A disappointing loss to Harvard forces the men's squad to recoup and regroup.

By Albert Chen

JULIA TIERNAN/YH Peter Grote, DC '02, is one of many Elis who wants to avenge a loss to Harvard.

It had all the makings of a season-ending classic. The Harvard team strutted onto their home court with nine straight league championships under their belt. The underdog Bulldogs arrived in Cambridge hungry and confident. They were coming off an emotional high, a 5-4 thriller over Princeton, their first victory over the Tigers since 1993. The teams were a combined 24-2, and ranked second and third in the nation. The winner would take home the league championship.

"In my 16 years of coaching," men's squash head coach David Talbott said, "we've never prepared as much as we did." Half of the men's team arrived in Cambridge the night before the match, something that has not occurred for a non-weekend match in recent memory. "Going in, we thought we had an excellent shot," Captain Nikhil Bhandare, TD '99, said. "We were playing well, psyched, and coming off the big Princeton win. The stakes were huge."

Many of the players had never been in that situation before, and it showed during the match--the pre-game excitement turned into on-court jitters. Players were rushing points and played tentatively in crucial situations, according to Talbott. After losing the first four matches in painfully close fashion, the team, Talbott said, was "so distraught," and could not recover. The result: a 9-0 loss.

"They felt embarrassed," Talbott said. "It was very humbling. No one thought they could beat us 9-0." Blake Gilpin, TC '01, admitted, "Personally, I was pretty depressed. It will take us a couple of days to recover." Bhandare was blunt in his assessment: "To be frank, we played badly."

According to Bhandare, the bus ride home was not happy. "It was more quiet than usual," he said. The team's dreams for a league championship were left behind at Harvard's Murr Center. But less than 24 hours later, the team was back on their own court, regrouping and finding reason to work towards a new goal. The Bulldogs face Amherst, the nation's No. 6 team, on Sat., Feb. 20, and hope to get back in the win column. More importantly, a victory would secure a third seed in the season finale, the ISA Team Championships. Yale's only two losses of the year came at the hands of the tournament's top two seeds, Harvard and Trinity. A first round win would mean a rematch with the Crimson in the national semifinal. At practice on Thursday, there was already talk of redemption.

"We had a great practice today," coach Talbott noted, just following his team's first practice after what he calls "the debacle." "They're pissed. They're angry at themselves. They're ready to go back and show them what they're capable of."

"We hate them so badly," Bhandare said of the Harvard squad. "I can't even express how we all feel."

Even with their disappointing loss to Harvard, the Bulldogs are enjoying a tremendous season. They are now 15-2, ranked third in the nation, and should finish with their best mark in five seasons. Still, there's no doubt that the players will look back on this season as being so much sweeter if they can shock the Crimson in their probable rematch.

"We have a chance to relive the whole situation, this time with a whole different result," Talbott said. The championships, held Sat., Feb. 25, to Sun., Feb. 26, will take the Bulldogs once again to hostile territory: Cambridge. "It's 100 percent mental," Gilpin said of such big-time clashes. "For all we talked about it, we just weren't ready for the match. You can talk about it, but you just don't know what it's like until you step onto the court."

The team was so hyped up for the match that coach Talbott believes that the pressue undoubtedly got to the team and hurt their performance. Most players on the team realized what a rare opportunity they had. For the seniors, it was the closest they had ever come to winning a league crown.

The team had more than a week to prepare for and think about Harvard. Perhaps the hiatus was too long. "They wanted to win so badly," the coach said. "Instead of focusing on the match, they were focusing on bringing home the first Ivy championship in nine years."

"The nervousness sapped our energy," Bhandare said. "We just got tired early in a lot of matches."

Now the Bulldogs are facing a new challenge. After being wiped off the courts at Harvard, they would like nothing better than to return next weekend and redeem themselves. "There are no excuses for what happened," Talbott noted. "The team tried their asses off. The pressure's off now, and we have a chance to show everyone what kind of team this really is." Bhandare added, "Hopefully they won't take us too seriously."

Perhaps they're in for a season-ending classic after all.

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