No. 1 Penn squash looking to finally break through vs. No. 2 Harvard

Penn and Harvard have waited almost two years to officially face off again on the squash courts.

The No. 1 Quakers (9-0) will host No. 2 Harvard (5-0) on Saturday to open Penn’s Ivy League slate, in a rematch of the 2020 Potter Cup Finals, the tournament that decides the men’s squash national collegiate champion. Though the Crimson defeated Penn in March 2020, taking every match but one, the Quakers’ second-place finish marked the best team result they have ever had.

“This is my fourth year playing Harvard, but we’ve never won,” graduate student Andrew Douglas said. “We’ve come really close. So that’s the biggest thing for us — none of us want to lose that match, and we’re going to try to do everything in our power to win it. I think if we can beat Harvard, the season will have at least an element of success to it, even if we did, say, lose every other match.”

Both teams enter the match with an unblemished season record. All but two of Penn’s nine victories have been 9-0 sweeps of their opponents, including the Quakers’ Nov. 13 win against No. 5 Drexel.

“It gives us confidence that we had such a successful first half of the season. We’ve had a long break since our last match at Rochester [on Dec. 4] and we kind of got to reset,” senior Aly Abou Eleinen said. “And the way we’re looking at it is just the first match of the second half of the season.”

The Quakers’ dominance has not gone unnoticed, and they have maintained the No. 1 spot in the College Squash Association rankings since preseason.

Six Penn players return from the 2020 Potter Cup final starting nine, including Douglas and Eleinen.

Douglas, a three-time All-America honoree, has not dropped a match this season, playing primarily at the No. 1 seed for Penn.

Douglas is also coming off an individual title win at the Cricket Club 10k in December. He swept all four of his opponents at the tournament in Toronto, his first appearance at a professional squash tournament since February 2020.

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“Winning that gave me a big boost of confidence that I’m not just a college squash player, and I think that playing against the top guys in the country, you need to have that kind of confidence in yourself, because they’re all playing professionally as well,” Douglas said. “So it’s just helped to prove myself a little bit, just for myself, more than anyone else.”

Alternating at the No. 1 seed and the No. 2 seed for Penn is Eleinen, who is ranked No. 80 in the world after just one year on the professional squash circuit.

Also among Penn’s strong core of veterans is graduate student Yash Bhargava, who became the first Penn men’s squash player in program history to win 50 matches on Dec. 4.

“[Fifty match wins] is an incredible milestone to hit, and it shows just consistency over a four-year period,” Penn coach Gilly Lane said. “It’s just a fantastic achievement for an amazing individual, and someone that I feel really honored to be able to coach and be around.”

Harvard also boasts professional-caliber talent, including the No. 20 player in the world, senior Victor Crouin.

A two-time Ivy League Player of the Year, Crouin faced off against Eleinen on the professional squash circuit in September. At the South State Bank Marietta Open, Eleinen upset world Nos. 100, 97, 52, and 40, but lost the final to Crouin in three games.

“Victor is obviously a world-class player. So is Marwan Tarek, No. 2 for them — he’s World Junior Champion, and Sam Scherl at No. 3 is a U.S. national team player,” Lane said. “All the players on [Harvard’s] team, one through nine, are very good. And what we’re trying to do is focus on what we can control, and prepare accordingly to put our players in the best position to be successful.”

The Quakers’ Jan. 12 match against Tufts was postponed due to COVID-19 concerns among the Tufts program, giving the Quakers more time to prepare for the showdown against their Ivy rivals.

“If you look at the roster and both teams, in my opinion, these are the strongest two teams in college squash history. The talent on both teams is just incredible,” Eleinen said. “I think it’s one of the biggest Ivy League matches in history, I would say. But we have prepared, and we’ve done everything we could, and I am really excited for the match.”