Not all college athletes get to be All-Americans, and certainly not all college athletes get to be All-Americans during their rookie seasons.
However, each year there is that handful of awe-inspiring freshmen standouts who just seem to outshine their upperclass peers and rivals in their respective sports.
This year, Dartmouth's very own ace squash player Laurie Sykes '99 is among these special few. Earlier this month, Sykes was named to the 1996 First Team All-America roster by the Women's Intercollegiate Squash Racquet Association.
But things were not always so rosy for Sykes. In fact, many of her matches early on in the season resulted in humbling losses.
Sure, Sykes had played tough matches against tough opponents before. During her high school years at the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, Sykes made her mark at numerous Junior National Squash Tournaments across the country. By the end of her senior year, she was ranked 12th in the nation.
When she arrived at Dartmouth last fall, though, she knew things would be different.
Among other things, squash would no longer just be an individual sport, but a team sport. She knew she could not just win for herself, but instead she had to win for her team.
And perhaps more importantly, the competition on the collegiate level was sure to be more intense and more ruthless than Sykes' days on the junior circuit. Sykes learned about this heightened intensity in the hardest way possible first hand.
"I was definitely intimidated at first," she said. "Playing the number one position, I pretty much assumed that I'd get killed all the time."
And in the beginning, Sykes' matches were anything but pretty.
"In our preseason scrimmages, the top players from Penn, Princeton and Williams all crushed me out there," Sykes said. "They pretty much just used me to wipe up the court."
But the Sykes saga gets better from here.
Sykes accepted her early defeats, worked out the kinks of her game and decided that if she was to play in the big league, she would have to play hardball.
"Initially, I was happy just to get a game off these top players," Sykes explained. "But then I got to the point where I couldn't be satisfied with a loss. I just started to work really hard in practice each day ... trying to push myself to a higher level of play."
And Sykes admitted, "I wasn't in the best shape when the season started. I've always been pretty lazy about chasing down balls."
"Laurie really isn't an endurance-type player who will try to go the full five games for every match," Dartmouth coach Chris Brownell said. "She's more of an offensive player. She hits the ball with great strength and she's very, very tough with her shots."
But for all her vigor and intensity on the court, Sykes has always managed to keep things in perspective careful not to let her competitiveness overshadow her sense of humor on the court.
Sykes "has a great attitude. She really sets a good example for the whole team. She has fun with the game and that's what makes her so successful on the court," teammate Andra Winokur '99 said.
After the preseason stumble, Sykes found some steady ground and went on to compile a better than expected 6-4 record in the dual meets. By the time the post-season tournaments came around, Sykes was truly at her best.
At the Howe Cup team championships, Sykes avenged her regularseason losses by defeating the number one players from Williams and Trinity. From here, there was no looking back for the freshman hotshot.
And it may be said that Sykes surely saved the best for last.
At the Individual Championships, Sykes turned in some of her finest performances of the year. There, she played her toughest match of the year against Lissa Hunsicker, a senior playing the two position for Penn.
"I played [Hunsicker] earlier in the season and lost in four," Sykes explained. "Then when I faced her again at the Individuals, she destroyed me 9-0 and 9-1 in the first two games ... and things weren't looking so great at that point."
Then after talking to her coach and teammates, Sykes dug deep and gutted out the last three games to clinch her 3-2 victory over her Penn rival.
After a big win like that, Sykes knew she couldn't stop there. She went on to beat a fifth-ranked opponent in the quarterfinals before bowing out in the semis to the eventual tournament champion from Harvard.
With all her energy, spunk and vigor that seemed to shine brighter and brighter as the season progressed, Sykes thus proved that she is nothing less than an All-American on the squash court.
But as if this was not enough of an honor, there's still more to Sykes' accolades for the season. As a sort of icing on the cake, Sykes was also named to the 1996 Women's All-Ivy Squash Team.
Expressing caution about not resting too much on her laurels, Sykes likes to look ahead to the future. "It'll be just as hard next year, if not harder to achieve the same degree of success," she said.
"It was fun for Laurie to be the underdog this year," Brownell said. "But as for next season, it's certainly going to be hard for her to repeat that same remarkable finish."
With this said, Brownell is also confident that Sykes will continue to get better from here. "Laurie will have to learn to deal with success, to just concentrate on her own goals and to just take on one player at a time next season," she said.
"She's definitely going to improve," Brownell said. "She's a great athlete and she's just starting to realize this. I think Laurie's just going to keep getting better and better from here."
Sykes was joined on the 10-player All-American squad by four other freshmen. She was the only Dartmouth squash player to garner All-American and All-Ivy status for the 1996 season.
