This weekend, Dartmouth will play host to a Professional Squash Association satellite event, the Dartmouth Mudbowl, at the squash courts in the Kresge sports complex. The 16-man main-draw field, with a total prize pool of $4,500, will run from Thursday to Sunday, with Thursday composed of an additional 16-man qualifying playoff to get into main-draw play, running from noon to 5 p.m.
The main draw will start on Friday, with first-round play beginning at high noon and then back-to-back quarterfinals getting underway at 5 p.m. Semifinal play will take place on Saturday at 4 p.m., and the tournament will culminate with the finals on Sunday at 2 p.m.
The event should prove to be very entertaining, as tournament organizer and head Dartmouth squash coach John Power wants to create a social atmosphere, with food and drinks being sold and hoards of chairs set up around the area. The highly skilled international field should be enough to pull any squash aficionado down to the courts to check out a match or two, with a dominant group of Englishmen, a few Australians, and two competitors from Zambia. John Rooney, coming in with a world ranking of 77, will be the top seed, and the highest-ranked American, David Meneely, at 93, will be among the competitors.
Most pertinent to the Dartmouth community will be the play of alumnus Beau River, Ryan Donegan (this year's Ivy League rookie of the year and No. 1 player) and last but not least assistant coach Kirby Sinclair of Australia, who received a wild card into the event.
The event could be a big break through for Sinclair, who plans on cracking into the ranks of elite players when he goes full time on the professional squash tour next year after his yearlong stint on the Hanover Plain. The fiery Aussie may just catapult himself right into the upper tiers of the squash cosmos with a solid performance this weekend, which would undoubtedly be the start to a successful career.
So even if you are not a lover of squash and the game seems like an interesting taboo as you watch it being played on the way down to the weight facilities, come out and watch the event in order to support the home town folks. It will provide a great opportunity to observe world-class squash, enabling hardcore squash addicts to fulfill their yearning fix and observe textbook play. It's possibly an educational experience for those who are interested in the game but do not know the ropes. So, for whatever reason, come on down this weekend to Kresge and be a part of this world-class event.
