In the world of collegiate squash, the Stanford women’s team is still very much a figurative baby. The club was founded just ten years ago in 1998, and was completely student-run until only three and a half years ago. On top of that, the squad has only been recognized as a varsity team for two years, and was the first-ever varsity squash team located west of the Mississippi River. However, the baby is not taking baby steps — it’s already running at full speed.

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In only its second year as a varsity team, the Cardinal has already managed to knock off a number of northeastern schools, many of which have been squash powerhouses for decades, and place highly at the competitive Howe Cup. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8723
Courtesy of Karissa Hazy

In only its second year as a varsity team, the Cardinal has already managed to knock off a number of northeastern schools, many of which have been squash powerhouses for decades, and place highly at the competitive Howe Cup.

Stanford has taken the women’s squash world, a world traditionally dominated by small New England schools, by storm recently, earning its first-ever top-10 ranking by finishing this season ranked No. 7 in the country.

“It has been rewarding...to see the program go from the last-ranked team to one that is challenging the top Ivy [League] teams [in such a short time period],” said Stanford coach Mark Talbott.

Talbott, widely regarded as one of the greatest American squash players ever, has been in charge of both the men’s and women’s teams since Aug. 2004, when he was named the squash program’s director. His guidance, along with an all-new squash facility in the Arrillaga Center for Sports and Recreation, has been instrumental in turning the women’s team into a national contender.

After a couple years of consistent improvement, the Cardinal set a goal of cracking the top eight this year — a pretty lofty objective, when you consider that the top-eight teams in women’s squash had remained the same for the past 30 years. Nevertheless, the team scheduled a tough regular season slate and finished with a record of 6-6. And while a .500 record may not seem that impressive on the surface, Stanford remained ranked in the top eight due to the quality of its opponents. In fact, all of the team’s victories came against opponents that it had never previously beaten, including Williams, Dartmouth and Bates.

Because the team ended the year in the top eight, it was able to play in the Howe Cup, the national championship tournament for the sport. Stanford had never played in the Howe Cup before, and the team’s inexperience showed as it was soundly beaten by No. 1 Penn and No. 5 Harvard in the first two matches. However, Stanford still had one more game to play: the seventh-place match against Brown.

The Card had lost a heartbreaking 5-4 match against Brown just three weeks earlier, and was determined to end its season on a winning note by taking revenge. As in the previous meeting, the match remained close until the end, but this time Stanford took a 4-3 lead with just two games remaining. The Cardinal only needed to win one of those two games to clinch the match, and No. 4 Cecilia Haig beat Brown’s No. 4 Breck Haynes in just three games (out of a possible five) to give Stanford seventh place and its highest finish ever. Cardinal No. 1 Lily Lorentzen then won her match for good measure to bring the final score to 6-3.

It was fitting that Lorentzen should end the season for the Card, as she had been the team’s number one player for the whole year. The junior, who won an individual championship with Harvard before transferring to Stanford after her freshman year, was recently named a first team All-American as well. Combined with standout sophomore Katy Brewster, the Card wielded a fearsome combination at the head of its lineup.

Senior leadership has also been important to the team, and this year’s seniors — Esther Cheng, Stephanie Kwok, Karissa Hazy and Brooksie Riley — all have a deep appreciation for how far the team has come: all of them began their careers when squash was still a club sport.

“[A]s a senior, it’s been incredibly exciting to be on the team the past few years and see and experience firsthand how quickly we’ve improved,” said Kwok.

“I could have never imagined the squash program would have come this far four years ago,” added Cheng, who, like Kwok and Hazy, played tennis in high school instead of squash. In fact, Cheng won the Wetzel Trophy this year, which is given to the best player in the nation who started playing squash in college.

And although this was a history-making season for the Card, the team hopes to do even better next season. Lorentzen and Brewster will be back to lead the line, and this year’s freshmen, a group of five players that Talbott called “awesome,” will have a full year’s experience under their belts. They will be joined by four incoming freshmen recruits next year who Talbott believes will “add tremendous depth, and increase our chances of being able to challenge the top five.”

Kwok took it one step further: “In squash, it’s rare for a new team to break into the top few and we’ve managed to do that in just a few years,” she said. “I’m confident that the team will be gunning for No. 1 very, very soon.”