"Do you ever. . ."
"Whaaat?"
"Do you ever wear earplugs when you play?"
"Sorry. Can't hear you."
It's a deafening sport. An unimposing black ball ricochets from wall to floor to ceiling. Rubber-soled shoes screech and stomp. Players yell out each point on their way to a game score of 15 as they whack serves and wicked crosscourts and bang into the tin--a metal out-of-bounds plate that reverberates in a realm of decibels all its own. And this is soft-ball squash.
Players are passionate about the game, and they're convincing. "In high school, I was a four-year letterman in tennis," says junior Jason Miller. "Then I picked up a squash racquet--and boom, that was it."
"Absolutely," senior Mark Goldenson chimes in. "Because the game values endurance, agility, finesse and technique more than strength, people who are 5-foot-3 can crush people who are 6-foot-something. Absolutely clobber them."
Goldenson and Miller, president and treasurer, respectively, are leading the club sport to respectability at Stanford. Two years ago, they say, the five DeGuerre Complex courts looked like bomb shelters, with head-sized holes in the walls. Funding from the provost's office netted a renovation--two new regulation-sized international courts and three American courts, of a weirdly short, former-racquetball-court configuration.
Last fall, the team of 15 also got its first coach--Richard Elliott, one of the world's top 20 players over age 35.
Ranked 36th in the nation last year, Stanford battled to the 24th spot this year, winning the divisional title at the national championships. And they're expecting to climb higher.
"Denison [University] went from 33 to 7 in five years," says Goldenson. "And we're gonna beat that."
