Nour Bahgat has the swaggar and the skills [The Howe cup sunday results]

Nour Bahgat

(photo Debra Tessier: ©2009)

USA's women's squash nationals, the Howe Cup, can be a daunting cauldron of nerves for the uninitiated. Through it's design, with mutiple divisions of eight teams each, segrated carefully by year-long rankings, the teams that meet in the three days of competition tend to be evenly matched. The pressure is high on each team to maintain or exceed their pre-tournament ranking. And that pressure is transferred onto the players. The role of the coaches is to blunt and to channel that pressure, morphing pre-match tension and nerves into peak performance throughout a weekend of high drama.

Trinity freshman Nour Bahgat, who hails from Egypt, made her debut on that stage this weekend, coming into the event as the individually first-ranked college player in the nation and Trinity College's #1 player.

More precisely, she made that debut at about 4:00 Sunday afternoon, when she took the court to face off with Pennsylvania's #1 player, Kristen Lange, who hails from Seattle. The setting wasn't the one either of these two proud players was hoping or dreaming it would be when the weekend began. Both Trinity and Penn had had realistic designs on the national championships, and so these two had hoped to meet in the national finals (taking place concurrently on adjoining courts between Princeton and Harvard). But that wasn't to be. Trinity lost a heartbreaking 5-4 contest with Princeton while Penn had lost a closer-than-the-scoreline-shows 2-7 semifinal contest with Harvard. (Bahgat and Lange had been easy winners in those contest, not really tested)

Even so, as Bahgat and Lange took the court Sunday afternoon, this match was a meaningful and important one. A very meaningful one. The Trinity - Penn match-up for third place in the CSA was for an important ranking position. The contest was now knotted neatly at 4 matches to 4, with only this final battle of number one's left to play. And with the remaining matches completed, the entire teams were crowded in the front row of the bleachers. As the two players, whose games are a contrast in every respect, warmed up, the crowd warmed up too, with the Trinity players beginning a singsong chant, " We have Nour .. we have Nour ... " (This being a variant on the Trinity cheer for the men's matches the last four years of "We have Gustav ... we have Gustav ... ")

Nour's Characteristic Smile

(photo Debra Tessier: ©2009)

But the sideshow was over and the play began. It took some minutes for even the first point to be scored, as Lange and Bahgat parried with each other, showed each other their stuff. This was clearly a battle of relative equals and thus more a chess match than a simple athletic contest.

And Lange had the experience of three seasons, with the big match pressure, the yells, screams, cheers, chants and insults of the college crowds, and expectations of teammates, coach and school.

Yet amidst all that, Nour Bahgat brought her own unique presence and personality to the table, and showed everyone present that she was ready to bring a level of peformance, inventiveness, creativity, brashness (sometimes bordering on chippiness) and just plain fun with the game, that will without doubt entertain the college squash fans for the next four years.

Make no mistake that without the wonderful skills and accomplishment of Kristen Lange, Nour wouldn't have been able to show this stuff.

And the match these two put on was an intriguing and interesting one. Nour at some points taking the initiative, Kristen meeting Nour's challenge with sound defense and some creative counterpunching that found Nour off guard. Kristen at other points taking the initiative, with Nour debating with herself and shaking her head.

The match, which went to Nour in four explosive games, really turned on a few small shifts of momentum, and was mostly even most of the way. And as unfortunately often happens in college matches at this level when the stakes are high, the refereeing began to inject itself into the game sort of as a third man, creating an unwanted diversion from the high performance squash on court. And truth be told, the refereeing only maybe made the difference of a point or two.

The difference in this match, between Bahgat and Lange, was the variety and constant attacking (in the classic Egyptian style) that Bahgat brought to the mat -- in fact I felt that Nour would be happy to play the entire match in the front half of the court. On those occasions when Lange could take advantage of that, and impose her length, she would force Bahgat off guard, and take the advantage. But on a majority of others, Lange somewhat inadvisedly, at critical junctures, felt that she had to play the front court game too. And this led to some small mistakes on her part that gave the Egyptian the momentum. If Lange goes back and considers that, as she is likely to do, their next predicted meeting, in the individual tournament at Williams in two weeks time, could be the next in a potentially memorable series of encounters.

The enduring memory of this debut moment on stage for the Trinity freshman, is the broad smile on her face as she played. She enjoys the game. She enjoys being on court. She enjoys attempting the audacious. And she had fun in this moment.

Kristen and her Penn teammates were disappointed. But she had played well, extremely well. It was a fine day of squash.

 

 

 

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.squashtalk.com