Trinity Hold Off Harvard to Win Seventeenth Potter Cup

2018 Potter Cup champions Trinity College. (image: Michael T. Bello/mtbello.com)

Trinity College successfully defended their College Men’s Team national title at Trinity’s Kellner Squash Center with a 6-3 victory over Harvard in a rematch of the 2017 final Sunday afternoon in Hartford, Connecticut.

The top-seeded Bantams nearly missed out on the Potter Cup, reaching the final courtesy of a comeback 5-4 victory against four seeds St. Lawrence in Saturday’s semifinals. Three seeds Harvard pulled off a semifinal upset against two seeds Columbia, avenging their 5-4 regular season loss with a 6-3 semifinal victory to reach their second consecutive final.

In Sunday’s final, the Bantams made a commanding start, sweeping the first three matches at the No. 3, 6 and 9 positions courtesy of Michael Craig, Ziad Sakr and James Evans.

Timmy Brownell provided Harvard some hope with a clinical three game victory at the No. 2 position. Shortly after Brownell’s victory, Tom De Mulder put the Bantams within one match of clinching the title with a three-game victory.

Harvard maintained pressure down 4-1, with David Ryan leading and Julien Gosset pushing Trinty’s Andrew Lee to five games in the No. 8 match. Lee pulled away in the fifth game, closing out the match 11-4 to clinch Trinity’s seventeenth Potter Cup in nineteen years.

With his seventeenth Potter Cup, Trinity Head Coach and the Ganek Family US Squash Head National Coach Paul Assaiante ties Harvard’s Jack Barnaby for the all-time record of coaching national teem championships.

Sixty-two programs competed across eight divisions at the—Potter Cup (A), Hoehn Cup (B), Summers Cup (C), Conroy Cup (D), Chaffee Cup (E), Serues Cup (F), Hawthorn Cup (G) and H Division—with matches also taking place at the Loomis Chaffee School, Wesleyan University and Westminister School.

For for all results and match replays visit csasquash.com/mensnationals2018.

The College Individual Championships will take place March 2-4 in Washington, DC.