National champ W. Squash returns to campus

The Quakers haven't had a good chance to celebrate their victory - yet. A day after capturing the national title that has eluded them for 24 long years, the members of the Penn women's squash team got back to life as usual yesterday. The magnitude of the national championship, however, still has not completely set in for all of the Quakers. "It hasn't really hit me, what we've actually done," junior Helen Bamber said. "After we won, I was thinking about all the other teams we saw playing, and it was amazing for me to think we were better than all of them." After vanquishing Princeton in the finals of the Howe Cup in New Haven, Conn., the Quakers started on their way home to begin celebrating -- sort of. "We had high anticipations of celebrating last night when we got in, but we wanted to go to to one last dinner as a team," senior Paige Kollock said. "That took a while, and we ran out of steam." Upon their return to Philadelphia, the members of the team generally went home to unwind or to study for impending exams. "We were all pretty exhausted from the weekend," freshman Runa Reta said. "I had an exam today and papers due." Many of the Red and Blue had no time at all to rest quite yet given the crunch of academic demands. "I haven't had a chance to celebrate yet -- I've been studying," Bamber said. "But [tomorrow] night, we're going to celebrate -- big time." Others, though, got an early jump on celebrating their athletic success yesterday by doing the least athletic things possible. At this stage in their academic lives, Penn's seniors can certainly afford to relax a bit more and let their achievement sink in. "I slept through my first class," Patrick said. "And then I did nothing." But the team does indeed plan to do something to celebrate, and hopes to do so with its coach as one of the gang. "Ultimately, we'd like to get Demer [Holleran] out with us because we know that she wants to come out but she's caught by what she thinks is being a good coach," Kollock said. "If we can get her out, it will be a fun time." For the Quakers, it will be a fun time that has been a long time in coming, but well worth the wait. "We thought we could do it the past three years," Patrick said. "To have actually done it is good." As Penn's No. 1, Patrick's season will actually continue, as she moves on to individual championships. But for her fellow senior co-captain Kollock, the team championship is a sweet end to a long athletic road. "I did not have these expectations going into my senior year," Kollock said. "I thought last year was our year and I just wanted to finish out having a good season, and this was not in the cards. I guess it's just a serendipity. I'm not going to reject it. I can't think of a better way to end my athletic career."

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