Imagine you are Wally Szczerbiak, and it's December 1998.
Your 34 points just led the RedHawks to a home victory over the No. 7 Tennessee Volunteers last month, making you the big man on campus. The most recognizable face at Miami University, you are a herd of paparazzi short of being a bona fide celebrity.
Today, the same is true for Baset Chaudhry, the No. 1 player on Trinity College's best sports team. But Chaudhry doesn't play basketball. He's not the school's quarterback either. No, Chaudhry's fame comes from the least likely of games: squash.
Yes, in addition to being a tasty vegetable and violent verb, squash is indeed a sport-a sport the Trinity Bantams downright dominate.
And we're not just talking Wally-World good either. We're talking best-team-in-college-sports-history good.
Sunday, while ESPN was busy taking the "sports" out of SportsCenter by covering the A-Rod saga for the ump-teenth time, the Bantams were busy winning their 11th consecutive national championship. It marked the school's 202nd consecutive victory.
The last time Trinity lost came in February 1998 when Bill Clinton still presided over the Oval Office and Lebron James was just starting adolescence at 14 years old. The first win of the streak came in December 1998, just after Szczerbiak finished dismantling Tennessee.
To fully appreciate this accomplishment, it helps to compare it with the other great dynasties in sports. John Wooden's UCLA Bruin's won 10 championships, one less than the Trinity squash squad. Only seven of those came consecutively, however, and their longest winning streak finished at 88, less than half that of the Bantams.
Trinity's win Sunday came against Princeton University, the only team to ever truly challenge the Bantams during their streak. Princeton and Trinity met in the four most recent national championships. Including the regular-season on Valentine's Day and Sunday's title bout, the Tigers pushed the Bantams to narrow 5-4 escapes on four separate occasions. In 2006, with the match tied 4-4, Princeton's Yasser El Halaby came within one point of giving his school the upset, yet coughed up a two-set lead in a meltdown he says still haunts him today. Two days ago, Trinity celeb Chaudhry overcame a 5-0 fifth-set deficit to claim the crown-clinching match for the Bantams-on Princeton's home court nonetheless.
Yet outside those four close encounters, the rivalry mirrors that of Roddick vs. Federer or Browns vs. Steelers: always heated and always one-sided. In the other 11 meetings between the two teams during Trinity's 202 win streak, the Bantams won by scores of 8-1 or better seven times.
Like I said, we're talking best-team-in-college-sports-history good.
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So what's the secret to their success? Turns out the Bantams were a decade ahead of the current economic crunch and outsourced to overseas talent early.
Head coach Paul Assaiante, the architect of the Trinity dynasty, took over the team in 1994. Despite his promise to shave his head if the Bantams won 10 sets all season, the team he inherited was nothing short of dismal, as noted by the full head of hair that remained un-sheared. Those initial struggles, however, quickly became a thing of the past.
Assaiante knew the best squash was not being played in the States, so he received permission from school administration to begin bringing in talent from outside the U.S. The incredible impact came immediately in the form of the 1996 national crown.
13 years and 11 titles later, the Trinity roster can still be easily mistaken as a list of model UN participants. The Bantam lineup currently features 12 international players from six different countries.
Certainly Trinity's streak will not go on forever. Assaiante knows this as well as anyone. He can even describe what that dreaded day will look like when it finally comes.
"The sky is going to get dark, the rivers are going to turn red and frogs are going to fall out of the sky," Assaiante told the Daily Princetonian.
With or without the Old Testament plagues, Trinity's next loss will undoubtedly be memorable. Perhaps by then SportsCenter will be giving this team the attention it deserves by airing more than just a fluffy five-minute feature. Now that would truly be apocalyptic.
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