M. Squash | Never a better time for an upset

If there was ever a time for the men's squash team to listen to coach Craig Thorpe-Clark, it would be now.

"It's not how you start, it's how you finish" is one of his mottos, and one that the Quakers hope to rally around this weekend at the national team championships.

Penn (7-6, 2-4 Ivy) enters the competition ranked No. 7 nationally, which earns them a birth in the Potter Cup -- the highest division at Championships - and a first-round match today against the tournament's host, No. 2 Princeton. A first-round upset, however, is a near impossibility, so the Red and Blue have their eyes on winning the playoff for fifth place, just as they have the past two years.

Fifth place "would mean a lot. Nobody wants to be the team that regressed," senior co-captain Joey Raho said. "It would mean an exponential amount to me that we finish where we belong."

The Ivy League champion Tigers will almost definitely prove to be too much to handle. Their only loss of the season came last week, when they fell one flight short of halting No. 1 Trinity's 198-game win streak.

But at the very least, a match against one of the nation's best will be good preparation for the talented teams Penn will face in the later consolation rounds.

"I think that there's no harm that can come out of playing Princeton," said senior Andrew Zimmerman, who turned 22 yesterday. "We're gonna go in there and get a great match in. And then whatever the result is, Saturday is another day. If we get some good squash in Friday, win or lose, we'll be ready for Saturday."

But the competition doesn't get much easier after that. In the second round, barring an upset, Penn will meet No. 6 Rochester, only a week after the Yellowjackets thrashed the Red and Blue, 9-0.

The team is not too demoralized after that defeat, however. Instead, they are focused on the upcoming weekend, partially due to the crucial return of junior Mark Froot to the No. 4 slot.

"We're using that as motivation for this week," Thorpe-Clark said. "I also think that some of the other teams may underestimate us a little bit because we didn't play well in the Rochester match."

Beyond that, a Sunday date with No. 5 Harvard or possibly No. 4 Cornell likely awaits. The Quakers would love to get their hands on either of those opponents, as they fell to the Big Red, 8-1, in their first match of the season and lost a 5-4 heartbreaker to the Crimson two weeks ago.

So while it will likely be Trinity or Princeton standing as the national champion after this weekend's play, the Quakers are determined to achieve their own victory by coming in fifth place. After all, nothing redeems a disappointing regular season quite like a stellar finish.

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