STAFF EDITORIAL: Congrats to the champions

Penn's women's squash team brought home a national title this weekend. Let's recognize the athletes for a job well done. But today, the members of the Penn women's squash team have good reason to smile: They have earned a national championship, and few have striven so hard, and for so long, for the right to be called the best in the country. On Sunday in New Haven, Conn., the finals of the Howe Cup -- as expected -- pitted two longtime rivals against one another. And proving their mettle, the top-seeded Quakers held off No. 2 Princeton in a hard-fought 5-4 battle. This was the women's squash team's first-ever national championship, and we should all be proud of their accomplishments. The women of the squash team are student-athletes in the purest sense of the word. They play not for individual recognition, not to see their picture in the paper, not for the promise of a lucrative professional contract. They play in pursuit of a team objective, the No. 1 ranking that has eluded them over more than two decades of competition. They embody the quiet dignity of the athlete who trains hard in the off-season and competes week after week, outside of the spotlight. Indeed, the team deserves our congratulations, not merely for its members' accomplishments on the court, but for the dedication they have shown on the long road to the championship. It was a road that began in November at the Ivy Scrimmage at Yale University. There, Penn -- the preseason No. 1, ahead of perennial favorites Harvard and Princeton -- defeated the Crimson and the Tigers. And through to the season's final competition, also at Yale, the Quakers held onto their No. 1 ranking, a feat unto itself. To coach Demer Holleran and the women's squash team, congratulations on a season to remember.