FEMALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR: At Long, Long Last

You’d be hard-pressed to compose a more fitting ending to the collegiate career of men’s squash ace Siddharth Suchde.

Having finished fourth in the College Squash Association (CSA) Individual Championships as a highly touted rookie, third as a sophomore, and runner-up in his junior season, Suchde bore all the markings of a champion—save the title.

Suchde proved that the fourth time can be the charm, capturing the individual title in the most improbable run of his Crimson career.

The scene was the 2007 Individual Championships. Suchde had stormed through the preliminary rounds of the 32-man tournament as the No. 3 seed, dropping just one game in the first three rounds before knocking off top-seeded Baset Ashfaq of Trinity in the semifinals to reach the championship match for the second consecutive year. Suchde’s opponent: Princeton’s rising star, sophomore Mauricio Sanchez.

Sanchez was a familiar, if unwelcome, foe. Suchde had played him twice during the regular season, losing both times. However, on both of those occasions, Sanchez had faced a player with an ankle injury that greatly affected his speed and mobility, leaving him a mere shadow of his customary dominating self.

“I was taking painkillers every day, it was brutal,” Suchde said. “My coaches and teammates knew this, so there wasn’t that much pressure. But it’s still hard to accept it when you know [that] if you had won, your team could have gone somewhere else.”

Indeed, in the semifinals of the CSA Team Championships—held two weeks prior to the Individuals—Suchde, still hampered by injury, lost to Sanchez for the second time in what turned out to be the deciding match as Harvard fell to Princeton, 5-4, and settled for third place.

So as Individuals began, Suchde had something to prove.

“I think most of the responsibility [in the Princeton match] lay with me that we ended up not making the finals,” he said. “I felt when I went in two weeks later, I was playing for the team to redeem myself.”

And redeem himself he did. In a hard-fought match with frequent shifts of momentum, Suchde remained focused and pulled out a convincing four-game win, 9-2, 7-9, 10-8, 9-2, avenging his earlier defeats and ending a run of seven out of eight national titlists from Princeton.

“I think it was more a sense of relief to finish college winning the title, having been so close but not quite there,” Suchde said. “It is something to be coveted and is definitely one of the high points of my collegiate career.”

Crimson coach Satinder Bajwa echoed that sentiment.

“I am very proud of Sidd,” he said after the championship. “He is a very deserving player.”

After graduating with the class of 2007, Suchde— who finished the season with a 14-3 record—will join the Indian National Team, which he has played with for several years. He is currently ranked No. 228 in the world and has competed against some of the best on the pro circuit.

He acknowledges that playing for the Crimson gave him an experience and sense of fellowship that he might not find among the professional ranks.

“When you play for Harvard, you feel so much closer to your teammates because you live with them, you socialize with them, and you study with them—it’s more than just squash,” he said. “There is certainly a lot of pride competing for your country, but it’s been very special playing for a university, and I think it is something I’ll never get to experience again.”

—Staff writer Barrett P. Kenny can be reached at bpkenny@fas.harvard.edu.