Angry Peter

Author: Peter Yordan

April is indeed the cruelest of months. Students come back from vacation tanned, toned and ready for spring, only to have the chilly blasts of ice and snow snap them back into their discarded fleeces and hats. Yet for those in the know there is a fresh source of solace from the never-ending story of winter. Nestled out of reach of the fickle fortunes of New England weather in the Fletcher stay-puff Baggy Dome are the newest jewels to grace our campus - the five international squash courts the college installed this year.
Mercifully, the new courts have arrived just in time for the worst winter ever recorded - further proof that there is a God, and that he's a fan of racket sports.
Long the province of CEOs, Boston Brahmins and Woody Allen movies, Squash is a peculiar game, little known outside the confines of the Northeast and Canada but beloved by all of its adherents. Squash began in 1820 in England at Harrow School, in a natural three-sided alley adjacent to the school's tennis courts. The sport's name derives from the 'squash' sound the ball makes when it hits the wall - clever, those Brits are. The game has only a passing resemblance to its vulgarly bouncy cousin, Racquetball.
Middlebury was long a joke among squash circles in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), one of the Meccas of American Squash. While rival schools like Amherst and Williams built purple palaces to hold their gleaming squash courts, Middlebury squash players toiled in obscurity, grinding away in antiquated facilities in a dusty and dank corner of Fletcher. In a league that features Trinity College, the nation's unchallenged emperors of collegiate squash at any level, Middlebury couldn't even field a men's team. The women's team had to suffer through the indignity of playing in cavernous, poorly lit North American sized courts when everyone else in NESCAC was playing in the differently sized international courts that now dominate American Squash.
But with the inflation of the Fletcher Marshmallow the Administration gave in to the pleadings and protestations of the long unheeded and underrepresented community of preppy middle and upper class New Englanders and New Yorkers at Middlebury. Down went the creaky relics of yesterday, and in came the five sparkly new wide and white-walled wonders we have now.
Whereas once you were guaranteed an empty court at whatever time, day or night, nowadays the squash courts are flush with students waiting to get on - provided they have non-marking shoes of course. Squash is hot at Middlebury, and with good reason. The game is maddeningly addictive and so easy to learn. Few games are more competitive or better exercise than Squash.
Those of us who have been living in Vermont for a couple of years know that indeed, summer very well might never come. What better respite from the cold spring winds than the climate controlled confines of a squash court? A round ball and a square court - the simple geometry of life.