Situated just left of the weightlifting area in SPAC is a series of small hardwood courts with walls on all sides. It is here that Northwestern’s club squash team, No. 30 in the nation this season, holds its practices and competitions throughout the first half of the academic year.
The team manages to keep pace with the nation’s best varsity squads, which have much higher funding than NU.
“We’re a club team and we only get $2,000 from the university, in comparison to some of the top programs in the country, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, that have squash endowments of over a million dollars,” said senior Ben Sussna. “So considering how much money we get, and we’re a club, we do real well.”
Sussna, a history major, had not played much squash until he picked it up from his nationally ranked roommate during his time at a New Jersey boarding school. Sussna then came to NU to play squash and has been part of a consistently successful program ever since.
Squash is a game played with a racquet and a small ball that does not bounce well on contact. Opponents take turns striking the ball toward the wall and must return it within one bounce.
“A lot of people like to compare it to racquetball – it’s like playing tennis in a box, except instead of a rally being exchanged over a net it’s hit against a wall,” explained Ed Gadient, president of the club squash team.
Perhaps the most amazing story of anyone associated with the squad belongs to coach Mark Johnson. Johnson is a professor in the biomedical engineering department at NU but is well known in squash circles.
“He’s actually incredibly valuable to the College Squash Association overall; he wrote the algorithm for the ranking system used to rank the 600 or so players in college squash,” Sussna said. “So everyone kind of knows who he is, and he’s really well regarded in the squash community.”
The club is made up of players with diverse backgrounds, many of whom had little exposure to the sport before coming to NU.
Hailing from the Midwest, Gadient was almost solitary in his love of squash, which is prevalent mostly among East Coast prep schools.
“I was maybe one of two juniors in Minnesota that was playing,” Gadient said. “So I was very inexperienced with this type of atmosphere and the competitive environment.”
Last weekend, NU matched up against many of the top varsity teams, as the club wrapped up its season at the national tournament at Harvard.
Though the team experienced mixed results, a victory over the No. 22 Wesleyan varsity squad was the highlight of the weekend and a nice way for the seniors to end their careers.
As the seniors leave, the club may turn to its greatest untapped resource: the student body. The sport has grown in popularity in recent years, and the courts at SPAC have become filled with people playing squash just for fun.
“It’s really incredible over my four years how many more people play squash, and how crowded it’s gotten at the courts in SPAC,” Sussna said. “The sport’s definitely growing. Northwestern definitely has the best resources in the Midwest to kind of come together and put together a good team.”
