REPEAT PERFORMANCE: Princeton University women’s squash star Zeina Zein, left, and Princeton head coach Gail Ramsay are all smiles as Zein displays the Ramsay Cup (named for the Princeton coach) that she earned for winning the College Squash Association (CSA) individual tournament last week in New York City. Junior Zein defeated Caroline Fouts of Harvard 11-8, 12-10, 5-11, 14-12 in the final on January 27 as she won her second straight national title. (Photo provided courtesy of Princeton Athletics)
By Justin Feil
Being at the top of the ladder, Zeina Zein is accustomed to taking on the opponent’s toughest player in the Princeton University women’s squash team’s matches.
The Tiger junior from Alexandria, Egypt, recognizes that as good as she is, the matches can go either way. She has won them all this year to help the Tigers start 6-1, but she’d dropped matches in the regular season in her first two seasons.
When it comes to the College Squash Association (CSA) individual tournament, however, Zein seems unbeatable.
“I think that she’s really more comfortable in an individual setting,” said Princeton head coach Gail Ramsay. “She’s only played like one world team championship with her four-person team and the juniors and everything else has been me, myself, and I fighting through to get to the next round, to the next round, to the next round. So, I think she’s really geared to that.”
Zein repeated as Ramsay Cup champion — named for the Princeton coach who won four national individual titles during her college career at Penn State — when she won all five matches as the top seed at the CSA National Individual Squash Championships that were held from January 23-27 at Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
“Obviously it felt really good,” said Zein. “I think, especially the last match, it was a little bit tough with the referee calls and everything. So it made it even harder. I think my match took up to an hour, which was longer than any other match that I’ve had before, like during the tournament and even I think last year too.”
Zein won the first two games in the best-of-five match, 11-8, 12-10, in the final against third-seeded Caroline Fouts of Harvard, but only after Fouts had established early leads in both games. Fouts won the third game 11-5 and then had a pair of game balls that Zein fought off before closing out her second straight title with a 14-12 game-four win.
“It obviously was a lot harder because there’s more pressure,” said Zein. “The matches were a little tightened up more than last year. We didn’t really have much of a lead or a gap that can make me feel comfortable at any point. I guess the last match especially, it could go both ways because I had the 2-0 lead, but then I lost the third and then going into the fourth, it was a little like we were going point by point. I had two match balls that I lost, so it was a little frustrating.”
Zein was determined to finish the title match in four games and not let it get to a fifth game that would further test her physically and mentally. That general feeling that the match could go either way is often present against the quality of opponents that she is accustomed to facing, but she’s been able to win over and over now in the national championship tournament. She’s lost just once in her career — in the semifinals as a freshman. Last year she was dominant in her path to her first career title.
“It’s just this one tournament is different than the whole season because the whole season we’re playing as a team,” said Zein. “You’re depending on your teammates. There are eight more players to back you up if you lost your match and you’re there to support and also be supported by. I feel like individuals is a little bit like how professional squash works. It’s like you’re kind of alone. You depend more on yourself, so you have to be independent and try to get your routines and be able to get a good start in every match and try to warm up well because no one is going to be there to help you.”
Zein seems to have mastered it. She is already in some rare company. She’s just the fourth Princeton player to win multiple national crowns, and the first since Julia Beaver did so in 2001. Beaver’s 2001 win was her third, and that’s something that Zein could also do next year to join some very elite company.
“I haven’t thought about it until someone mentioned it to me,” said Zein. “They’re like someone won it three times in a row, and you can run it back if you could win next year again. But I think now I’m mainly focusing on our upcoming team events, because we’re trying to obviously win the Ivy League. Then there’s also the Ivy tournament. Then there’s also the team championship. We still have a long road ahead of us with also the spring semester coming up as well. So then we’re back to trying to balance between being a student-athlete, which is always difficult to do.”
Zein is optimistic about the ability of the Tigers team. Their depth played out in the individual national tournament when she had to meet Princeton freshman Alex Jaffe in the semifinals. Jaffe, who was in the 9-12 seeding, had rolled through the No. 5 and No. 4 seeds to set up a matchup of teammates.
“Arguably I think she should have been in the top eight,” said Ramsay. “She actually had always played quite a bit against the UVA No. 1, but she’s No. 1 so she gets a hand up a little bit on the seeding. So, I think even though it was an upset, it was an unusual upset. She had a relatively good draw because she knew who she was going to play in that quarters, and she had probably more often won those matches. She’s really, she’s quite good. Unfortunately, she’s No. 2, where she could be No. 1 on probably all but three or four teams.”
Jaffe had a game ball in the first game against Zein, but Zein fought it off. Jaffe did win a game off her before Zein closed out that match in four games as well. The two have played each other in practice and for challenge matches for the team’s top spot, but this was different.
“It’s totally different playing an actual match in an actual tournament than just like practicing together or playing challenge matches, but we do have a lot of respect for one another, and I think we put on a really good show, and I think the match went really well,” said Zein. “I think we both played really well. Obviously, I’m glad that it went my way, but all credit goes to also Alex for putting on a good fight out there.”
They will be back fighting for the Tigers the rest of the year. Princeton opened the season with a loss to Stanford, but since then rattled off eight straight wins, including 9-0 victories over Cornell on Friday and Columbia on Sunday when they returned to team action. The Tigers host Penn on February 7 and Dartmouth on February 14 and Harvard on February 15 to finish the regular season. Harvard has won nine straight Ivy titles. Then, the top four Ivy teams will play in the inaugural Ivy League Tournament that will be hosted by the regular-season champion.
“Worst case, if you lose that one you still have another chance to make it up and win the other one,” said Zein. “So then instead of having this one chance, now we have two, besides also nationals and then we have like three chances to win something with the team. So, I think that’s really a really good thing to add to the league now.”
Princeton’s strong representation at the individual national tournament was the latest step in showing their strength. The Tigers are hoping they can break through as Ivy champions and compete for a national title in the first week of March.
“We’re in a really good position and hopefully it goes our way the upcoming matches as it gets more intense,” said Zein. “Stanford was obviously a tough one to start with. I think we’ve fought back together, and we’ve trained really hard during winter break. Staying on campus, playing those matches, I think helped a lot as well. So I think we’re ready for our fights.”
Tough competition has hardened Zein and the Tigers. She continues to aspire to being an even tougher player. After last year’s national individual title season, Zein found success in an offseason tournament before returning to training in her native Egypt. Most of her summer was spent conditioning, but she did get in a tournament in Egypt too. She also found some tournament action before the college season started when she returned to Princeton.
“Those tournaments really helped me get the experience, I think, and also know how to adapt when things go wrong in a match and also have different game plans and stuff,” said Zein. “So besides just training and doing fitness and physical stuff during the summer and offseason, I think it’s really important for me to also play those matches under pressure because it just makes me gain a lot more experience and be able to adapt and figure out when things go wrong during a match.”
Right or wrong, whatever the challenge has been, or whoever the challenger, Zein has been able to figure it out when it comes to the individual national championships. She did so again to repeat as women’s national champion.
“She wants to get better every year, and she has aspirations of playing on after college,” said Ramsay. “I think she’s working on her overall physical strength and she’s focusing on skills that she needs to improve and also skills that she has that she needs to develop. So she’s thoughtful about her development and she’s consistent and determined to keep growing while she’s going through her Princeton experience.”