M. Squash reflects on the frustrations of a losing season

The men's squash team faced a rocky season filled with adversity. For any sports team, one of the major challenges during a long season is to battle through the ebb and flow of wins, losses and controversy. There was a point in time where it appeared the Penn men's squash team would be swallowed alive by its season. Losses abounded, and those wins which came few and far between were overshadowed by a controversy that always found a way to rear its ugly head. Three weeks after the Quakers ended their campaign, the players have been able to step back and re-evaluate a season that began with high expectations, became rooted in frustration and disappointment and concluded with a final hint of optimism. "We came into the season thinking that we were going to be a great team, and it turned out that our No. 1 player and No. 1 recruit were injured," co-captain Juan Dominguez said. "From the get-go we knew that we were going to be challenged throughout the entire season." Despite the injures and having to force three freshmen and a sophomore transfer into the regular starting lineup, the Quakers began the season in impressive fashion. They won three out of their first four matches heading into winter break, including decisive victories over Cornell and Brown. Penn was poised to become one of the top eight teams in the country as the busiest stretch of the season was set to begin. The team's confidence was at a high and the momentum looked to be on its side, but as the saying goes, looks can be deceiving. The Red and Blue returned from winter recess and were rudely awakened with embarrassing losses at Williams, Amherst, Harvard and Dartmouth. Overall, the Quakers finished the regular season losing six out of seven matches. "One of our lowest points was definitely the ride home after the weekend at Williams and Amherst," freshman Will Ruthrauff said. "The team was broken and we had lost our focus." The Quakers realized that beating the likes of Princeton, Harvard and Trinity was a tall order. Losing badly, though, to teams with which they felt they should have been competitive, took a toll on the players and their psyches. "We had a string of losses that were pretty substantial and those kind of losses, 9-0 and 8-1, didn't help the team morale," senior Jason Karp said. "I think that we felt impotent at that point because we couldn't do anything against these teams," Karp added. "It's a feeling that you have no control over the situation, which contributed to the lack of a positive attitude." To compound this crisis in identity, the team had to deal with its most complicated and sensitive issue of the season. As the year progressed, players noticed the tension-filled relationship between their coach, Jim Masland, and Chuck Braff, who had been playing in the number one position. Masland looked for ways to motivate Braff, but Braff drifted farther away from the team and its focus, according to several of Braff's teammates. Following the Dartmouth match, Masland and Braff discussed the situation and the coach recognized that the best way to resolve the issue was to suspend his star player for the remainder of the season. "It became a frustrating situation for the team with Chuck," Masland said. "There are certain expectations for everyone on the team, and it becomes difficult when some people are putting in mixed efforts and not getting the most out of their abilities." For his part, Braff acknowledged that playing squash was not something that he felt was important at that point in his life. "I have been playing squash for a long time; it has always been fun for me," Braff said. "I promised myself that when I lost the love for the game that I would stop playing. For many reasons this is the way that I felt since I have been at Penn." Although it was a disheartening blow to lose the best player in the middle of the season, members of the team know that it was something that had to be done. In the short term, it was a difficult and sudden transition for the remaining players, but in the long run the team decided it was best for all parties involved. "Chuck's absence was important to the team as well as to himself," Dominguez said. "If a player is not comfortable with himself or within the team, he's not going to be a good influence. He made the decision that he had to take some time off and I respect him for that kind of mature response." With the losing and controversy that was taking place within the team, the Quakers seemed destined to limp quietly into the summer licking their wounds from a lost season. Somehow, someway, the team was able to pull itself together for one final run in the season-ending Team Championships. Penn won two of its three matches, losing in the final round of the second-division playoffs, 6-3, to a Dartmouth team who had beaten them 8-1 earlier in the season. The Red and Blue also received some good news for a change when it learned that Dominguez had been named as a second-team All American. Karp was also honored as an Academic All American, one of only five players in the country to attain the award. "In the grand scheme of things, our team was pretty shaky in terms of all of the bad events that caused disruption," Karp said when asked to sum up the year. "However, I think this team is the closet one that I've been on in the last two years. Looking back, I don't regret anything that happened this season."