March 14, 2011

Diplomats Pair Captures Intercollegiate Doubles Championship

NEW YORK -- Franklin & Marshall's Gabriel de Melo and Ryan Mullaney captured the Ketcham Cup, awarded to the U.S. Squash Intercollegiate Doubles Championship winners. de Melo and Mullaney defeated the Penn's Trevor McGuinness and Daniel Judd, 9-15, 15-11, 8-15, 18-14, 15-10. 

de Melo and Mullaney's win marks the first Ketcham Cup for Franklin & Marshall since Jess Berline '97 and Mike Sabatine took the championship in 1997. 

"With the men finishing in the top eight and the women winning the Walker Cup, both F&M men's and women's teams finished on a high note this season," said Head Coach John White. "Gabe and Ryan winning the Intercollegiate Doubles final is the icing on the cake. I guess we now need a Doubles court here at F&M!"

McGuinness had been half of the doubles championship pair in each of the past two years. He and Porter Drake won the event last year. As a freshman, McGuinness teamed with Thomas Mattson for the win. The Diplomats knocked off Connecticut College's Caleb Garza and Christopher King 15-11, 15-8, 15-13 in the semifinals to face McGuinness and Judd. F&M's pair received a first round bye and defeated Princeton's Peter and Phillip Sopher, 15-12, 15-7, 15-14 in the quarterfinals. 

While de Melo's career has been well chronicled, Mullaney is a newcomer to the Diplomats' program. The first-year enrolled at F&M in January and worked his way into the ninth spot in the Diplomats' lineup by the College Squash Association Team Championships. Mullaney trained under F&M Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, Chris Spahr '87 at the University Club in Boston. Spahr's teammate and fellow Hall of Fame inductee, Morris Clothier '87, sponsored the annual championship. 

While doubles is not a standard part of dual match play in college squash, an intercollegiate doubles tournament has been held annually since the late 1980s. A doubles tournament was held sporadically in the 1940s and 1950s, but after the 1956 tournament, there was no formal intercollegiate doubles competition for over thirty years.  

In 1988, William Tredwell “Treddy” Ketcham helped bring back the doubles tournament. A former player at Yale who served as the USSRA president from 1965 to 1967, Ketcham was a major proponent of the doubles game. He was also an accomplished player; between 1965 and 1974, he won the USSRA senior (age 50+) doubles title seven times, playing with four different partners. The intercollegiate doubles tournament was renamed in his honor in 1998.

NATIONAL INTERCOLLEGIATE DOUBLES CHAMPIONS

  • 1942: Larry Austin & Sands (Dartmouth College)
  • 1948: Kingsley & Seymour Knox (Yale University)
  • 1950: R. Allen & R. Dickinson (Williams College)
  • 1951: Rick Austin & Steve Foster (Dartmouth College)
  • 1953: Charles Warner & Ben Edwards (Princeton University)
  • 1954: Dan Hutchinson & Roland Nordie
  • 1956: Jones & Eels (Williams College)
  • 1988: Keen Butcher & Roy Rubin (Princeton University)
  • 1989: Alex Dean & Erik Wohlgemuth (Yale University)
  • 1990: Alex Dean & Alex Darrow (Yale University)
  • 1991: Alex Darrow & Garrett Frank (Yale University)
  • 1992: Garrett Frank & Jamie Dean (Yale University)
  • 1993: Jamie Dean & Reade Frank (Yale University)
  • 1994: Jamie Dean & Reade Frank (Yale University)
  • 1995: Rick Hartigan & David Kaye (Princeton University)
  • 1996: Ben Fishman & Jack Wyant (Princeton University)
  • 1997: Jess Berline & Mike Sabatine (Franklin & Marshall)
  • 1998: Preston Quick & Joseph Pentland (Trinity College)
  • 1999: Akhil Behl & Duncan Pearson (Trinity College)
  • 2000: Akhil Behl & Duncan Pearson (Trinity College)
  • 2001: Duncan Pearson & Patrick Malloy (Trinity College)
  • 2002: Dylan Patterson & Peter Carlin (Harvard University)
  • 2003: Will Osnato & Dent Wilkens (Princeton University)
  • 2004: Pat Malloy & Coly Smith (Trinity College)
  • 2005: Julian Illingworth & Trevor Rees (Yale University)
  • 2006: Will Broadbent & Garnett Booth (Harvard University)
  • 2007: Zach Linhart & Peter Cipriano (Bowdoin College)
  • 2008: David Letourneau & Kimlee Wong (Princeton University)
  • 2009: Trevor McGuinness & Tom Mattsson (University of Pennsylvania)
  • 2010: Trevor McGuinness and Porter Drake (University of Pennsylvania)
  • 2011: Gabriel de Melo and Ryan Mullaney (Franklin & Marshall)
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