If you ask someone in the city who the most dominant sports team in London is, you’re likely going to get a variety of answers. Maybe the Knights, possibly the Majors, maybe even Western‘s Football or Basketball team. But Western has another team. One that doesn’t even compare to the other teams in the city because not one of them have come close to the constant success of Western’s men’s squash team.
The Mustangs have been champions of Ontario University Athletics (OUA) squash for 41 years running now. Staying atop the mountain since 1984, the same year the original Ghostbusters was released. The streak, while immensely impressive, does seem to add some pressure to the team’s current players, as one of the team’s captains Dylan Deverill puts it, “We’re representing 41 years of hard work, but I feel like it also fuels us in a sense that everyday we train and every day we put in the work.”
The teams dominance is not only contained to their OUA championship success though. They are currently ranked 13th in the College Squash Association’s (CSA) rankings, which is typically just for American schools. Due to the teams consistent domination in OUA competition they are constantly playing against the best of the best across the border such as Cornell, Harvard, and Yale.
When asked about the difference in the level of competition in each country and how they compare, Deverill referred to it as “completely black and white.” Despite the difference in competition, it hasn’t stopped the Mustangs from continued success. Just this past year they left the US as Hoehn cup champions, the first time they’ve won the tournament since 2013.
How does the team stay so successful? Antonio Mendes, another one of the team’s captains says, “The one super valuable thing about Western squash is that we attract mainly Canadian players.” Mendes says that the players who make up the team have been competing against each other in tournaments since before they were ten years old, and that while it was an individual sport up until university, “it was super cool to come onto kind of a team aspect and then compete together all towards one big goal.”
While Deverill is in his final year and Mendes will only be eligible for OUA competition next year, both say they will continue to support the team after they depart the school. As Dylan puts it, they will “Always be a mustang on the squash team.”
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