The speed challenge stood out as one of the most exciting parts of Doubles Day. Using a Stalker Pro II, a high-performance sports radar gun that is used in Major League Baseball, the speed challenge included four young players: Drexel team members Karina Tyma and Lucas Rousselet, Hameed Ahmed from the Squash Doubles Association professional tour and associate head coach at Harvard; and Tim Lasusa, the assistant coach at Yale.
Tyma reached 102 miles per hour; Rousselet topped out at 107mph; and Ahmed’s best was 145mph. Lasusa was able to hit a remarkable 172mph. “This might be my top squash achievement,” he said afterwards. “I’ve dreamed of this since I was a child.”
Lasusa’s performance came within a whisker of the unofficial world record. In 2005 at the Canary Wharf Classic, John White, now the head squash coach at Drexel, hit 172mph on a radar gun. In 2011 using a special off-court radar gun at the U.S. Open, Cameron Pilley reached 175mph. In 2014 Pilley pushed the record up to 176mph at an exhibition in Hertfordshire, England.
