Currently, the Harvard men’s and women’s squash teams are separated by only one slot in the national rankings—the women, as the defending national champions, are ranked first, while the men trail only Trinity.

But the teams are even closer than that. Under the tutelage of a shared coaching staff headed by Harvard Coach Satinder Bajwa, the two teams’ practices often overlap. They even study yoga together to improve team unity as well as the players’ balance and mental focus. Even off the court, the teams are close—as part of the same blocking group, both men’s captains and both women’s captains live in the same entryway. It seems fitting, then, that both are essentially locks to be chasing national titles this season and both will have to contend with strong Trinity teams in pursuit of that goal.

Harvard Women

On the women’s side, both co-captain Virginia Brown ’01 and Katie Gregory ’01—who had been undefeated for two consecutive years before she lost her final match of the season—graduated from last year’s Howe Cup-winning squad. The loss of that duo, coupled with the decision of Ashley Harmeling, who went undefeated last year as a freshman, to take a year off to work in Boston has left three holes in the bottom of the Harvard lineup.

“We could count on them, even if the top had tough matches and lost,” senior Carlin Wing says. “This year, we don’t have that type of experience.”

However, all indications are that experience may be the only advantage last year’s team had over the current edition, as the seven recruited freshmen on this year’s squad appear quite capable of filling those slots.

“They’re going to make this team solid for the next four years,” Wing says.

The top players from last year, too, are a year older, including Crimson No. 1 Louisa Hall. As a freshman last year, Hall finished the season ranked fourth in the country and was named a first-team All-American. This year, she has moved up to No. 3 nationally in the preseason rankings.

“Louisa is one of the most natural squash players I’ve ever seen,” Wing says. “When you watch her, she’s confident in her shots. Her technique and her movement just work very well together.”

Behind Louisa Hall, senior Margaret Elias returns for her second year as co-captain. Also a first-team All-American, Elias finished as the eighth-ranked player in the country last year and is fifth in the current rankings. Although she is easily one of the quickest players on the team, Elias is a fierce competitor whose real strength is her intensity.

“She always rises to the occasion in important matches and pulls through,” Louisa Hall says.

Freshman Lindsey Wilkins, who will start the season playing No. 3, is a tough competitor who reminds many of a young Elias. An aggressive, focused, fast player, teammates have observed that Wilkins has breezed through the often-bumpy transition to the college game.

“She’s been competing for ever and ever, so it’s not like she’s going to be intimidated by these college girls,” co-captain Colby Hall says.

Playing No. 4 for Harvard will be Wing, a second-team All-American who finished last year ranked thirteenth in the country and had moved into the top ten in this year’s preseason rankings at No. 8.

Behind Wing are junior Ella Witcher, who is ranked No. 26, and the last of the Crimson’s returning All-Americans, co-captain Colby Hall. Colby, Louisa’s older sister, joined Wing on the second team, ending the season ranked 18th in the country and is currently ranked 11th in the nation.

One can see the family resemblance in the way the Halls control the Barnaby Courts.

“When Colby plays aggressively, she’s a phenomenal player,” Wing says. “Both her and Louisa run really well and run just about everything down.”

Currently rounding out Harvard’s top nine are freshman Hillary Thorndike, sophomore Kristin Wadhwa, and freshman Stephanie Hendricks. However, with fourteen players on the roster as opposed to only ten last year, some shuffling in the lineup is almost bound to occur.

“Everyone’s wrestling for a spot, but it’s happy wrestling,” Elias says.

That bodes well for the Crimson, who must handle the added burden of being the defending national champions.

“It’s a little bit of pressure, but at the same time I think it’s sort of just psyching us up, too,” Colby Hall says.

As a result, the women have been working even harder than last year, holding morning practice twice a week in addition to their standard afternoon sessions. Still, Harvard won’t know how good it is until it sees its younger players compete on a national stage.

“It’s going to be important for the freshman to get some match experience and be able to pull out big matches,” Wing says.

Once they do, though, the Crimson women could well be celebrating their first back-to-back national titles since the Howe Cup resided in Cambridge from 1993-1997.

Harvard Men

On paper, the Ivy League champion men’s team faces a tougher road to the national title. Gone are last year’s co-captains, Deepak Abraham ’01 and Shondip Ghosh ’01, two of Harvard’s four first-team All-Americans, second-team All-American Andrew Merrill, and Gray Witcher.

However, the Crimson still has a lot of talent returning. Incredibly, the team’s entire top nine from last year finished the season in the top forty-four players nationally. Thus, while Abraham (No. 4), Ghosh (No. 7), Merrill (No. 19), and Witcher (No. 34) have graduated, co-captain Pete Karlen (No. 6), sophomore James Bullock (No. 9), both of whom were first-team All-Americans, junior second-team All-American Dylan Patterson (No. 22), co-captain David Barry (No. 38), and sophomore Ziggy Whitman (No. 44) return.

Even so, the team recognized that it would have to extend itself to compensate for its losses. Thus, six of ten returners trained full-time this summer.

The results have quickly become evident. In this year’s preseason rankings Karlen remains sixth, but Bullock, Patterson, Barry, and Whitman have all risen, to eighth, 18th, 29th, and 35th, respectively.

Throughout the preseason, Karlen and Bullock have been battling for the top spot in the lineup. The competition, though fierce, is friendly, as the players recognize each other’s excellence.

“He’s surely talented, but his main strength is that he works very hard at the game and is dedicated to his training,” Bullock says. “He definitely sets an example so people know you have to put in a bit extra.”

Karlen, who will captain the squad along with Barry, has earned both recognition on the national scene and the admiration of his teammates in practice.

“Right now he’s probably one of the better players in collegiate squash because he’s trained really, really hard for the last four years,” freshman Asher Hochberg says.

Bullock, too, has worked to improve.

“James Bullock is certainly the best athlete on the team,” Barry says. “He won some big matches last year because he would cover the court so well, but he’s become more focused on the technical part of his game and has made a huge jump this year.”

Behind Karlen and Bullock, the rest of the lineup falls into place with Patterson playing No. 3, followed by Whitman, Hochberg and fellow freshman Mike Blumberg. Junior Thomas Storch, Barry and senior Tomo Hamakawa currently round out the last three slots.

Like the women, the Crimson men have been practicing Tuesday and Thursday mornings, in addition to grueling workouts every afternoon.

“We definitely feel like we’re training harder than any squash team right now,” Hochberg says.

So far this season, both the men’s and the women’s teams have put together several strong performances, with each sweeping Brown, winning all 27 games in the process, and capturing the Ivy League scrimmages. There, the women defeated Yale, 8-1, and then blanked Princeton, the third-ranked team in the country.

For their part, the men shut Columbia out, trounced Dartmouth 8-1, and took an important victory over Princeton, 6-3. Indeed, the win was a surprisingly easy triumph over a competitive Tigers team.

Both teams host Cornell tomorrow. Given the talent and leadership of the two squads, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the parallels between them—not conceding a game to Brown, winning the Ivy scrimmage title, hosting Cornell—might well continue all the way through the Ivy League and national championships.