You can view results from the last two weekends here: RESULTS

In Memoriam: David Ryan (1996 – 2024)
It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of David Ryan, a beloved figure in the Harvard and College Squash Association (CSA) community, who passed away in his sleep on Saturday, October 26, 2024, at the age of 28. David was an extraordinary athlete and a cherished friend, admired for his warmth, humor, and dedication to his sport and teammates. He is survived by a loving family: his father, Eoin, an esteemed coach at Sutton Lawn Tennis Club and Squash Ireland’s 2013 Coach of the Year; his mother, Suzanne; and his sister, Stephanie. His memory will live on in the hearts of countless friends, teammates, and fans, who will forever cherish stories of his humor, tenacity, and the vibrant presence he brought to every interaction.

David Ryan’s achievements within the CSA will be remembered as legendary. Serving as captain of Harvard’s 2017-2018 squash team, he reached the peak of college squash by capturing the 2018 CSA Individual Championship title. David’s journey to this title remains unmatched: an unseeded player, he claimed the championship by defeating top-seeded athletes from Penn, Dartmouth, and Trinity, including a remarkable comeback against Trinity’s top player in the final. His historic victory, secured with a dramatic four-point surge to win the fifth game, is a testament to his resilience and grit, leaving an indelible mark on the landscape of college squash.

David’s squash journey began well before his college years. Hailing from Ireland, he was a celebrated junior champion. After college, David competed on the PSA tour, reaching the semifinals of the 2022 Limerick Open. A true competitor, David also brought humor and a mischievous spirit to every court he graced, whether with Harvard or his Irish teammates. His athletic prowess was matched by his magnetic personality, always connecting with teammates, younger players, and friends.

The below is a passage from Rob Dinerman’s A History of Harvard Squash During the Mike Way Coaching Era (2010-21) which chronicles David’s journey to winning the 2018 CSA Individual Championships.

“A TITLE FOR A LIFETIME”
David Ryan had entered the Individuals, scheduled to be played the weekend after the Potter Cup at the Squash On Fire facility in Washington D. C., but his ranking wasn’t high enough to get him into the top division, which, as noted, had been limited to the top 16 ranked players since 2015, and he had no intention of traveling to D. C. to play in the second flight for players ranked Nos. 17 to 32. Although he had compiled a spotless 15-0 combined record in dual-meet and Potter Cup play that season, he had played at No. 4 and therefore wasn’t ranked high enough to make it into the top flight. Convinced that his season and college career were over, he did not play any squash that week, which he instead spent reminiscing about the season, enjoying his free time with friends and studying for a midterm exam he was due to take the following Monday morning in a History course. But just prior to the Individuals weekend, as the draws were being finalized, he got a phone call from Coach Way informing him that enough players (a full half-dozen), exhausted by the grueling three-match Potter Cup weekend just past, had withdrawn from the Individuals top flight for there to be a spot available for him if he was still interested. Included in the group of withdrawing players was the 2017 Individuals champion Osama Khalifa, whose lower-back condition had flared up enough to prevent him from defending his title, just as had happened with his older brother Amr, who similarly had been unable to play in the Individuals during his senior year in 2015 due to the same injury.

Ryan had not played in the Individuals since his freshman year, when, as previously detailed, he surprised everyone with his run to the semis. During the intervening seasons, he had been frustrated at not having the opportunity to challenge the top players at other schools due to the strength of Harvard’s top three players — now the opportunity he had craved for years was being dropped into his lap at the last possible moment, and he was not going to pass it up. He advanced to the semis with Friday wins over Andrew Douglas and Alvin Heumann, the No. 1 players at Penn and Dartmouth respectively. Those results created an additional challenge, since Ryan, not expecting to make it that far, had only packed two shirts and two pairs of shorts in his suitcase! This meant that, after defeating Heumann Friday evening, Ryan had to go back to his hotel room, hand-wash his clothes in the shower and hope they would be dry enough for him to wear them the following day.

His semifinal opponent, teammate Timmy Brownell, had beaten Princeton’s top player Youssef Ibraham in the quarterfinals and had never lost any of his many challenge matches (the majority of which had gone five games) with Ryan during their two years at Harvard, nor had he lost the one time they had played each other in an official tournament at the 2014 World Junior Championships in Namibia. This match went to a fifth game as well, but this time Ryan jumped off to an early lead, which he closed out with an 11-7 tally.

Waiting for Ryan in the final was the top-seeded Kush Kumar of Trinity College, who had cracked the top 100 in the PSA rankings prior to starting college. There was very little turnaround time between Ryan’s semi, which didn’t end until nearly 11pm, and the Sunday-morning final, and Kumar, whose straight-game semifinal win over Abouaish had neither lasted nearly as long nor ended nearly as late the Ryan-Brownell match, was definitely the fresher player. In spite of this, Ryan got off to a great start, winning the first game 11-4 and continuing his momentum through the second game as well. He knew that Kumar was a “momentum” player and he therefore tried varying ways of keeping Kumar off his rhythm. These ranged from implementing a game plan predicated on deep, straight drives mixed with counter-attacking straight drops, to occasionally resorting to what he later termed “tactical stoppages in play,” to sometimes trying an unorthodox shot out of the blue. “I needed to pull out everything I had up my sleeve,” he wrote years later about his approach to that match, and his strategy and execution were both throwing points on the pile and getting into Kumar’s head. But by mid-match Ryan’s legs were feeling the strain of the weekend, and when Kumar, who had been told by Coach Assaiante that he was leaving too many loose balls and that he therefore needed to “tidy up the court,” rallied to win the third game and jumped out to a 7-1 lead in the fourth, Ryan wisely decided to let that game go in order to conserve his energy for the fifth game.

During most of those two mid-match games, Ryan’s increasing fatigue affected the width of his drives, opening up the court for Kumar to run him from front to back and impose his excellent front-court game. In the break before the last game began, Saad Abouaish, Brownell and Coach Way exhorted Ryan that this would be the last game he would ever play wearing the Crimson colors and that, for better or worse, he would remember the upcoming game for the rest of his life. Abouaish, who knew Kumar’s game well after the several matches they had played during the past two years, also advised Ryan to mostly drive the ball down the near wall when he was up front, rather than going cross-court, since Kumar appeared to him to be “sitting” on the cross-court and wasn’t reacting as well when Ryan instead hit a straight drive.

Ryan clawed his way to a slim 7-5 advantage, but Kumar then won five of the next six points, the last of which, a stroke call in his favor when there was contact near the right wall, gave him a 10-8 lead, double-match-ball. The call infuriated Ryan, which, under normal circumstances, as Ryan later acknowledged, “would have instigated a strongly worded conversation with the referee and a lot of bad language under my breath aimed at Kush. But, in this instance, after a loud roar of ‘Nooooo!’ at how wrong the decision was, it fired me up like I have never felt before. It gave me a second wind (or third or fourth wind), to the point that I know I wasn’t even thinking, ‘Oh no, I’m two match balls down.’ All that was going through my head is that I am not losing another point, no matter what.” Nor did he, as each of the match’s last four points landed in Ryan’s column. Trailing 10-8, he volleyed a perfect forehand drop winner off a Kumar backhand cross-court, following which he legged down a Kumar drop shot to the front-left and hit a bold but risky cross-drop winner. Ryan’s momentum carried him close to the left wall, leaving the whole right side of the court open if Kumar had been able to retrieve the ball. He dove forward in a vain attempt to reach it and lay there on the ground for quite a while. When he finally rose to his feet, there was a demoralized aspect to both his body language and facial expression during the brief stoppage (while someone raced in with a towel to dry the area of the court where Kumar had landed), almost as if Kumar realized that his best chance to win the match had come and gone.

At 10-all, following a tense exchange near the front forehand corner, Kumar nearly hit a forehand cross-court past Ryan, who got just enough of his racquet on the ball to send it along the left wall, in response to which Kumar backhanded a working-boast volley into the tin. It was a low-percentage shot that appeared to have a bit of desperation to it. On the final exchange, Kumar hit a good backhand straight-drop that drew Ryan too far out of position to muster anything more than a weak backhand cross-court directly onto Kumar’s racquet at mid-court. Ryan later said that by that stage he had become so rubbery-legged that he knew that that was his last swing of the point either way, and that all he could do was pray that his shot would somehow catch a dead nick or that Kumar would mishandle the return. With the entire right side of the court exposed, all Kumar had to do to win the point was get the ball back to the front wall.

However, whether out of mental or physical exhaustion, his return went right into the bottom of the tin as an incredulous Ryan jumped for joy, yelling “No way!” and brandishing his fist to celebrate the culmination of his improbable and extremely compressed run from non-participant as of less than 96 hours earlier to Individuals champion. It was the first time that a player had rallied from match-ball-down to win the Individuals in the 28 years since Jenny Holleran, Harvard Class of 1990, had hit a backhand drop-shot serve-return winner against Yale’s Berkeley Belknap on simultaneous-match-point in 1990. It was also the first time this had happened in the men’s Individuals since 1939, 79 years earlier, and also on a simultaneous-match-point, when Harvard star Kim Canaverro rifled a hard serve right into body of his opponent, Princeton’s Stanley Pearson Jr., only to have Pearson instinctively reflex-volley the ball barely an inch above the tin.

The opening lines of the Crimson write-up read, “David Ryan was never supposed to win the 2018 College Squash Association (CSA) national individual championship. Nor was he supposed to be in the finals, semifinals, quarterfinals, or even the opening round.” Asked how, after playing No. 4 all season, he was able to beat three No. 1’s in as many days, Ryan’s interesting response was, “I had never gone up against those guys, but the thing was that they hadn’t played me either, so they didn’t really know what to expect. Maybe I got them a little bit nervous, when it came down to it, or maybe some of them were overconfident about playing someone who had spent the season at No. 4. I was a couple of match balls down and I was just in that sort of mindset that I really didn’t want to lose, no matter what. I was going to leave it all out there. It’s my last ever college squash match, probably my last squash match. period. I have to say the most memorable part of the year was definitely the moments after winning the individual championship. The teammates that were actually at the tournament stormed the court. My coaches were almost in tears. And when I got back to the airport in Boston, my whole team was there holding posters and champagne and screaming my name. It didn’t feel like an individual championship. It felt like winning a team championship.” In recognition of his pluperfect season, Ryan was unanimously voted team MVP by his teammates and he, Abouaish and Brownell all made first-team All-American.

NOTE: This article has been adapted from articles by Rob Dinerman that first appeared earlier this week on the squash website Dailysquashreport.com.

David Ryan, 1996-2024, 2018 Intercollegiate Individual Champion

David Ryan’s 96-Hour Odyssey

[Philadelphia, July 24, 2024] – The College Squash Association, the governing body of intercollegiate squash, is pleased to announce the election of a new Board Chair and a new board member. Will Carlin has been appointed as the new Board Chair and Katherine O’Donnell Lynch has been elected to the board. Each will be pivotal in driving the organization’s strategic initiatives and fostering continued growth. 

In their new roles, Carlin will lead the organization’s 11-person Board of Directors, and Lynch joins as a Class 3 Manager. Both bring extensive experience and passion for college squash, and their strategic vision and ability to drive operational excellence will be instrumental in guiding the CSA toward continued success and expansion. 

Carlin takes over from Margaret Gerety, who served as the Board Chair this past year. The CSA expresses its deepest gratitude for her leadership and contributions during her tenure. Margaret has been an invaluable asset to the CSA since she joined the Board in 2019. A few highlights during her tenure include successfully negotiating a new organizational structure with US Squash, recruiting growth-oriented individuals to both the Board and committees, cultivating a culture of giving, and leading the search for a new commissioner. 

Carlin expressed both thanks and excitement about his new role. “I am honored to be third CSA Chair following the incredible leadership of John Nimick and Margaret Gerety. The eleven current board members are all amazingly committed to our wonderful game and the importance of intercollegiate squash. I am thankful to be part of the College Squash Association team and look forward to contributing to the organization’s growth and success,” he stated. “I am confident that together, we will achieve remarkable milestones and create new opportunities in the industry.” 

Carlin and Lynch are joined by the re-elections of John Nimick, whose ongoing dedication and expertise continue to be invaluable, and coaches Mark Allen and Mike MacDonald, who have excelled in ensuring that the insights and perspectives of active coaches are well-represented in the CSA’s decisions. 

The association is confident that the leadership and experience of the newly elected and re-elected board members will further strengthen its efforts to elevate the sport of squash in the collegiate arena. 

Will Carlin 

Will Carlin, perhaps best known as the back-page columnist for Squash Magazine and the host of several professional squash tournaments, including the Tournament of Champions in New York, has had a long squash career. Carlin went to Yale, where he played number one and was Captain his senior year. During his collegiate squash career, Will earned first-team All-America and All-Ivy honors. He was the 1989 National Softball Champion and the US #1 player in 1990 and 1995. During this time, Carlin became one of the first US men to play the PSA tour full-time, which he did for three years, achieving one of the highest-ever PSA rankings by a US man (#51).

Carlin was elected as squash’s first athlete representative to the US Olympic Committee, where he served on the Board and the Executive Committee. He is the only non-Olympian ever to serve as one of two athlete representatives on its Executive Committee, and one of only two squash players worldwide ever to serve on its country’s Olympic EC. Carlin served for 14 years on the US Squash Executive Committee, where he won the Stewart Brauns Award for service to US Squash.  

Carlin is co-founder and CEO of Speakable, a consulting firm that helps organizations with high-stakes presentations. Prior to that, Carlin was managing partner of three different marketing agencies, including OgilvyInteractive North America and the New York office of marchFIRST, a $200-million, 500-person operation.   

Katherine O’Donnell Lynch 

Katherine O’Donnell Lynch started her career as an officer in the US Navy, driving $1B Destroyers. She then pivoted to building and scaling startups in the health, wellness and fintech space, beginning at Oscar Health where she led operations and brought the company public. She then co-founded Ness, the first of its kind credit card that rewarded consumers for taking healthy actions. Katherine has since been working as a consultant and advisor to many early and growth stage companies looking to build and scale their operations (examples include racquet sports, military focused credit cards, and an AI personal assistant). 

Katherine was co-captain of the 2010 national and Ivy League champion team at Harvard. Katherine lives in Short Hills, NJ with her husband Joe (also an avid squash player!) and 2 girls, Lucy and Margot. She plays at the Chatham Club and at the Harvard Club of NYC. 

For more information about the College Squash Association and its Board of Managers, please view the CSA Governance page. 

About the College Squash Association:
The College Squash Association (CSA) is the governing body overseeing men’s and women’s intercollegiate varsity squash in the United States. In May 2017, CSA formally organized as a nonprofit organization led by a founding board of directors. In December 2022, CSA became an independently-managed subsidiary of US Squash, a new corporate structure that formally affiliates squash’s national governing body and its collegiate governing body, creating a united pathway to sustained success for squash on campus and robust growth for squash overall. 

Philadelphia, PA – The College Squash Association (CSA) announces that Tita Hicks of St. Lawrence University has been named the 2024 Ann Wetzel Award recipient.

The Ann Wetzel Award is given to a senior women’s player who has shown the greatest level of improvement over their 4-year career. The candidate is evaluated on outstanding growth technically as a player, story of progression from limited experience to key contributor, a sound understanding of the rules of squash, and positive on-court poise and demeanor. 

Hicks joined the St. Lawrence women’s squash team as a freshman with prior experience from City Squash, an SEA program. Her drive and commitment to the sport helped her make significant improvement in her game. Unfortunately, Tita’s freshman year season was cancelled due to COVID, but that did not stop her in her journey to becoming a stronger squash player. Tita worked to earn her spot on the ladder and in the past two years has made the most improvement on her team being voted most improved, twice. She showed her greatest improvement in her last season of play when she reached No. 7 on the ladder.

Head Coach, David Morrish, praises Tita for her accomplishments stating that she “epitomizes what a program is about. She was not strong enough to be on the team when she first came, but did not let that deter her. When I first came, she was at the bottom of the roster, and regularly losing to all those above her. This past season she won challenge matches against two players above her and played as high a #7 on the roster. And she did all of this with a smile”.

Tita’s teammates cannot speak highly enough of her, “in the intense game of squash, Tita’s sportsmanship and class shines through the glass walls on court. She never misses to acknowledge an extraordinary shot by her opponent. A honest handshake at the end of her matches, regardless of the score. You will always hear Tita’s words of encouragement from outside the court. Her enthusiasm never goes unnoticed as it boosts the team morale, a true form of the spirit of teamwork. Her success is also reflected in her views of sportsmanship, as it lies not just in how you win, but in how you play the game” they share.

Hicks is the first ever Wetzel Award winner from St. Lawrence University.

The award is named for Ann Wetzel. The 1964 national champion, Wetzel founded the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s varsity team in 1970. During the more than 20 years she coached at the University of Pennsylvania, Wetzel taught hundreds of women the game of squash. Through her love of the sport and her passion for teaching, she gave many women the opportunity to experience the thrill of intercollegiate squash.

As we celebrate Tita, we also take a moment to honor the memory of Ann Wetzel who recently passed away. Wetzel’s legacy lives on through the countless players she inspired and the programs she helped establish. Her dedication to advancing women’s squash has left an indelible mark on the community.

The CSA congratulates Tita on her success and wishes her the best in her next chapter after graduating from St. Lawrence University.