As the men's squash team approaches this weekend's season-opening matches, the absence of some of its most talented members threatens to hinder the team's success in the fall slate.
With players studying abroad this semester, the squad faces major challenges filling empty positions on the ladder until the players return in the spring. Until the spring, the Jumbos will have to find ways to compete without the help of key juniors Alex Gross and Ben Rind.
Gross, who was named to the All-NESCAC team last spring, played in the No. 1 position for the entirety of the 2008 season, while Rind often played at the top of the ladder in either the No. 2 or No. 3 position. While these absences could prove to be game-changers, the squad insists that the fall schedule should help the team adjust to the new dynamic.
"The first few matches are going to be pretty tough for us," senior co-captain Zach Bradley said. "We're going into the matches with two of our top players abroad, but we're going to use the first couple matches as a learning experience for the rest of the season."
Though the squad has temporarily lost players competing in the top positions, the graduation of tri-captains Brian Rassel, Chris Martin and Josh Levinson leaves a vacuum at the bottom of the ladder. Match wins in the end of the lineup can often prove key to victory, as seen in last season's battle against Denison. In that contest, the Jumbos trailed 4-1 in the top five matches, but pulled off the 5-4 win after the tri-captains and Bradley took their matches in the 5th-9th matchups.
Despite the graduations, however, the addition of new players as well as the presence of veteran senior John Subranni, who missed last season while studying abroad, could help fill the void.
In particular, the team has confidence in its sole freshman addition, Sheldon Taylor. The Atlanta, Ga. native could step into one of the five positions left vacant this season. The return of Subranni should also give the squad some clout toward the top of the ladder, where the senior competed in his freshman and sophomore seasons.
"We have one freshman on the team this year, Sheldon Taylor, who's a really solid power hitter," senior co-captain Max Dalury said. "He's much more aggressive attacking players, and also has solid ground strokes. That should pay off in some of our closer matches against teams like Colby and Bowdoin where we had very close losses."
Bradley added, "With players abroad, everyone moves up a couple spots, but with John Subranni back, we have a big boost for the top of our ladder."
As if the adjustment period wasn't hard enough, the squad will also have to grapple with a new scoring system that could very well change the game as the team knows it. With colleges switching to the American scoring system, which rewards points regardless of who controls the serve, Tufts will need to adjust to quicker game play.
"At first, everybody didn't like the new scoring as much because matches are shorter and it didn't reward fitness as much as the old system," Bradley said. "It all comes down to limiting mistakes as much as possible, because under this system they can really hurt you."
Despite holding the No. 20 rank in the nation in last year's final College Squash Association standings, the Jumbos will be thrown into a thicket of competition against even higher-ranked programs beginning this Friday.
With Williams and Cornell ranked in the top 10, and the season's opening opponent Bates at No. 11, the Jumbos face an uphill battle in just the first two weeks of the season. However, the squad is focused more on certain NESCAC opponents like Colby, a team it will face next semester and who handed the Jumbos close losses in the 2008 season.
As the season progresses, the team hopes it can work toward a level of play that will be enough to avenge some of the matches last year that left the team at 9-12 overall.
"Some of our really close matches that are do-or-die are in the spring, and they're a really good gauge of where we are," Dalury said. "It's important that we play those in the spring when we have our full roster back.
"We really think we can make up for some of the heartbreaking losses we had last year," he continued. "We really want to beat Colby and we think we have a better chance against Bowdoin and Amherst. We feel we'll be able to compete much more closely than last year because of the level of fitness we've been working towards in the offseason."
