trin squash

This past weekend the Trinity College squash team won its 11th straight national championship, keeping alive its NCAA record-breaking streak of 202 straight victories. The Bantams prevailed in dramatic fashion over the #2 ranked Princeton Tigers. The deciding match was between the top 2 players in the nation: Princeton's Mauricio Sanchez from Mexico and Trinity's Indian behemoth, Baset Chaudry. Sanchez had a commanding 5-0 lead in the 5th and final game of the match - 4 points from the national championship for his team. He went on to choke in typical Princeton fashion, dropping the game, match and season for the Tiglets.


Trinity's impressive streak proves also to be a huge triumph for the sport of squash. The team's accomplishments have landed it a number of bits on ESPN, notably the recent Outside the Lines segment that aired last week (can be seen here). Two years ago the team's coach, Paul Assaiante, was given the opportunity to throw the first pitch at a Red Sox game. As you might imagine, the crowd was mainly comprised of massholes shouting "what the f*ck is squash?!" That being said, I'm always thrilled to see my favorite sport be brought to national attention and given the accolades it deserves; after all, most Americans identify squash with lock-jawed New Englanders or the sport's retarded stepchild, racketball.

With all of the praise Trinity Squash receives and exposure it gives the sport, I just want to point out that they are not exactly competing on a level playing field. It is no secret that the Trinity coach, Paul Assiante, is given carte blanche by the school's administration to poach the world's top young players, regardless of their academic backgrounds or ability to pay tuition. It is a fact that the best squash is played outside of the U.S. Over the past 11 years, there have rarely been more than 1 or 2 Americans in the team's lineup. By contrast, the nation's other top programs must abide by far stricter admissions standards and have significantly more Americans filling their lineups. Trinity has undoubtedly raised the bar in college squash, but it has essentially transformed the recruiting process to an arms race for highly-trained foreign players.

Well if you've made it this far and want to see some squash in action, here are some dank highlights from the Tournament of Champions, one of the world's biggest squash tournies that takes place in Grand Central every February.

Posted by Buck Dancer on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 8:01 PM 4 comments

11:11 on monday night

it was 11:11 when i started writing this, so you should get to make a wish by the transitive property. last week was the beginning of second semester. lots of tanned/healthy/revitalized/smiling faces were reunited after two months. thursday night i somehow wound up talking to this female cop who, coincidentally, dealt with me after i split my head open outside of delanos...so she is telling me how lucky we are to not have to worry about the town police, then proceeds to go off on a tangent about how many gangs are in the pioneer valley. i ate up every word of it. the next afternoon when i woke up and told my friends about it they were convinced that she was just trying to make her work as an ac policewoman seem more "legit". she claimed all the apartment complexes down the street from here were controlled by gangs. id put my money on you getting beat up by a group of massholes mourning the patriots loss over you getting beat up by a gang. the homeless people around here aren't warmongering gang members rocking their red or blue. most of them are bippies (burnt out hippies) and alcoholics. they're dudes, crazy dudes, but dudes nonetheless. one bar night earlier this fall i befriended this feastivly plump bippie who calls himself dreddy eddy. he kept calling me "mama". the next day when i was walking into town to get a coffee i saw him and the rest of his bippie family and they were all about positive energy, smiles..... and psychedelics. dreddy eddy has a friend whose taller, thinner, and paler. he looks 16 but know for a fact he's well over 25. one time he promised my friend John a magic trick in exchange for a cigarette. so this guy takes a cigarette and shoves it up his noes, and then pulls it out of his mouth. it was righteous. so dreddy eddy and his bippie braahs are always down for a cigarette break, provided that you can provide them with cigarettes. i decided to look up amherst crime rates and found this profile on Amherst ...i decided that although i would rather live in St. Helena than Amherst, i would still much rather live in Amherst than Williamstown. i also realized that this police woman was full of lies. the same way younger college professors feel the need to preface their courses with extensive name dropping, most AC police will (if given the opportunity) drop the fact that they attended or will soon attend "the police academy". my friend matt found this out the hard way his freshman year when he drunkenly asked a cop busting him and his friends for drinking in the freshman dorms "oh my god i can't believe they let you guys carry guns?!!?!?!??!"

back to friday morning. at my 2pm breakfast at the dining hall i ran into my friend James. he invited me to hang with with him and some of his sophomore fraternity brothers and then they convinced me to drive down to new york with them. an hour later i wound up sitting bitch in James' tahoe with his three fraternity brothers. when we got into grand central i left them to go visit see my good friend Pete. we went to Pete's friends apartment in the village. i only knew a few of the people there. we drank for a while sitting down and shortly after the party transformed into a stand-up-dance-and-drink party we all split and cabbed it to BK. we were headed to studio b but got lost, very lost, on the way. i didn't mind because i was stupidly experiencing wanderlust while driving around in circles, probably because i was blitzed. once we got to studio b i booty shaked the night away. GZA of the wu-tang got on stage at some point really late and i changed my dancing style from electric-helical-worm-gestures to two-handed-w-in-the-air.

saturday i went to the museum of natural history with Pete and my friend Dickie who happened to be in the city to catch a flight to Vail. the i think the dinosaurs were the biggest hit for the group, but the underwater section with the huge blue whale was pretty cool, too. i really wanted to go and see big bang demonstration , and/or cosmic collisions but we didn't have time. so after three hours of wandering/considering what would happen if the habitat dioramas came to life/pondering the meaning of life i headed back to school.

Posted by Madame Lamb on Monday, February 4, 2008 at 8:11 PM 0 comments