Home-grown vs. imported? No contest

Yasser El-Halaby wowed the squash world the last four years on his way to four straight individual titles - a feat never accomplished before. However, El-Halaby was just one part of a recent tradition of exceptional international squash players.

A United States-born player has not won an individual title in over 15 years. El-Halaby hails from Cairo, Egypt, and other recent champions have come from Colombia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Israel.

Elite international players have left their mark on the individual stage, but their presence has been felt at the team level as well. While Penn only has one male international squash player, and the women have four, 20 of the 96 roster spots on the top five male teams are filled by international players.

The presence of squash players from abroad has been particularly evident at Trinity College. The Bantam men have won 156 straight matches and eight straight collegiate titles. This year, on a team that Penn coach Craig Thorpe-Clark calls their best team yet, nine players come from abroad.

Two events occurred to make international squash players so relevant. First, Paul Assaiante was hired at Trinity in 1994. Second, college squash changed from the American style to the international style, which involves a larger court and a softer ball. Assaiante knew international players were key for Trinity to beat perennial Ivy favorites, and the change in styles made it easy for international players to succeed in U.S. colleges.

Assaiante's first real international success was Marcus Cowie of the United Kingdom. Cowie won individual titles in 1997 and 1998, but more importantly, helped import more international players to Trinity. Nine of the twenty players on the Bantams' roster are international. That includes No.1 player Shaun Johnstone of Zimbabwe, No.3 Gustav Detter of Sweden, and No.5 Eduardo Pereira of Brazil.

Recruiting international players poses all sorts of problems, from financial aid and SAT scores, to the quintessential problem of finding the players themselves.

Both Thorpe-Clark and women's coach Jack Wyant have begun recruiting outside the country. Thorpe-Clark traveled to New Zealand last year as Wyant scouted Belgium and Germany watching junior tournaments.

The two coaches disagree on the ease of assessing international players, as Thorpe-Clark finds it somewhat challenging and Wyant trusts his coach's intuition, believing he knows talent when he sees it.

Tara Chawla, a sophomore from Winnipeg, Manitoba who plays for Wyant, did not always plan on coming to an American school. As she got older and watched other squash players attend U.S. schools, she became more interested in the idea. For her the biggest difference is in the character of sport.

"It is more of a club or individual sport back home," Chawla said. "It is more of a team sport here."

While international players continue to be an integral part to collegiate success, the real story may be the growth of the sport in the United States.

"Squash is undergoing a real boom at every level in this country," Wyant said. "In the rest of the world it is staying at the same level of participation."

International squash players may have raised the level of play at U.S. colleges, but American play is on the rise and may be better than competition outside it one day. Thorpe-Clark, with his largely home-grown team, may be at the head of the curve of the next squash wave. But it certainly hasn't come yet.

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