Essentially, the greatness of the Harvard women's squash team is this 96-8.

The Crimson played 11 matches over the course of the season. Each match is made up of nine games. That's 99 games Of those 99, Harvard lost just three and finished the season with a 969 winning percentage.

Top to bottom, no team in the country could compete with Harvard. In fact, only three individuals could.

"It's too had that we didn't have more teams to push us to our limits," Coach Bill Doyle said after Harvard flattened Yale, 9-0, for the regular-season national championship.

Harvard also won the Howe Cup for the first time in three years. The Howe Cup tournament invites every varsity women's squash program in the nation to compete, and most do. It's a test of team depth and endurance, and the Crimson won it with its second-best player out with the flu.

And, in the post-season national individual tournament, five out of the top 10 players hailed from Harvard--including the winner, junior Vanya Desai.

The women's squash team was good enough to start tongues wagging about it being "the best ever." And while team members are predictably shy over grabbing such an accolade, they don't hesitate to acknowledge that, indeed, it was a superior year.

"This year was one of the best teams we've ever had," says junior Jordanna Fraiberg, who won the national individual tournament in 1992. "I'm not sure if we're the best, but we're certainly among the best."

Teams of the Year don't have to dominate their sport the way the women's squash team did. But it helps.

Harvard's top-to-bottom quality can't be fully realized by just looking at its matches. If it was a dream season, it wasn't an easy one.

A flu epidemic hit the team in mid-season, knocking Fraiberg out of the Howe Cup. Injuries slowed training schedules. Desai, the team's top player, developed tendonitis in her wrist.

But buoyed by the team's exceptional depth ("we could go 11 deep and still be very tough," Doyle says), the team persevered.

"I've never seen so much sickness in one year before," Doyle observes. "But everyone rose above it. They refused to lose."

The Rookie

Although several freshmen contributed a lot to the season, the most surprising rookie on the team might have been Doyle himself.