feature article - The Hill School

M A G A Z I N E 

The 

Greatest 

Match No 

One Saw 

John Musto and the Yale men of 1990 pulled off 

stunning comebacks against Harvard twice in 

five days. James Zug takes you back to one of 

the most exciting stories in squash history. 

SEPTEMBER 2012 / $3.50 www.squashmagazine.com 

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF U.S. Squash

HeBy James Zug 

Whiffed: 

Yale v. Harvard 

Wednesday 21 February 1990 

Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Yale University, New Haven 

Yale Harvard Winner Score 

1. John Musto ’91 v. Mark Baker ’92 Y 3-2 

2. Cyrus Mehta ’90 v. Jeremy Fraiberg ’92 Y 3-1 

3. Tim Goodale ’91 v. Jon Bernheimer ’90 H 3-0 

4. Alex Dean ’90 v. Jonny Kaye ’92 H 3-0 

5. Garrett Frank ’92 v. Jim Masland ’90 Y 3-1 

6. Chris Hunt ’90 v. Marty Clark ’93 H 3-2 

7. Jeff Hoerle ’90 v. Farokh Pandole ’92 H 3-0 

8. Tuffy Kingsbury ’90 v. Jon Masland ’91 Y 3-1 

9. Alex Darrow ’91 v. Josh Horwitz ’93 Y 3-2 

22 | SEPTEMBER 2012

The Original Streak, the Cardiac 

Kid, The Palindromic String and 

Cool as a Cucumber—The 

Story of the Greatest Squash 

Match That No One Saw 

Yale v. Harvard 

Sunday 25 February 1990 

Thomas B. Ringe Squash Courts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 

Yale Harvard Winner Score 

1. John Musto ’91 v. Mark Baker ’92 Y 3-2 

2. Cyrus Mehta ’90 v. Jeremy Fraiberg ’92 H 3-0 

3. Tim Goodale ’91 v. Jon Bernheimer ’90 H 3-0 

4. Alex Dean ’90 v. Jonny Kaye ’92 Y 3-0 

5. Garret Frank ’92 v. Jim Masland ’90 Y 3-2 

6. Chris Hunt ’90 v. Marty Clark ’93 H 3-0 

7. Jeff Hoerle ’90 v. Farokh Pandole ’92 Y 3-1 

8. Tuffy Kingsbury ’90 v. Jon Masland ’91 H 3-2 

9. Alex Darrow ’91 v. Josh Horwitz ’93 Y 3-2 

squash magazine | 23

1989 

We had lost to Harvard in the regular season in 1989, 6-3 in 

Cambridge. A week later we beat them in the semis of the first 

nationals team tournament at Yale. We beat them 7-2. And then 

we beat Princeton in the finals. It was theoretically an historic 

victory, but we really didn’t celebrate because if anything it reinforced 

that we should have beaten Harvard in the regular season 

match which was just a few days before. 

Some people were happy, but I very specifically remember 

many people including myself who were very unsatisfied by the 

outcome of the season. That season we were considered the sole 

national champions for both regular season and the team tournament, 

but we were tied for the Ivy title. This is because the Ivy 

League did not use a tie-breaker but the CSA did. I think it was 

1961 when Yale had last beaten Harvard. The difference in the 

celebration between the tournament win in 1989 and the regular 

season win the next year was a factor of about 100. 

—John Musto 

1989 was Dave Fish’s last home match at Harvard. It was a 

beautiful send-off. 

—Steve Piltch, Harvard men’s coach 

1989 was the first year of the national teams for the men. 

There was some pushback from the athletic department to create 

it because it did add an extra match day. But it made sense. 

The women had started their team tournament years before 

[1973] but the men, we had never had one. 

Before 1989 it was simply an individual men’s tournament. 

So even though we won this new tournament, we were not convinced 

we were really the national champions. There was some 

confusion about that in the beginning. Everything was new and 

the regular season had always been the sole way of determining 

that. OK—so we had beaten Harvard in some playoff tournament. 

It wasn’t enough. We hadn’t beaten them in the regular season 

since 1961. That was The Streak in those days. And in 1989 it 

reached 28 straight wins. Did the playoff win end The Streak? We 

didn’t feel so. Maybe we were national champions, but we still 

had something to prove. 

—Dave Talbott, Yale men’s coach 

The [1962] Intercollegiate team contest was a tight, threeway 

affair, but both Harvard and Yale succeeded in defeating a 

good Princeton team, so it came down to the last team match, 

even as it had in 1961 when Yale defeated Harvard 5-4 in a thriller. 

This one was so close that it was hard to believe. Played at 

Yale before a packed and cheering gallery, the match see-sawed 

24 | SEPTEMBER 2012

ack and forth until with the matches tied at 4-all, Yale’s [Joe] 

Holmes and Harvard’s [John] Francis entered the fifth and deciding 

game. The Yale fans were overjoyed when Holmes vaulted to 

a 11-6 lead. However sophomore Francis rose magnificently to 

the occasion and with a blazing hard serve and a series of nick 

drop shots incredibly won the next nine points for the match and 

the title. The small but vocal group of Harvard fans jumped into 

the court to congratulate their hero. 

—USSRA 1962-63 Yearbook 

The Elis’ bus ride home didn’t begin until after midnight. 

Make no mistake; it was a grim trip and even the silver linings 

were tarnished. The JV had swept: Yale won numbers 11-20 in a 

breeze. Like the 747 that lost to a Saab, they picked the wrong 

distance…Unlike other years, though—and here the previous 27 

come to mind—1989 offered the hope of revenge. The coming 

weekend would be the new nine-man team intercollegiate tournament, 

held at the comfortable confines of Payne Whitney Gym. 

And revenge Yale would get, in the form of a 7-2 semifinal win. 

But as far as the streak was concerned, they might as well have 

been playing foosball.” 

—Derrick Niederman, Squash News, April 1989 

I’ll never forget that feeling coming back from Cambridge in 

1989 in the van. We didn’t want that feeling again. 

—Chris Hunt 

That was a super-depressing bus ride back in ’89. The worst 

couple of hours of my life. 

—Tuffy Kingsbury 

THE TEAMS 

You’ve got a coach in Dave Talbott who created a situation 

where you could be your best. Growing up in Denver, I had not 

been a part of the East Coast scene. As a freshman I played from 

No. 12 to No. 16 but Dave didn’t give up on me. 

—Chris Hunt 

So many of us had fathers who had gone to Yale: Garrett, 

Alex, Tommy Clayton, my father. Yale was in our blood and the 

streak was killing us. 


(Opposite) The 1990 national champions from Yale 

University: (Back row, L-R) Dave Talbott (Head Coach), 

Alex Dean, Charlie Stewart, Alex Darrow, Scott Faber, 

Tim Goodale, Tim Levin, Kenny Katz, Jim Seldner; 

(Middle row) Gerard Griffin, Jeff Hoerle, Chris Hunt, 

Cyrus Mehta, Tuffy Kingsbury, Bill Bauman, Garret 

Frank; (Front row) John Musto, Dan Morgan, John 

Schumann, Jeremy Feinstein, Genry Morsmann. The 

other key off-court part of the Yale team was Henry 

“Sam” Chauncey, Jr., (above, with Scott Faber). 

Chauncey, class of 1957, was a longtime senior 

administrator and still today is a central behind-thescenes 

part of the Yale Squash program. 


I grew up in New Haven. My dad was a Yale professor. I started 

going to Yale v. Harvard matches from age 12 and Harvard 

would always win 9-0. I idolized the Yale squash players. It would 

crush me to see them lose. 

—John Musto 

We were a very tight team. A lot of us (me, Goodale, Tuffy, 

Musto) lived in Davenport [College]. A lot of us were from the 

Heights Casino program. A lot of us were members of Sigma Nu 

fraternity. We hung out together all the time. We were buddies. 

We had fun together. A lot of the top teams weren’t like that. We 

had a free spirit as a coach. It was a different era. 

—Alex Dean 

1989-90 was my first year as men’s coach. I had been the women’s 

coach for three years and when Dave Fish stepped down 

from the men’s squash team, I 

came in. 1989 was a tough season. Princeton had ended our six 

year, 72-match win streak and then we had lost to Yale in the nationals. 

Fishy was an institution. He was an extraordinary friend and 

mentor. 

Looking at the 1990 season, it was a huge transition. I thought 

we had a lot of ability, we had a good team. Ultimately, Princeton 

and Yale would push us. The truth was going to play out in the 

course of the year. 

We had serious talent: Marty Clark got to 59 in the world; Jeremy 

Fraiberg got to 99. Bernheimer played on the pro tour for three 

years. This was a good team. We had guys from four countries: Baker 

from England, Pandole from India, Kaye from Israel and Fraiberg 

from Canada. We had two fantastic American recruits, Josh Horwitz 

and Clark—they were the top two American juniors—to help replace 

George Polsky who was away that year, but our 

big recruit was Mark Baker. He transferred in 

as a sophomore from England. Physically he 

was an incredible player—strong as an ox, 

built like a house. Jon who had played No. 1 

last year and Jeremy, they had to step down 

a notch as Baker turned out to be a fantastic 

hardball player. 

—Steve Piltch 

I had been the U19 English captain 

and was probably in the top ten of juniors 

worldwide. I had been accepted at 

Harvard as a freshman but I decided to 

go to Nottingham University in England. 

Then I decided to re-interview and was 

accepted as a sophomore. The team 

were a good bunch of guys, so it was not 

hard to integrate, and the transition to 

hardball was relatively easy and I was 

beating most players straight away. I 

played two tournaments that season, 

one local tournament [Boston Eye 

Opener] where I lost to Greg Zaff in 

the final and the Harry Cowles tournament, 

which I won. 

—Mark Baker 

We were psyched to have Mark. 

He was really fit and had these 

strong, enormous legs—a very powerful 

player. He picked up hardball 

really quickly. 

—Jon Bernheimer 

I had met Mark at the World 

Juniors in Scotland in 1988 when 

I was on the Canadian team and 

we talked about Harvard—I had 

deferred for a year after high 

school—and so I was psyched 

when he finally came. 

—Jeremy Fraiberg 

26 | SEPTEMBER 2012

The junior varsity celebrates—Jeremy 

Feinstein, with the thumbs up, and New 

Haven native, Charlie Stewart. 

We had a lot of talent there, with Jeremy and Mark, a lot of guys 

from overseas. Steve brought us together. Piltchy was a fantastic 

coach. He had the right balance between working hard and having 

fun. Amazing guy. I thought the transition from Dave to Steve was 

seamless. Piltchy was already there, so it was fluid. Dave was still 

around, he didn’t completely leave the scene. He’d give technical 

advice. Steve was amazing about the physical aspects of the game. 

We were a pretty close-knit team. We hung out together 

and had a good team dynamic. We worked hard. I would get them 

up at 6am and go running at the indoor track. A lot of guys weren’t 

really into that. I was a kind of maniac. Gary Waite was on campus 

then, and he’d come to practice. I just loved that. We’d pick his brain 

and talk about how to be a better player. He’d come on court and 

just kick the crap out of us. 


I remember being totally unprepared for college squash. 

I was the No. 2 ranked junior in the country and I showed up 

to practice and was overwhelmed. I was getting my ass kicked. 

Practices were intense. It was very humbling. I lost a lot. It was 

a learning experience. I wasn’t going to play top five. I was No. 9. 

Tuesdays and Thursdays we ran sprints on the track in the 

morning. Twelve 440s. Guys were throwing up. It was the worst 

experience of my life. 

We had some good times together. We used to talk on the 

long van rides and Fraiberg would come up with some crazy hypothetical: 

“What if Bo Jackson played tennis, how long would 

it take him to win Wimbledon? If Michael Jordan played hockey, 

how long would it take him to score fifty goals? If Pete Sampras 

played golf…” Farokh and Jonny Kaye used to goad Jeremy. That 

game passed the time in the van. 

—Josh Horwitz 

Steve was more a disciplinarian than Fish. He was a very 

good coach. 

We all got along. There were different characters on the 

team. There was a natural competitiveness but it didn’t extend 

beyond the court. We had our own groups of friends. It was fun 

having my brother Jon on the team. 

—Jim Masland 

The Yale match was circled on the calendar. We trained for 

it all year. They said that Yale was a loud place to play, so Piltch 

used to pipe in static into Hemenway so we could get used to 

the noise. He had a boom box and played it loud. Man, that was 

hard to practice with. I remember looking at Jon Pratt and saying, 

“this is going to suck.” 



WEDNESDAY 

I remember it like it was yesterday. That was the impetus for 

my hair going gray. 


There was a giant crowd. The place was packed. I just remember 

the place was packed. 

—Dave Talbott 

You win your match pretty easily and there is not much else 

you can do but root and yell. There was a lot of yelling that night. 


They were loaded for bear. It was like a Davis Cup match. It 

was crazy, really hot, really loud. We were in the lion’s den. 


“It was a wild time,” Talbott said. “During the course of the 

match we estimated that about 700 people were in and out of 

the courts…[Yale president] Benno Schmidt and [Director of Athletics] 

Ed Woodsum were there for the whole three-and-a-half 

hours and when it was all over there was a ten-minute standing 

ovation.” 

—New Haven Register, 26 February 1990 

I went on second. I had no place to go to prepare, no refuge 

from the noise. I didn’t have a Walkman. I felt unwelcomed. Not 

unsafe but unwelcomed. 

I went into Talbott’s office. I had almost gone to Yale. I had 

put the acceptance letter in an envelope and then didn’t send it. 

I knew all these guys from New York, although they were older. 

I liked them. 

But the scene was hostile. It was louder than anything I had 

experienced: hot, loud, hostile. I remember being intimidated. 

I went up 2-0 against Darrow and lost in five. I think he pummeled 

me. It is not a happy memory. 


Marty was a strong competitor. The only contentious thing 

was in the middle of the match that I broke a string and went out 

to get a new racquet. When I came back in, I wanted to hit a few 

balls to get a feel for the new racquet and Marty said, “Let’s go.” 

He said that the rule was we had to start right away, no warmup. 

I am pretty sure I knew that he was right. There was no ref. It was 

just the two of us. He was not being ungentlemanly. It is a gentleman’s 

sport. In hindsight, he was a fierce competitor. 

—Chris Hunt 

Jim Masland and I had a history. Four years earlier we had 

played. He was a senior at Chestnut Hill Academy and I was a 

sophomore at Hill School. We were both No. 1. In our first match, 

at CHA, he was a big man on campus, captain, and I beat him. 

After the match he kicked a water fountain or something and 

it broke and flooded the locker room with water and he got in 

trouble for that. 

A couple of weeks later we played again at Hill. I put a large 

headband around my head. This was around the time that Jim Mc- 

Mahon used to do it, when he was getting in trouble for writing on 

his headbands. I wrote “H2O” on it. Got inside his head and beat 

him again. I was a pesky kid. My nickname was “Rat.” 

Fast forward four years and he’s a senior at Harvard and No. 

5 and I am a sophomore. He was captain, same scenario as four 

years before. 

—Garrett Frank 

There was one particular match in high school where he was 

irritating. I got upset. I had to spend time cleaning up the water. He 

and I had some backstory, a little bit of history. He got under my skin. 


It was a bad loss for me. The courts were fast. Cyrus was 

motivated, the crowd boosted him. He was inspired. I didn’t outplay 

him. On paper it was an upset. It was not a good result. 


For a time it looked very bad for us. We were down 4-2 and 

in two of the remaining matches—Darrow against Horwitz and 

Musto against Baker—we were down. 

—Alex Dean 

I had been sick for three weeks leading up to the match, two 

weeks in the infirmary, missed the Princeton match. I practiced on 

my own at night for five days leading up to the match, hitting just 

three-walls and doubles boasts (shots that could end the point as 

I doubted my ability to last a long time). In the match I alternated 

between the two shots and made virtually every one I hit. 

My teammates were in court two pacing in circles because they 

couldn’t squeeze in to see the match. They would look up at the balcony 

to see if Yale people were cheering to see whether I had won 

the point or not, and if I did they would bang on the wall, which later I 

remembered hearing but didn’t know what it was at the time. 

After just a few points into my match, I was winded and didn’t know 

how much longer I could last. I lost the first game 15-6. In the second 

game, I was down 13-8 and finally felt I had got hold of my breath. I tied 

it up 13-all. He called set-five and went up 4-1. I felt that if I didn’t win 

the second game then it would be impossible for me to come back. The 

next points were all very long. I chipped my way back and won the first 

game 18-17 (5-4 in the tiebreaker). I lost the third game 15-9. 

I was down in the 4th 8-3 and then 10-4. At this point all the 

other matches had finished and everybody crowded around court 

one. At 10-4 I started thinking about all the training that I had done, 

thought about practicing on this court as a kid, and thought about 

the little-known enclosed track that I would run on in which you 

couldn’t see around the corner. I started chipping away and tied the 

score at 12-all. I ended up winning the game 15-12. 

When I got off of the court after the 4 th , I was told that the match 

was even at 4-all. I was very calm and focused. The final game was 

tight the entire way up, 6-all, 10-8, 11-9. I was up 14-11, having wasted 

two match balls. We played a long point. I hit a forehand threewall 

which he got to. He hit a backhand roll corner and then time 

stood still. I was in the middle of the court and he was stuck in the 

front left corner. I had the entire court to hit to end 28 years of Yale 

losing to Harvard and to win the national championship. An image of 

28 | SEPTEMBER 2012

(L-R) Jeff Hoerle, Tuffy Kingsbury and Cyrus Mehta 

celebrate Yale’s historic win. 

all the Yale players who had lost to Harvard went flashing through my 

mind and I hit the ball down the rail watched it bounce the second 

time. I turned to the crowd and raised my arms above my head as my 

teammates came climbing over the wall, literally climbing on top of 

Harvard coach Steve Piltch, to get over the glass. They first smothered 

me and then raised me up over their heads. 

I had actually taken lessons on that very court from when I was 

11, and Steve Gurney, Yale coach at the time, would tell me to imagine 

that I was playing No. 1 for Yale against Harvard for the national 

championship, with the stands full, and that it all came down to me, 

so in a sense I had been practicing for this moment for many years. 

—John Musto 

I did not play as well as I could that day, so was disappointed 

with the result. On the day Musto handled the match better. 

—Mark Baker 

Musto was still a trifle weary and oyster-gray from a virus 

that had sidelined him from the Princeton match, so the secondgame 

reprieve was essential. 

—Derrick Niederman, Squash News, May 1990 

Mark Baker was like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. He was a 

huge huge guy. I felt like in comparison to these international 

guys, we were just hacks from Brooklyn. Besides Cyrus, we were 

all from the States. We just tried to hang in there. 


All I remember was 4-all and down 0-2. There were contrasting 

styles—it was like when Mark [Talbott] played Jahinger [Khan]. 

Baker playing softball, straight drops and Musto using the angles, 

three-walls, reverse corners. It was less that Baker broke down 

and more that Musto upped the pace and really attacked, hitting 

three-walls. John didn’t want long points. Baker got rattled, as the 

match wore on, and started making mistakes and errors. 


It was so poetic, like it was out of a novel or something: Musto, 

the flat-footed, cello-playing mystical genius, the cardiac kid, the local 

kid, hitting these explosive double boasts. 

That was the thing about hardball: the speed of the exchanges. 

Musto was ripping roll corners, reverses, sick reflex volleys, crazy angles, 

the double boasts, the reverse double boasts, the Philadelphia 


shot, the skid boasts, the ball zipping everywhere. Astonishing upsets 

were possible in hardball. 


“It’s one of the greatest comebacks I’ve ever seen,” Yale 

head coach Dave Talbott said. 

“He knew it all came down to him.” 

—Yale Daily News, 22 February 1990 

It was a crushing defeat. Piltch just got run over by enthusiastic 

fans after the match. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Maybe we would have beaten Yale if we had been more of a 

team? Once practice was over, we sometimes went our separate 

ways. We were very talented but had some ego. 


When the match ended and John won the match, I got trampled. 

To this day, I have a bad back because of that. I would have 

preferred to have been rushing into the court to celebrate rather 

than trying to get out of the way. 


Baker barely made it off court before the dikes burst and a 

sea of blue covered the T, the service boxes, most of Court 1 and 

all of John Musto. Such was the power of pent-up energy. 

The team match line score thus read YYHHYHHYY—the same 

on either side of the glass wall, but a far cry from the equally palindromic 

string of nine H’s that had characterized this would-be 

rivalry for so many years. 


My overwhelming memory was “Wasn’t that great for Yale?” 

You feel the empathy. That final match came down to Musto and 

Baker, all this history, all this pressure. Hot as balls in there, 

people screaming. Quite like a Duke v. Carolina game. Given 

that rivalry and the history of futility. Benno Schmidt is there, the 

president of Yale, introduced by Talbott at the beginning of the 

match. It was a beautiful, great moment for college athletics. It 

was almost pre-ordained. They had five seniors, their last home 

match. They had lost forever to us. This was their moment. They 

had brought their president. They knew something was brewing. 

It was a fairy-tale ending. They weren’t going to be denied. It was 

their date with destiny. 


It was so intense and there was such pent-up emotion that 

when it was over, we plowed through the door and tackled Musto. 

We thought we’d have this a year ago and had to wait 365 days. 

It was a great feeling. For Musto, playing at No. 1, with his work 

ethic, to win it was awesome. 

—Chris Hunt 

What was so memorable was the pile-on after the Musto 

match. Bam! That’s it. We were climbing over the glass and there 

was a huge pile-on, with Musto on the bottom. He was exhausted, 

had the flu. I remember he was on the bottom of the pile 

yelling, “Get off! Get off. I can’t breathe.” 

There were a couple of photos of the pile-on and it was like 

the Miracle on Ice and there was Dave running around looking for 

someone to hug. 


John Musto (Below) being hoisted onto the shoulders 

of the victorious Yale men, (and Right with Jen Spiegel) 

rightly proclaimed that on this long weekend in February, 

1990, that Yale was truly No. 1. 

30 | SEPTEMBER 2012

“Color it blue.” “How 

sweet it is.” “We’re number 

one.” These were some of 

the phrases used to describe 

Yale’s win over Harvard. 

—Racquet Voice, March 

1990 

“There are no NCAA championships 

as such,” Talbott 

said. “The national champion 

is generally recognized as the 

regular-season champion, and 

that’s what we won when we beat 

Harvard. This weekend we have 

the [nationals]. It’s a competition 

we started last year to give the 

players more competition and a 

little more opportunity to get rec- ognition, but I wouldn’t trade 

the championship we won Wednesday for any other championship 

anywhere.” 

—New Haven Register, 26 February 1990 

“It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever been involved in in my 

career,” Talbott said. “It’s the culmination of a long haul and it 

puts us on par with the king of the game—Harvard.” Crimson 

head coach Steve Piltch agreed. “It was the greatest intercollegiate 

squash match ever played, or certainly one of them,” he 

said. “We put it on the line and they played better. We did everything 

we could do and they were just a little bit better tonight.” 

One fan last night was especially impressed with the Eli’s success. 

“It’s one of the greatest matches I’ve ever seen,” President 

Benno Schmidt, Jr. said. “Of course, I never doubted.” 


Here is the craziest thing: the last time we beat Harvard in 

the regular season, it was 1961 and my father was on that team. 

And he was in Payne Whitney that Wednesday watching us beat 

Harvard again. 


SUNDAY 

We went straight down to Penn the next morning, with the nationals 

starting that Friday it just made sense to keep going rather 

than return to Cambridge. But it made for a very long road trip. 


Down at Penn, we practiced and thought about avenging that 

loss. We met for lunch, played, went to a matinee movie. I was worried 

about playing Yale again. I knew it was going to be another 

tough match. [George] Polsky had shirts made up at the start of 

the season, with a Letterman Top Ten list on it and one said that 

we hadn’t lost to Yale in 28 years. That hurt. I had one of those teeshirts 

and I didn’t want to own it now. 


We beat Dartmouth 9-0 and 

then Princeton 8-1 and so on Sunday 

we once again faced Harvard in 

the finals. 

—Alex Dean 

It was an vacant building on 

Sunday afternoon. Looking around, 

undefeated season, national champions—who 

cares? It was kind of 

cool in a way because it was just us, 

just the players. These days, we’ve 

got ESPN, reporters, cameramen, 

the New York Times, more than a 

thousand people, live streaming, 

people taking photos with their phones, 

Twitter, Facebook updates. It is a circus now. 


The whole thing was an anti-climax after Wednesday. The 

galleries were empty, completely empty. It was frankly a bit of a 

let-down. 


One of the aspects of the story was that this was pre-Internet 

and no one really knew what happened that Sunday. This 

was a great match and no one saw it. My parents who lived in 

Philadelphia, they didn’t come. No one was there. 


Alex Dean at No. 4 was the first off the court with a 3-0 win 

over Jonny Kaye. Whenever Deano came off the court with the 

first win, we had always won the match. 

—John Musto 

I had lost to Kaye 3-0 in 1989 and again 3-0 on the Wednesday. 

I wasn’t going to do it a third time. 

—Alex Dean 

I was up 2-1, 13-8 in the fourth. I was thinking, “I should 

have this one.” I lost focus a bit. Masland pushes it into the fifth. 

He just gets the lead. He goes up 13-8 and pulls it out. To this 

day, I say, “What was I thinking?” 


It was the end of a long season and few people were there. I 

was up 2-0 on a corner court. I was up and confident. I lost 3-2. 

I don’t know what happened. Darrow stepped up his game. He 

grinded it out. He was just a bit tougher then. He had been in 

college for a while. 


The next match, four days later at Penn, may have been the 

greatest collegiate match that nobody saw. 

There was practically nobody watching—just the two teams 

and a couple of Penn grad students from India who were waiting 


to use the courts. Our nickname for Cyrus was “Chute,” a very 

bad Indian swear, and the grad students were aghast as we were 

yelling “let’s go Chute” to cheer on Cyrus. 

—John Musto 

What was amazing was the turnaround from Wednesday. 

So many people who won on Wednesday lost on Sunday and vice 

versa. The biggest flip was with Hoerle. Farokh was the best No. 

7 in college squash history. He killed Jeff Hoerle on Wednesday, 

smoked him. Jeff’s just a kid out of Deerfield who picked up 

squash in tenth grade. He was No. 19 on the ladder as a freshman. 

But on Sunday, Jeff beats Farokh. That was the biggie. 


On Sunday, the courts were colder. I was focused on revenge. 

I had felt responsible for the team losing on Wednesday. I 

was motivated to win. 


Down at Penn, no one was watching our match, no one at 

all. We were playing in one of those back courts where there was 

no glass-back wall and the gallery upstairs was tiny, just room 

for a half dozen people. 

It got to 2-all. I know we are down 4-3. The match was a hardfought 

battle. In the fifth, Jimmy went up something like 14-12 and 

had a couple of match points. Then it went into the tiebreaker, set 

three and he’s up 16-14 with three more match points. 

In the tiebreaker I went to a different place. I was in the zone. 

It had never happened to me before. The ball was as big as a 

baseball. I’m ice-cold. I hadn’t lost a match in college. I had gone 

undefeated my freshman year at No. 7 and so far my sophomore 

year. I wasn’t going to lose. 

I won the next two points. Then I am serving, at 16-16, to 

his forehand from the left side. I decide to mix it up. I have to do 

something different. He’s been shooting off my lob serve. I hadn’t 

hard-served all match, really all season. I never hit a hard serve. 

I bang a serve. He lets it go by and it hits the back wall on the fly 

and comes straight out right along the right wall. Jimmy slides 

up and swings at the ball but misses it because it is hugging the 

side wall. 


I was peering through the little window. Garrett was down a 

couple of match balls. On the last point, he hits the hard serve— 

the hard serve?—and it comes along the side-wall and Masland 

couldn’t pick it out. Serve, swing, match over. 

It was a frozen moment. Surreal. No one moved: Rat, Jimmy, 

me. No one. For ten seconds they stood there, looking at 

each other. 

Then they came off the court and it was pandemonium. 


I don’t remember what happened in the match down at 

Penn. Do I want to hear it? I know it was close but I’ve probably 

repressed a lot. Honestly, I don’t recall the details of the match. It 

was a tough loss. I remember being out on the court with Frank. 

I don’t remember any of the details. I’ve played a lot of high-level 

squash and it must have been brutal. The match could have gone 

either way. Ninety-nine of a 100 times, I win that match. 

I don’t know if you’ve enlightened me or depressed me. 


I was down 0-2 (15-12, 15-12) and after the second game 

we went over to see what was happening with Rat’s match. If 

Rat loses, it is 5-3 and the match is over. Dave tells me, “John 

you probably won’t have to finish your match because Rat’s 

about to lose.” 

He’s watching through the little 6x6 inch window in the door. 

There is only room for one person. He’s telling us the score. 16- 

14, 16-15, 16-all. Silence. Then: “He whiffed!” 

We all shout: “Who whiffed?” 

“He whiffed, he whiffed!” 

“Who, who?” 

“HE whiffed it”—meaning Masland. 

Rat walks out of the court and says, “Cool as a cucumber” 

Dave looks at me and says, “Well, I guess you are back on.” 

—John Musto 

Rat comes out of the court, saying, “Cool as a cucumber,” 

just walking right by us like nothing had just happened. It was 

amazing. 

—Alex Dean 

Rat had ice-water in his veins. That is it. 


I walk off the court saying, ‘Ice-cold, baby. Ice-cold.” Coach 

picked me up and hugged me. I am on cloud nine. My first question 

was, “How is Musto doing?” 


They were so amped up after the Masland match. Garrett 

was so clutch. He was a character. Jimmy had a temper and 

used to break racquets, goggles, and Garrett got under his skin. 

I went with Farokh and we sat behind the court where Musto 

and Baker were playing. We were so nervous and tense that we 

sat there and listened rather than watched. I had a bad feeling. 


I had been very ill on the day of the match and really should 

not have played, so was not disappointed with the score. 

—Mark Baker 

When Garrett won, I went back on court and we played the 

three highest quality games of all the games we played. I won 

those 15-13, 15-13, 15-10. 

We were all strangely calm afterwards. It confirmed the first 

match that we were, however slightly, the better team. We played 

very much like a team and were a very tight-knit group. 

—John Musto 

But Bernheimer gave Harvard its fourth match at No.3 and 

Yale’s Wednesday winners at No. 1, 5 and 9 all trailed 2-0. Basically 

Yale had to first force and then win all of the theoretical 

32 | SEPTEMBER 2012

emaining nine games—and that’s exactly what happened. Darrow 

pulled off a déjà vu at No. 9, Frank laid probability to rest 

and fought off five team match points at No. 5 while Musto, in his 

personal version of Superman II, rallied to win 15-10 in the fifth 

at the pole position. If anything, the sequel may have outdone the 

original—but don’t tell the throngs who were at Payne Whitney 

that memorable day. They wouldn’t believe you. 


I remember being very disappointed. We just didn’t get it 

done. They hung in there and played well. It was a big loss. It was 

a tough, tough trip. 


Jimmy lost a heartbreaker. That was hard. And then Baker 

lost. He ended up wearing the loss because it was dramatic and 

it was the last one but five guys had lost that afternoon. 


Scott Faber (L) and Gerard Griffen, two junior varsity 

players, shared in the glow of breaking Harvard’s 28-year 

win streak. 


Player Intros—along the back wall was Steve Piltch 

(Harvard manager), Treddy Ketcham, Tyler Lonergan 

‘89 and John Musto. Lonergan had been on the team the 

year before that had won the National Championship but 

lost to Harvard in the regular season. 

had come down to New Haven 

for the match on Wednesday and 

I couldn’t face them on Sunday 

night. 

We met on Tuesday for a little 

bit. We were so devastated. Fraiberg 

and Baker didn’t want to go 

to the nationals. I remember Bernheimer 

practicing. 


We pulled over in New Jersey 

at some rest stop to get dinner. We 

got out and the Harvard team was 

getting back into their van. Piltch 

said, “We can’t get rid of you guys” 

—Alex Dean 

No one went to class on Monday 

morning. It was an epic night. 


I remember in that old locker room, cold and cavernous and 

we just sat there and listened to the Yale guys celebrating. 


When the Harvard men’s squash team lost to Yale, 5-4, for 

the second time within four days, both [teams] called it an act of 

fate…“I guess you win some and you lose some,” Pandole said. 

“You have to lose some to enjoy the winning.” “I still definitely 

think Harvard is more talented,” Talbott said. “They had the 

match. I think they handled two very frustrating losses in an exceptional 

way. Our guys really respected that.” 

—Rebecca D. Knowles, Harvard Crimson, 27 February 1990 

“It proves that [Wednesday] wasn’t just a home court advantage 

and that we really were a better squash team,” Talbott said. 

“We didn’t leave any doubts in anybody’s mind.” 


It was the kind of match you want kids to play. When things 

get really tough, you have to rely on what makes you strong. You 

have to keep control during the difficult moments. Don’t do anything 

special. But you have to do something. 

It was spectacular. We failed; one half-step short. I loved the 

experience and hopefully made a difference. That said, I would 

have preferred to win. 


AFTERMATH 

Not a word was spoken on the way home, not for six hours. 

We stopped for dinner. No one talked at dinner. My roommates 

At the banquet after the season, 

there was a big annual award 

normally given to a senior as the 

most valuable player. It was given 

to all five of us seniors. It was a nice way to say goodbye. 


In the past fifty years Yale men have only once been both national 

champions and Ivy League champions in the same season 

in squash and that was 1990. 

—John Musto 

After the matches, we were pretty upset and I think some 

of the guys wanted the year to be over. Mark and Jeremy were 

burned out and had injuries so they didn’t go to the individuals. 

Me being a senior, I just went. John Anz [the Harvard assistant 

coach] and I drove down to West Point alone. 

I beat Cyrus in the final in three. Winning the individuals was 

the biggest win of my life. 


The women’s intercollegiates were at Brown, so I was there 

and watched the finals in which Jenny Holleran beat Berkeley 

Belknap 17-16 in the fifth. That was exciting and then I heard that 

Jon had somehow won the men’s title. 


We didn’t know Jon had won the individuals till Monday. 

There were no cell phones or email, so word didn’t filter down 

until there was an article in the Crimson. He held a huge party 

the following weekend in Currier House, holding up the trophy. It 

took some of the sting out of what happened in February. 


It was pretty quiet on the drive home from Philly that night. It 

was clear that we had settled on what would happen the next 

34 | SEPTEMBER 2012

Bedlam ensued after John Musto 

(center, facing the camera) 

completed Yale’s miraculous run to 

the Ivy title over Harvard. 

3-0, 4-0. We just knew it 

was a matter of time. That 

was very satisfying. There 

was never any doubt. Our 

biggest problem was figuring 

out who was going 

to play No. 1. Any of our 

top five could play one 

and any of the bottom four 

could play No. 6. 


Last year Yale squash 

captain John Musto 

scraped out a fifth-match, 

fifth-game victory to 

clinch the competition for 

the Elis and wrest the national 

championship from 

Harvard. But this year, 

that exhiliration turned 

to pain, as top-seeded 

Harvard junior Jeremy 

Fraiberg battled him to a 

decisive fifth-game. Fraiberg 

prevailed in an overset 

match to nail the coffin 

on the Elis. 

—Harvard Crimson, 20 

February 1991 

year. I think we learned that you need to know how to respond 

to defeat. The nice thing in sports is that there always is a winner 

and hopefully you’ll get another chance to be the winner. 

We learned one hell of a lesson about ourselves and grew up as 

squash players and as a team. We got some of that arrogance 

knocked out. Had we beaten Yale those two times, I am not sure 

we would have been as good the next two seasons. 

We did pretty well the next two years. We beat them 7-2 in 

the 1991 regular season and then 7-2 in the nationals. We internalized 

the lessons. We understood: don’t talk the talk, you’ve 

got to walk the walk. You learn much more from losing and we 

did. That is the irony: out of disappointment comes growth. I am 

really a believer in this, that athletics if they are done right, what 

really matters is lessons learned and how you apply them. 1991 

and 1992 bear that out. 


We used the losses to Yale as motivation. No one said it explicitly. 

We all knew. We were not going to let them beat us again. 

It stung. We didn’t make tee-shirts. We just smoked them. It was 

a defining moment for us to get better. 

We didn’t want to live in the past. You can’t let the past drag 

you down. 

I remember two years later going back to Yale and beating 

them, just crushing them 8-1. On the court for introductions we 

knew and Yale knew that we were going to beat them. We were up 

That was the biggest 

match of my career: my junior year beating Musto. It was so 

symbolic for the team, after what he had done to us the previous 

year. Musto had absolutely hammered me at the Ivy Scrimmages 

in November. So at the team match at Harvard in 1991, I was 

up 11-4 in the fifth, and Musto managed to come back and tie 

it at 13-all. It was crazy. That cardiac kid again. In the overtime, 

he made a bad error on a sitter and I won the match. It was a 

bookend. We would have won the match anyway, but it was pretty 

sweet to win. I let out a roar after winning the last point. 


After graduating, I went pro and played for a few years. I 

trained with Gary [Waite] in Switzerland and on my way home I 

stayed with Mark Baker in Nottingham for three or four weeks in 

his flat and trained with him. That’s the last time I’ve seen him. 


We didn’t know it at the time, but those two matches were 

the last hurrah. It was the end of the hardball era in only a 

couple of years. It was the end of having the national championship 

team with eight Americans in the top nine—the overseas 

recruits were coming. And it was the end of the finals of 

the nationals being such an obscure event that no one came to 

watch. It was only 22 years ago but it seems like it happened a 

hundred years ago.

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