Men's squash team gets set to hit the road

Even before the official start of the 2002 men's squash season, the Jumbos have encountered some stiff competition _ on the home court. Due to the inadequacy of facilities on campus _ only four courts exist at Tufts, and even those are not of the standard international dimensions _ the team has been forced to split practices between their home campus and Harvard. As a result, coach Doug Eng was able to schedule only four matches in the Boston area, none of which will be played at home.

"We will always be underrated," Eng said, "because of the nature of our court situation. If you are the Boston Celtics and you play all your games on the road, you might only win 30, when you would win 50 if you played them all at home."

Eng indicated that it is difficult to overestimate the effect playing an almost exclusively away schedule can have on a team.

"Even if you're dead even in ability with a team, you'll lose 5-4 [on the road]," he said.

As if being forced to become road warriors isn't enough, the Jumbos are also left to deal with the loss to graduation of last year's tri-captains, Colin O'Higgins, Neil Pallaver, and Shayan Haque. The void formed by those departures will be filled largely by four newcomers.

"We really went after freshmen this year," Eng said, before admitting that his recruiting strategy is "not exactly like Duke basketball's."

Eng lost his two top recruits, who opted to attend Brown and Cornell, but did enlist freshmen Spencer Maxwell, Derek Lee, Pranav Tripathi, and Tom Keidel, to join on at Tufts.

Squash competitions consist of nine singles matches, and as things stand, Eng will send out his four freshmen in the third through sixth spots. Below them will be juniors Jordan Kolasinski and Jesse Goldberg, playing at seven and nine, respectively, and sophomore Jason Krugman, who will compete in the eighth slot.

Leading the Jumbos will be a pair of experienced senior co-captains, Chris Choi and Nathan Anderson. Choi, who edged Anderson in a challenge match this week to earn the top position on the team, went just 2-10 in dual meets last year, but was a respectable 3-3 in tournament play. Anderson was one of the Jumbos' best last year, going 6-7 in dual meets, and he is the only returnee with an above-.500 career record, at 23-17.

"We have two very motivated and talented captains," Kolasinski said.

Aside from those two seniors, the Jumbos are somewhat inexperienced. But despite their youth, and lack of a home court, Eng said his team should be able to improve on the 8-11 record and No. 20 national ranking they posted a year ago. The squad believes that a .500 record and No. 17 national ranking are possible this year.

"[We need to] believe in their goals and remain committed to [the] plan. That's what we've been stressing this year," Eng said.

The squad will look to bring a strong contingent to the Nine-Man Nationals, held in late February. The competition will be broken into divisions of eight teams apiece depending on rankings. The top eight teams compete against one another, as do the next eight, and so on. Last year, Tufts finished fourth in its division.

To achieve its goal of the No. 17 national ranking, it would have to win that division. Doing so would also likely propel the Jumbos past rival MIT, which ended Tufts' season last year by defeating them at Nationals. The rivalry between the Engineers and Jumbos developed in part because the teams often practice together at Harvard.

"After three months of seeing MIT every day at practice, we're going to get to play each other," Eng said. "MIT is a perfect rival."

Squash is similar to a sport such as baseball in that it is heavily individual, but also has a team element. Even if the Jumbos have no control over their inexperience and unbalanced schedule, Eng hopes their cohesiveness will develop as the winter progresses and become a strength.

"Team unity very often makes or breaks a season," he said. "You don't coach things like that, but just hope it happens."