‘A true family’: Penn squash’s national title was years in the making

There was history about to be made at the Arlen Specter Squash Center, and the members of the Penn team did not want to miss it.

The Quakers had won four matches on March 3 against Trinity College in the Potter Cup. Just one more and they would secure the first national championship in program history.

When sophomore Omar Hafez stepped onto his court to face Trinity’s Joachim Chuah, most of his teammates were elsewhere. Three matches were happening at the same time, and junior Roger Baddour had his opponent on the ropes: up two games to one, leading in the fourth game.

Even Hafez could feel the moment coming. As he started his own match, he was waiting to hear the screams that would tell him it was over, that someone else had ended it. But Baddour’s opponent fought off eight match balls to keep the day alive, while Hafez won his first game, and then the next, and all of a sudden the crowd had migrated toward him.

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“I was so nervous, but I was trying to keep in my mind that I want to do it,” Hafez said. “I’m the one who will finish it for this team and make the history.”

Hafez lost two match balls before his opponent failed to return his shot and sent the ball over the back wall and out of bounds. The point, the match, and the championship secured, Hafez rushed toward his teammates as they celebrated on the other side of the glass, and leaped up on the wall to join them.

When the door to his court finally opened and Hafez’s teammates streamed through it, they were also crossing a threshold they’d been knocking at for years.

“It’s a celebration of all the classes that came before,” Penn coach Gilly Lane said. “All the work that people that came before this team and put in to lay the foundation for the success... To put our names up there with the names that everyone thinks of in squash is amazing, but it’s because of the legacy built by the players in this era, and I’m super proud of what they’ve been able to accomplish.”

There’s an elite club at the upper echelon of men’s college squash that hadn’t admitted a new member in 25 years. Since 1942, only five schools had reached the pinnacle of the sport and claimed the Potter Cup as national champions: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Navy, and Trinity College.

Now you can add Penn to that list. But while the Quakers finally hoisted the trophy this year, it was a mountain they’d nearly summited before.

In 2022, a star-studded roster led Penn to an undefeated regular season, including a win over Harvard, then the king of the men’s college squash circuit. Penn secured its first ever No. 1 ranking, and as the Potter Cup approached, the stars finally looked like they were going to align.

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But it all ended in heartbreak when Harvard got its revenge, beating Penn 5-4 on its own court in the finals for the Crimson’s third straight national title.

“To be that close and have it stripped away from you is a pretty brutal feeling,” said senior captain Nick Spizzirri, who was a sophomore on the 2022 team. “The guys that graduated before we ended up finally getting the championship obviously put in so much hard work to make the program as high level as it is today. And you have to give thanks to those guys.”

Last year, Penn lost again to Trinity in the semifinals. Redemption was a while coming, but it was on its way.

Even the path to the top this season wasn’t always straightforward.

Back in November, just weeks before the season, Lane got a text from his star freshman, Salman Khalil: I need to talk to you.

It was a nerve-racking text to receive from his rookie, who had arrived to Locust Walk as the top recruit in the world. The news Lane received was even worse: Khalil had broken his right wrist by falling off his scooter — an injury suffered on the way to training. He was out for six weeks, his adjustment to college squash delayed as he rehabbed.

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But Khalil fought back to make his debut in January, just in time for the first Ivy matchup of the season against Cornell. He continued to play as one of Penn’s top seeds for most of the year.

“It showed I was able to answer back, and showed how much the team supported me,” Khalil said. “How much they trusted me, putting me in such a high position on the team.”

During the Potter Cup, Khalil won his second-seeded match to help build Penn’s lead. He finished the season as Ivy League Rookie of the Year, the third consecutive Quaker to win the honor. Hafez won in 2023, and Nathan Kueh in 2022.

“I always believe things happen for a reason,” Lane said. “I told him that maybe this injury happened so that he could understand how lucky and how blessed he is to be playing this game and how good he is, so that he could appreciate his time when he’s playing. And he came back and didn’t miss a beat, and without him, we’re not where we are now. There’s no chance.”

Penn will run it back next year with the same roster, plus an infusion of new recruits. Spizzirri and fellow senior captain Dana Santry will be back, extending their graduation to comply with Ivy rules.

“There’s a responsibility to represent the people that came before you. And now they’re leaving a legacy that they’re gonna want the people that follow to live up to,” Lane said.

There’s no bitterness from the alumni who missed out two years ago. Only joy, Lane said. Some of the players from that team were even there in person to see it all come to fruition.

“For me, that was one of the greatest accomplishments: for them to be as happy as if they were winning it,” Lane said. “They built the culture that the guys know now, and guys that are here and have won have just continued to build it in their own way. But the foundation of it is the same.”

Three members of the 2022 team moved on to play professional squash full time, and they remain ambassadors for the program. One of the first calls Lane got after the championship was a FaceTime from Aly Abou Eleinen, who is ranked 14th in the world on the PSA World Tour.

Even the players who arrived too late to play alongside them know the impact that 2022 team had on the program. They have come to know the alumni who live locally and still sometimes show up to practices.

“Upperclassmen are used to putting the team first because they play for the team before they play for themselves,” Khalil said. “So I think that’s something I learned from them, and hopefully, when I’m an upperclassman I will be able to teach the underclassmen the same thing.”

“I’m so proud that they think of themselves like that because that’s truly what we want as a program,” Lane said. “The fact that those guys that are playing now, they feel like they’re winning for them, not just for themselves but for the people that came before them — that is a true family to me.”