Liberty League

Yellowjackets Take Squash Title

The Rochester squash team won the program’s first–ever Liberty League title this fall, and the Yellowjackets are setting their sights even higher.

“In the years to come, I hope that Rochester becomes one of the main powers in college squash world, alongside Harvard, Princeton, and Trinity,” says Jim Bristow ’10. “I think when you are hungry for something, you’re willing to work that bit harder to get it.”

At the Liberty League championships at St. Lawrence University in November, the Yellowjackets won a total of 34 individual matches, 30 of them with a 3–0 score. Rochester got top-notch efforts from Hameed Ahmed ’11, Yohay Wakabayashi ’10, Robert McDavid ’11, Ori Goldman ’09, Will Newham ’11, and others.

Such dominance didn’t come as a surprise to either the Yellowjackets or their coach, Martin Heath, a former international–level player who arrived at Rochester in 2005 and has pulled together a powerful squad. Heath says “a stellar recruiting year” and last year’s win over reigning league champ St. Lawrence presaged November’s results.

The coach says his team’s systematic training regimen played an important role, and added that the team’s top players have “motivated the players lower down the ladder to improve.”

Adds Bristow: “This team knows that we have a good chance of surprising people this year, so everyone is working very hard to reach those goals.”

Those goals include making themselves known on the national level.

“It’s an exciting time for the squash team,” Heath says. “We can only improve. It is great to win a title we have never won before like the Liberty League, though in reality, we are shooting for national glory in a couple of years.”

—Ryan Whirty