitter (@CollegeSquash) and Instagram (@college_squash) for additional updates throughout the weekend.

In an effort to recognize the on-court performance of our players, one women’s player and one men’s player will be highlighted for their accomplishments during each month of the season. CSA congratulates our January Players of the Month: Tate Harms (Harvard) and Hannah Chukwu (Trinity).

CSA Men’s Player of the Month – January 
Tate Harms, Harvard University

Tate Harms, a sophomore from Wollerau, Switzerland, helped secure the Ivy League title for Harvard in January. In a close match up between the top teams in men’s college squash, Harvard and Penn were tied up at 4-4. While Harms, Harvard’s #4 player, dropped the first two games in the deciding match, he fought off multiple match balls to capture a riveting third game. Harms then battled back from 8-5 down in the fifth to win it 11-9 and clinch the 5-4 victory for his team. This match not only determined the CSA Men’s No. 1 ranking but also the Ivy League title. Harms accomplished this massive match, along with an overall 5-1 record in January, while maintaining exemplary sportsmanship and leadership.

CSA Women’s Player of the Month – January
Hannah Chukwu, Trinity College

Hannah Chukwu, a first-year from Tatabanya, Hungary, had several clutch wins in CSA January matches that secured Trinity’s No. 1 ranking. Most notably, Chukwu’s wins against Harvard, Drexel, and Princeton showed her true strength and determination. She took down top women players in the CSA playing at the #3 and #4 position, moving up in the ladder multiple times in place of injured teammates. Chukwu remained undefeated in all of January play with additional wins against Tufts, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia and Penn, leaving her 8-0 for the month.

Following the successful execution of another Mid-Atlantic Squash Conference (MASC) Championship event last weekend, the College Squash Association (CSA) is pleased to announce that MASC is now a fully recognized and sanctioned squash conference within the CSA organization.

Originally formed in 2017 with five institutions signed on, MASC has grown to include six men’s teams and six women’s teams during the 2022-2023 season. Anderson Good, MASC Commissioner and former George Washington University head coach, is credited with the design, formation, and leadership of the conference from its inception to the present.

“I am thrilled that MASC has now gained full conference recognition by the CSA,” said Good. “This further cements our place in the collegiate game and we look forward to continuing to grow and enhancing our student-athlete’s college squash experience.”

MASC has formally crowned men’s and women’s conference champions since 2019. Later that year, CSA granted MASC provisional status as a squash conference in order to support and monitor added structure and growth. Since then, the conference has added named divisions and perpetual trophies at the championships, end-of-season conference awards to recognize the efforts of MASC student-athletes and coaches, and an official website and social media platforms for the conference.

“The CSA is very pleased about the growth and formalization of the Mid-Atlantic Squash Conference,” stated CSA Executive Director & League Commissioner David Poolman. “MASC is truly a flagship organization in a growing geographic region for college squash and a welcome destination for teams that do not have a natural conference affiliation. We are excited to support and celebrate the continued progress of the conference into the future.”

MASC joins the Ivy League, Liberty League, and New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) as current conferences which sponsor squash competition and championships.

Current MASC member institutions include: Dickinson College, Drexel University, Franklin & Marshall College, Georgetown University (women only), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (men only), U.S. Naval Academy (men only), Stanford University (women only), and University of Virginia.

Mid-Atlantic Squash Conference

Week Ten Varsity Match Results: February 2 to February 8

View all results here: CSA Women and CSA Men’s&Co-Ed

* – Mid-Atlantic Squash Conference (MASC) Championships
^ – Liberty League Championships

Varsity

• Multiple conferences, including MASC and Liberty League, held their championship events this past weekend to wrap up their 2022-2023 season. The Ivy League also named their 2022-2023 conference champions. 

Ivy League Champions

Men
Harvard University –  2023 Ivy League Champions

Women
Harvard University – 2023 Ivy League Champions

Liberty League Champions

Men
University of Rochester – 2023 Liberty League Champions

Women
William Smith College – 2023 Liberty League Champions

MASC Champions

Men
University of Virginia – 2023 MASC Champions 

Women
Drexel University –  2023 MASC Champions                             

Club Teams

• West Coast Men/Co-Ed Club teams UCLA, Cal and Stanford competed in a small round robin this weekend. 
• Men/Co-Ed Club teams Georgetown University, Richmond University, George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University had a successful round of matches at Squash on Fire this weekend.
• Several midwest club teams gathered at Chicago’s MetroSquash, hosted by University of Chicago, to compete in their final matches before the Club Team Championships.
• In their first hosting gig as a formal club program, University of Connecticut welcomed several northeast-based teams to the facility at Avon Old Farms School.

Please follow the CSA on Twitter (@CollegeSquash) and Instagram (@college_squash) for additional updates. 

Week 11 will begin tomorrow, February 9 to February 15. 

The road to the championships is coming to an exciting end with so much still to play for and only a couple weeks left of the College Squash Association (CSA) regular season. The CSA has posted its penultimate weekly update of the team rankings before the final set of standings come out for the women’s and club teams next week.

The results of the NESCAC Men’s and Women’s Championships, scheduled for this coming weekend, will have a major impact on the final seedings going into the National Championships because of the teams bunched together in places 14-20 in both polls. Only teams ranked nine through 16 earn a berth into B Division at nationals, so multiple teams will be looking for that final victory to either secure their place or put them over the top into the next tier.

Remaining non-conference match-ups like Virginia vs. Penn and Cornell vs. both Virginia and Drexel are the last puzzle pieces to figure out the top divisions in both varsity championships. Friday’s Virginia-Penn women’s match and the full match-up between Cornell and Drexel are not to be missed. The women’s positions five through nine are still totally unsettled after CSA overturned Yale’s result against Columbia due to a disciplinary issue.

The club team rankings are also coming into clearer view with the National Collegiate Club Team Championships scheduled for Feb. 17-19 at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center in Philadelphia. The new club rankings reflect a mix of regular season results and an assessment of likely starting lineups for the championship event.

The full set of rankings can be viewed here below, while fans should look for regular updates on the College Squash Team Rankings page all season.

* – Not participating in National Collegiate Club Team Championships.

Welcome to Coaches Corner – a column for CSA coaches to provide insight, advice, and anecdotes. This week we welcome Wesleyan’s Head Men’s and Women’s Coach, Shona Kerr. Below, Shona discusses the different phases of growth players face when joining a college squash team. 

As a coach and educator, I am constantly evaluating what I teach my students and its place within the American student-athlete concept. At Universities we are in the human development business. This can get obscured in the heat of competition, in the pursuit of a better ranking and the prowess of winning. I will discuss the optimal group dynamics of teams and the evolution of varsity squash players through their four years in college. The goal is for players to develop into dynamic individuals ready to take on the greater world around them and fulfill their best potential.  

I have a student athlete who went 88-1 in her college career and won the Betty Richey award (the highest award that is bestowed to a senior in college squash). Through others noticing her hard work and abilities, she was offered a job with a prestigious bank and is still there today. This is a successful student-athlete. On a different note, I received a text from a recent graduate to thank me for where she had found herself. Her experience on the squash team gave her the life tools and connections needed to land her dream job, and I quote, was “all because of squash”. While at the bottom of the roster for four years, she never stopped working hard, always showed up on time and offered to help the team in any way she could. Having learned our squash strategies, and having watched so many matches from the bench, she became a great contributor as a coach. This is also a successful student-athlete.  

What does it look like when college squash is done right? What did the student’s experience give to them and did they graduate as a more evolved individual? I take the term student-athlete literally in that academia, coupled with what is learned as an athlete on a team, can offer a significantly enhanced education.  

Lately, I have been delving into Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and feel one could do a lot worse than to use this model for the holistic development of our students. There are so many life lessons to glean from this book – it has stood the test of time for good reason. The one I will extract here is his Maturity Continuum paradigm and look at how it relates to the development of our four-year student-athletes.  

The Maturity Continuum presents the evolution of human growth from Dependent to Independent to Interdependent. To quote Covey: 

 “Dependence is the paradigm of you – you take care of me: you come through for me; you didn’t come through: I blame you for the results. 

 Independence is the paradigm of I – I can do it: I am responsible; I am self-reliant: I can choose. 

 Interdependence is the paradigm of we; we can do it; we can cooperate; we can combine our talents and abilities to create something greater together”. 

If my players leave as interdependent individuals (or at least on their way), I have given them one of the ultimate tools they can have in entering the workforce, managing a family, starting their own company – whatever sphere they choose to commit to.  

When players start as first-years they are dependent. They need to be told how to be an effective teammate and student-athlete. As much as I work to prepare students, there really is no substitute to the experiential aspect of joining a new team. Athletes start with varying backgrounds. Some solely worked with a private coach, played when they chose to and individually competed in tournaments. Others played on a high school team, of which the programs can have varying degrees of rigor. Some come in with both. Others come from a SEA (Squash and Education Alliance) program. Some come from more, or less, rigorous schools academically, schools that don’t give grades, or from abroad – it’s an adjustment.  

First years are eager to fit in, find their place on the team and bond with their new teammates. It is my job to educate the students to be proactive in seeking what they need. Whether that is extra hitting time, one-on-one sessions, how to use the training/physiotherapy resources when needed for injury, rehab/prehab, syncing the team google calendar of events to their devices, finding peer tutors for their classes, helping them learn how to schedule their time, etc. Not to mention the social side of the team. Some players need a little help knowing when they really should join the team for an apple picking excursion or when it is a more casual trip with a few others to a movie. It is also a time to look ahead to set goals for their four-year membership – what do they want to achieve? This way we can start the process of reverse engineering and mapping out what’s required to attain these goals.  

I had a student graduate about five years ago and had asked what his goals were. He was very clear that he wanted to ultimately play top three on the team. In his first year, he barely made the starting nine and wasn’t too sure about me as his new coach (he really missed his previous coach). We very much clicked when he decided to give me a chance. He went through all of the maturity continuum stages and finished his career playing number two – with a winning record. This is what is possible. Through his good habits he left operating very much as an interdependent person that had used all the people and resources around him to excel.  

A current first-year student recently played a thrilling five game match in front of a packed house, which he won 13-11 in the fifth. Afterwards he put his head through my office door and said “that was thrilling, now I get it”. He felt like he belonged and found his home, another step along the path that the first-years have to make. 

My point being is that it can be bumpy at the start before students find their flow.  

As sophomores and juniors, they are working towards independence. Having gone through one complete cycle of a college team year, independence begins to happen while hopefully forming good study and training habits. They have a more complete idea of how the team works socially and emotionally, as well as a clearer picture of how to improve their game. With this they can more easily self-direct. They know how to complete the weight lifting program ascribed and don’t need to be shown. They know how a college match runs, they know they are expected to be at practice on time, they are more comfortable with the coaches and in seeking out what they need. They are able to begin prioritizing changes they are making to their game, and in what order to progress.  They show up to the team events that they should and are helpful to others when asked. The collective sum of good habits are the tenets of creating leadership, and as Covey states, leadership is not possible without first achieving independence. 

There are two players that pop into my mind when I think of this stage. They were equally driven to improve with totally opposite styles of play. I witnessed the shift to independence after their first season finished and would find them independently training together and working on the areas that each needed to improve.   

As juniors and seniors, they begin the path to interdependence – a higher level of operating that allows the team to collectively achieve more together than as individuals. I always remind people that although squash is an individual sport college squash is played as a team – no one can do it alone. They start to appreciate match play with teammates as an opportunity to test their game versus a chance to prove themselves individually. They are comfortable initiating feedback to teammates and proactively ask for coaching from their peers and coaches. They recognize the collective team goals and are constantly thinking of ways to help others get there. They start to become comfortable bringing team concerns to the coaching staff and are learning to trust that others can help. They actively check in with players to make sure they are doing well, both on and off the court. If something needs doing, they just do it, or have learned to delegate to the best person for a particular task. They begin to solicit help from graduates that have gone before them as they navigate the job and internship market, and life after university.  

As an example, there was a first-year athlete that was struggling with adjustment to college. The senior captains were acutely aware of this and brought it to my attention. The solution was as simple as taking this player to breakfast to talk about how school was going and what their expectations were. It transpired that this student cared so deeply that they were almost getting in the way of themselves. Having worked through this issue, I attempted to help them adjust their approach to a more positive approach and they are now a thriving member of the team. 

When done right the synergy of an interdependent team is exhilarating. The hard work is done at practice, in the gym and in the classroom. On match day, a functioning team should just flow with their actions, and can be a marvel to watch.  

Covey’s seventh habit is called Sharpening the Saw and pertains to the constant renewal of oneself. This habit is essential to progress from dependence to interdependence. It has four elements shown below. Again, good character is the collective of good habits which in turn creates leaders of good character (and ultimately winning). Without this habit it is extremely hard for an athlete to fulfill their potential.  

Here is Covey’s diagram for his seventh habit – Sharpening the Saw: 

The classroom offers mental sharpening. Good athletic habits (i.e., sleep, nutrition, stretching) and training address the physical aspect. The player-to-player interaction provides the social and emotional portion. Last is a spiritual piece, which could be religious, but can also be a personal worldview. It is better put as your value system. Learning how to take care of one’s own renewal allows for optimal performance on court and in all areas of life.  

We talk about this on the team in terms of working towards your ideal performance state. In a recent match, one of my more competitively reliable players lost an eminently winnable match in five games. He looked flat on his feet and missed shots that he would normally make. Something was off. We talked afterwards and it transpired that he’d had little sleep in the last two days due to academic work and thought he could overcome this with caffeine. The lesson was learned, you have to work on daily renewal to be at your best for everything you do. It is why I ask the team to complete match evaluation forms post play. The first question is “describe your preparation for this match, sleep, nutrition, warm up, etc”. Through self-reflection the student-athletes begin to see the positive patterns that lead to success. 

The secret here is that squash is the educational vehicle and human development is the product. A complete student-athlete experience can teach all the elements of Covey’s seven habits and guide a person from dependence through to interdependence – a higher level of operating. A job well done is a student who graduates having learned and lived these applications, elevating them for their next life chapter and beyond.  

This is why you should play college squash.