The college squash schedule is relatively light this weekend, but there will be hot spots of action for fans to follow.

Once again, the CSA’s growing geographical diversity will be on display. Teams will be traveling to Chicago, Pittsburgh, Annapolis, Maryland, and Upstate New York for round robin competition. Even the Ivy League, bastions of tradition, have found a new home for their annual Scrimmages in Penn’s new squash center.

The CSA’s midwest contingent will gather at MetroSquash in Chicago for the aptly-named Big Ten Tournament. University of Chicago was the highest ranked team in last year’s rankings, but emerging teams from Indiana University, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, University of Notre Dame, and University of Wisconsin will be out to show their growth and improvement.

For example, newly appointed Northwestern coach Mike Masius had this to say about his team: “The club squash program at Northwestern University is prepping to move up the collegiate ranks. The university has had a club team since the mid 90’s and enjoyed some growth and lulls over the years as both a coed program and as two individual teams. Now that the student run program has a coach in place, increased awareness throughout campus and outside support; the future looks bright.”

The Ivy League Scrimmages, typically hosted at Yale, migrate south to coincide with the official opening ceremonies of the Martin and Julie Franklin Squash Center at Penn. All eight Ivy League institutions will be in action in a bracket format.

Traditional round robins will take place at the Naval Academy and Bard College over the course of the weekend. Boston University, Fordham University, Georgetown University, Haverford College, Johns Hopkins, and Lehigh University will congregate in Maryland, while Colgate University, Lafayette College, Siena College, Swarthmore College, and Vassar College will compete at Bard.

In additional action, the Chatham men host debutantes Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh in the battle of the Steel City, and the Colgate women host Bard, Bucknell, and Vassar.

The order of play for this weekend is:

• 3-court system:  3,1,2 / 4,6,5 / 8,9,7
• 5-court system:  1,2 / 4,3 / 6,5 / 7,8 / 10,9

View the full college schedules here:
College Squash Women’s Schedule
College Squash Men’s Schedule

Live Scoring will be available for many matches during the weekend on Club Locker.

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

Last weekend saw the college squash season kick off in earnest with several round robin competitions between club teams, plus one varsity team in action. In a display of the expanding geographical diversity of the College Squash Association, the schedule included matches in Pittsburgh, Columbus, Baltimore, Charlotte, and New York City.

Left: Chatham’s Vini Muniz, their top returning player, helped the Cougars to their first wins in program history. Right: Johns Hopkins swept their two opponents at their home venue, Meadow Mill Athletic Club.

Second-year varsity men’s program Chatham University earned the program’s first ever victories with wins over visitors Denison University and Bucknell University. Other top performing teams including the Washington University of St. Louis men, the Ohio State University men, the Colgate University women, and the Johns Hopkins University men, who all went undefeated on their opening weekends of play.

This weekend’s action features several more round robin competitions in diverse locations with more varsity teams starting their formal competition seasons. University of Virginia and Vassar College will host many matches throughout the weekend, while Denison University will be the host institution for round robin play staged at Nardin Academy in Buffalo.

The headlining matches on the men’s side involve two early-season rematches of Hoehn Cup (B Division) play from last year.  Virginia and Franklin & Marshall renew their closely contested rivalry on Saturday, while Western Ontario welcomes Navy north of the border, hoping to avenge their tight 5-4 loss to the Midshipmen in Annapolis last season.

In Buffalo, Chatham will look to build on the momentum from their first victories, especially when they take on their first varsity opponent of the year, Hobart College. Hobart and William Smith Colleges will aim to exert dominance over the competition in Buffalo under the guidance of new head coach, Pat Cosquer.

Vassar and head coach David Ames host a round robin with Fordham University, Bard College, Northeastern University, and Lafayette College coming to town. The Fordham and Northeastern women’s teams had a taste of competition last weekend, but they will be tested with a full weekend of play this time around.

The order of play for this weekend is:

• 3-court system:  1,3,2 / 6,4,5 / 9,8,7
• 5-court system:  2,1 / 4,3 / 5,6 / 7,8 / 10,9

View the full college schedules here:
College Squash Women’s Schedule
College Squash Men’s Schedule

Live Scoring will be available for many matches during the weekend on Club Locker.

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

Starting this weekend, all intercollegiate squash contests between CSA teams will follow a random order of play for the individual matches. The CSA central office will establish a new randomized order each week, which will be announced every Thursday throughout the season on the CSA website and social media platforms.

Historically, CSA team matches have followed the same prescribed order each week. Using either three-court or five-court playing systems, matches would begin with the lowest ladder positions (i.e. Numbers 9, 6, and 3 in the three-court system or numbers 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 in the five-court system). Now, the order of the matches will be randomly generated and will likely change from week to week.

“We are excited to try this new format this year,” said CSA Executive Director & League Commissioner David Poolman. “A few teams used a random order during last season’s league matches, and it has gained popularity among the coaches. It allows the student-athletes to experience different playing situations within team match-ups, while removing the need for some of the unnecessary gamesmanship in creating lineups.”

The random order will be announced each week during the season on Thursdays. That order of play will stay in effect for every match played during the subsequent seven-day period. Spectators interested in attending matches and watching specific players should take note of the order of play for that week before traveling to a match.

Random order of play will also be applied during the College Squash Team National Championships at the end of the season.

The order of play for the week of October 24 to October 30 is:

• 3-court system:  1,2,3 / 6,4,5 / 7,8,9
• 5-court system:  1,2 / 3,4 / 6,5 / 8,7 / 10,9

The College Squash Association (CSA) has announced the seven student-athletes who will serve as members of the organization’s revamped Player Advisory Committee (PAC) for the 2019-2020 season.

The committee will communicate directly with the CSA Executive Director & League Commissioner, providing a valuable player perspective on CSA’s new initiatives and other issues that face CSA teams. The CSA Board of Directors may also call upon the PAC to offer direct feedback on specific questions stemming from board discussions. After each season, the committee will produce a report containing feedback on the season and recommendations for future consideration.

After originally selecting three student-athletes per graduation year, the CSA increased the committee membership to four players per year this season. The current PAC has three women and four men representing a cross-section of conferences and ranking positions. These student-athletes are asked to provide a voice for the college player community and will be expected to collaborate with their peers, including both teammates and opponents. PAC members serve terms of two academic years, from the fall of their junior year through their college graduation.

The 2019-2020 Player Advisory Committee members are:

Class of 2020

Graham Bonnell, Bates College

Timmy Brownell, Harvard University

Gabby Fraser, William Smith College

Class of 2021

Mohammad Alterki, George Washington University

Molly Carabatsos, Connecticut College

Jack Lentz, U.S. Naval Academy

Emme Leonard, Princeton University

With many college squash teams now back on court for official practices, the CSA offers a preview of the road to the CSA Championships, highlighting many key matches along the way.

The Harvard men’s and women’s teams will both look to defend their team titles at the CSA Championships in late February. Both teams start their championship defenses late in the fall semester: the Crimson men welcome local foe MIT on Nov. 20, while the women open both their season and Ivy League play at Dartmouth on Dec. 3.

The clash of the titans, the rematches between defending champions Harvard and runners-up Trinity, is a midweek match-up this season taking place on Wednesday, Feb. 5 in Hartford, CT. All four teams will be eager to make a statement with the team championships scheduled for only a few weeks after those matches.

The season kicks off in earnest next weekend, but one match between two of the CSA’s newest teams has already taken place to open the campaign. Debutants University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University played the first of hopefully many local rivalry matches in the Steel City, with CMU clinching the 6-3 victory.

Other local rivalries are the hallmark of the opening weekend of play, headlined by fast-rising second-year varsity men’s program Chatham University taking on well-organized club programs Denison University and Bucknell University and the Wellesley College women welcoming neighbor Northeastern University.

The first all-varsity match-up of the 2019-2020 season should be an exciting one: Mid-Atlantic Squash Conference competitors University of Virginia and Franklin & Marshall College will square off in Charlottesville. While the Virginia women swept both matches against the Diplomats last season, the UVA men squeezed out three separate 5-4 victories during the second half of last year.

The weekend of November 15-17 marks the first opportunity for the NESCAC teams to compete, and the increased activity on the schedule that weekend points to this critical point in the season. Intriguing Friday evening matches start off the weekend right. The Maine rivalry between Bates and Bowdoin will start a new chapter with first-time head coaches Reinhold Hergeth and Theo Woodward taking the reins of those programs, respectively. Additionally, two men’s teams with eyes on a Top-8 spot – George Washington University and University of Virginia – will face off in primetime in Washington, DC.

After at least 53 total matches between the 15^th and 17^th, CSA squads compete in at least 59 matches the following weekend on Nov. 22-24. Three of those matches involve the Stanford University women, who finished a program-best 3^rd in the country in 2019, making their first foray to the east coast. Virginia continues its brutal early season schedule, taking on heavyweights Princeton, Yale, and Trinity on consecutive days. Connecticut will be a hotbed of college squash that weekend, with Yale and Wesleyan hosting multiple neutral site contests along with their own matches.

As the calendar turns to December, Ivy League play opens with the aforementioned Harvard-Dartmouth match-up, as well as contests between the Yale and Brown teams. The final weekend of matches before finals and the holiday break includes two rematches from last year’s CSA Men’s Team National Championships. In a rematch of the Summers Division Championship, MIT welcomes Brown to Cambridge, while the 3^rd– and 4^th-place teams from last season, Penn and Rochester meet in Philadelphia.

The beginning of 2020 brings a litany of matches while teams are on winter break.  Williams College kicks things off with matches on back-to-back days against Dartmouth and Middlebury. Mark your calendars for January 11 and 12 when many teams are back in action after the new year.  This first full weekend of Ivy League play could have major implications for the top of the rankings with Harvard scheduled to host Penn and Princeton. All four visiting teams will likely push the defending champions, especially considering Penn and Princeton’s talent this season and Harvard having played so few matches up to that point.

2019 men’s runner-up Trinity has a tough five-day three-match stretch during the following week when they host Rochester and Penn with a trip to Columbia sandwiched in between. The Trinity women, also national finalists last season, will tackle the challenging Columbia-Penn tandem over a three-day period. The weekend of January 17-19 also sees Fordham play host to some budding rivalries and important mid-rankings clashes, when Connecticut College, Haverford, and Hamilton visit the Bronx.

The following week of the schedule is regional rivalry week, capped off by the annual Pioneer Valley Invitational in northwest Massachusetts. Amherst and Mount Holyoke will host a bevy of teams, many of whom will play important rankings-adjacent matches against geographically diverse opponents. The Yale women face a tough test this week, albeit with all matches at home, when they face Trinity, Stanford, and George Washington over a five-day period.

The last full weekend of regular season squash occurs as February arrives, with several critical matches that will affect teams’ overall rankings. This includes rematches of both B Division finals from last season. The Cornell and Dartmouth women rekindle their rivalry in Ithaca on Feb. 1 with possible Top-8 seeding on the line. On Sunday, Feb. 2, the 2019 Hoehn Cup rematch of Drexel and George Washington could have an impact on which team makes the jump to the Potter Division later in the month.

The weekend of February 7-9 marks the beginning of championship play for some CSA teams. The Liberty League Championships, Mid-Atlantic Squash Championships, and NESCAC Women’s Championships all take place on that weekend.  The final full weekend of Ivy League play is scheduled then too.

The following weekend, February 14-16, features the NESCAC Men’s Championships and the informal Centennial Conference round-robin competition between Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, Haverford, and Johns Hopkins. Not to be outdone, the Princeton and Trinity women meet on Feb. 15 in Princeton for a blockbuster rematch of last year’s Howe Cup semifinal. Depending on season results and final rankings, these two teams could meet again only a week later at the CSA Women’s Team National Championships at Yale.

The full details of the 2020 CSA Championships are as follows:

• CSA Women’s Team National Championships: February 21-23, 2020 in New Haven, CT
• CSA Men’s Team National Championships: February 28-March 1, 2020 in Boston, MA
• CSA Individual National Championships: March 6-8, 2020 in Philadelphia, PA hosted by University of Pennsylvania

For a full listing of scheduled matches and results throughout the season, please bookmark the following links: Men and Women.

In an official release on Monday, Bates College named Reinhold Hergeth to the position of Head Men’s and Women’s Squash Coach. Hergeth comes to Bates from Chelsea Piers in Connecticut, where he has worked as a top club professional since graduating from Trinity College in 2013.

A native of Bloemfontein, South Africa, Hergeth was a core contributor to four years of great success at Trinity, including three National Championships. Hergeth played No. 1 and was a senior co-captain on the 2013 championship team.

While at Chelsea Piers, Hergeth had a wide variety of responsibilities, including coaching club members of all abilities, managing the junior program, and overseeing tournament planning and execution at the club. He has also been the head varsity coach at New Canaan High School for the past five years.

Hergeth takes the helm of Bates Squash after the previous head coach, Pat Cosquer, took on the same role at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.  The Bates women lost four top-nine players to graduation in 2019, but they add four incoming student-athletes to the group led by three-time All-NESCAC selection Luca Polgar. The men’s team will aim for their 19th straight winning season with seven starters returning to be joined by three recruits.

For more details on Hergeth’s hire to lead Bates Squash, you can view the formal press release here.