Trinity’s 252 straight victories is the longest winning streak in intercollegiate sports history.

If you aren’t familiar with squash (and I confess that I knew very little about the sport prior to researching this article), here are the final moments of the match that clinched the Yale-Trinity contest:

Only 32 colleges and universities have a men’s varsity squash team, and almost all are located in the northeastern United States or eastern Canada. Only five—Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Navy, and Trinity—have won a College Squash Association national championship.

College squash lacks the parity of many other college sports, but 252 wins is 252 wins. By comparison, the celebrated UConn women’s basketball winning streak ended at 90.

We may not see another intercollegiate varsity team win 252 consecutive games or matches in our lifetimes, but there have been several other winning streaks in the world of sports that were similarly impressive. Such as:

Kenyon College men’s swimming: 31 consecutive NCAA Division III National Championships

Last spring the Kenyon College Lords finished second in the NCAA Division III championship men’s swim meet, exactly one point behind the Denison University Big Red. (Kenyon and Denison, both in central Ohio, are about 30 miles apart and both compete in the North Coast Athletic Conference.) It was the first time since 1980 that Kenyon hadn’t finished first.

The Lords’ 31-year championship streak is the longest in any sport in NCAA history. The second longest streak belongs to the Kenyon College Ladies, who won 17 consecutive Division III swimming titles from 1984 to 2000.

Fun fact: The coach of the Denison team that ended the Lords’ 3-decade reign is a 1982 Kenyon grad who was a member of the 1980 team that started the streak.

Kenyon celebrates its 31st national title in 2010. (©Carlos Gonzalez/NCAA Photos)

Julio César Chávez: 87 consecutive boxing bouts

Mexico’s Julio César Chávez went pro in 1980 at the age of 17 and remained unbeaten for the first 13-and-a-half years of his professional career.

During his 87-bout winning streak Chávez went from weight division to weight division winning world titles. He won the WBC Super Featherweight title in 1984, the WBA Lightweight in 1987, the WBC Lightweight in 1988, the WBC Super Lightweight in 1989, and the IBF Light Welterweight in 1990.

In 1993, a few months before a draw with WBC Welterweight champ Pernell Whitaker ended Chávez’s run of victories, rival Greg Haugen questioned the validity of Chávez’s streak:

“The way I see it sixty of the guys he fought were just Tijuana cab drivers that my mother could have knocked out.” Haugen added, “But the other twenty-two are good fighters so I’m not taking him light but I’m not taking him as he’s unbeatable either with 82-0.”

On February 20, 1993 Chávez knocked out Haugen in the fifth round.

Julio César Chávez and his many belts.

Last June Chávez’s son, Julio César Chávez, Jr., captured the WBC Middleweight world title by defeating Sebastian Zbik in a majority decision. The younger Chávez has a record of 43-0-1.

Penn State women’s volleyball: 109 consecutive matches

Like the Kenyon men’s swimming team, the Penn State women’s volleyball team saw a championship streak end in 2011.

The Nittany Lions had won four straight NCAA titles before losing this year in the Regional Semifinal (Sweet 16). Three of Penn State’s volleyball championships were part of a more impressive streak: 109 consecutive matches.

The streak lasted nearly three calendar years, starting on September 21, 2007 and ending with a loss to Stanford on September 11, 2010. Along the way the Nittany Lions completed two perfect seasons.

Cael Sanderson: 159 consecutive wrestling matches

Iowa State wrestler Cael Sanderson may have been the most dominant college athlete in history.

In four years at Iowa State (not counting a redshirt year when he was a freshman) Sanderson compiled a record of 159-0 and won 4 national championships wrestling at 184 pounds. Sanderson graduated in 2002.

Two years later he won Olympic gold in Athens wrestling at 84 kilograms. Today, he’s the head wrestling coach at Penn State.

159-0 deserves a Wheaties box. (From www.caelsanderson.com)

Esther Vergeer: 434 consecutive tennis matches, and counting

You’ve probably never heard of Esther Vergeer. But she’s a a tennis player with 19 Grand Slam singles titles and 19 Grand Slam doubles titles and a 434-match win streak in singles that dates back to 2003.

You don’t know about Esther Vergeer because she plays in a wheelchair.

The 30-year-old native of the Netherlands has been in a wheelchair since she was 8, and she has become a world-class athlete.

Vergeer has won every French Open and U.S. Open Women’s Wheelchair Singles Championship ever held, along with every Wimbledon and U.S. Open Women’s Wheelchair Doubles Championship ever held. (Wimbledon doesn’t have a wheelchair singles tournament). She was also a member of the Dutch women’s wheelchair basketball team that won the 1997 European championship.

Vergeer will look to continue her 434-match streak next week in Melbourne. Here she is in action at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing:

Brandon High School (Florida) wrestling: 459 consecutive meets

In January 2008 the Brandon High School wrestling team lost by four points to South Dade High School, breaking a streak of 459 victories.

The duration of the streak is even more impressive than the number of wins: The Brandon eagles hadn’t lost a wrestling meet in 34 years.

It had been more than five years since the school just outside of Tampa won a match by fewer than 20 points. The 459-meet streak is a record for all high school sports in the United States.

Jahangir Khan: 555 consecutive international squash matches

We started with squash, so let’s finish with squash.

Pakistan’s Jahangir Khan is widely considered the greatest player ever to pick up a squash racket.

Khan won the World Amateur Individual Championship in 1979 at age 15. In April 1981 he began a 555-match winning streak that included five World Open and five British Open titles. (The World Open is the most prestigious tournament in squash, followed closely by the British Open.)

His streak ended in November 1986, but he would go on to win another World Open and five more British Opens.

Michael Jordan was the Jahangir Khan of basketball. (Photo from Wikipedia)

(I just spent the summer watching 8-and-under swimming, in which belly-flop starts are the norm, not the exception.)

Per international rules, Labeid got disqualified. That’s too bad. It was the only event Labeid qualified for, and only three Mauritanian swimmers qualified for the meet. (Eycub Leebeid finished 116th in the 50M Freestyle, last among those who weren’t disqualified or no-shows. Soukeina Abdellahi was a no-show for the Women’s 50M Freestyle.)

“False Start Leads To Great Belly Flop”—Cosby Sweaters/Yard Barker

As we began a sponsor search, one referral we were given was Generational Equity of Dallas, TX. In addition to being experts at advising business owners looking to sell their companies, Generational Equity is a company rich in philanthropic activity which includes the funding of an orphanage in Nigeria, a Belize faith-based mission, and support for fighting colon cancer. Generational Equity also has several ex-collegiate athletes including a member of the 1989 SMU Mustangs football team (the first year after the death penalty). Though Southern Methodist University doesn’t qualify as a Midwestern team, we couldn’t deny the inner passion the company has for sports.

When Generational Equity agreed to sponsor our initiative, we began to evaluate organizations that could help us connect with the right child athletes. One on our shortlist was a local YMCA. Upon reviewing their scholarship programs, we were introduced to an eight-week swimming program they offered that helped provide essential swimming skills to kids who, for a variety of reasons, couldn’t swim. Though the exposure to a swimming program at the YMCA could serve as inspiration for a child to take up the activity as a sport, we were more convinced that the donation would be put to good use as 100% of the participants would leave the program with essential skills that could mean survival in the right situation.

Town North YMCA Swimming Out Reach

On June 18th 2009, I had the pleasure of spending the morning with Diddy Fullbright and Micaela Gomez on site at their swimming outreach program at the Sierra Vista apartment complex. Sierra Vista was one of the two apartment complexes they selected to reach out to this year.

“Our residents are primarily Hispanic and 95% have children,” commented Margo Rodriquez, manager of the Sierra Vista apartments, “We have found that a large percentage of our resident adults do not know how to swim and do not have the ability to teach their children. This summer, we set out with the YMCA to do something about it.”

The YMCA program conducts four daily swimming classes at the apartment complex’s pool. The classes began this week and run Monday through Thursday until August 9th.

“Between our 2 separate outreach programs, we have over 50 kids learning vital swimming skills. The parents are responsible for a $15 fee for the entire program and the rest is paid for by a donation from Generational Equity,” commented Micaela Gomez of the YMCA. “Each child starts the program with a skills evaluation and finishes the program with a follow up evaluation to measure progress.”

The class that I attended had participants ranging from 3 to 14 years of age had little to now swimming skills. One very young child had downs syndrome and it was very touching to see the smile on her face as she made progress in one of the water exercises.

Swimming: Support and Survival Skill

Swimming is a sport that has been put on the world sporting radar screen by the greats who have represented their countries in the Olympic games of the modern era. In a 2006 post, though dated with regards to Michael Phelps, the Top 10 swimmers of all time are highlighted. Swimming is also a sport accessible to all via community and school programs that take transform young people into competitive athletes. However, in addition to being a sport, swimming is a fundamental skill that can be a means of survival for children and adults alike.

Program Sponsor: Generational Equity

Generational Equity is based in Dallas, TX and is the leader in Merger and Acquisition Services, Business Evaluation, and Exit Strategy Planning for middle market businesses worldwide. Generational Equity Charities provided sponsorships through MidwestSportsFans.Com and DallasSportsFans.Com for the 2009 Summer Swimming Outreach Program by the Town North YMCA of Dallas, TX. Generational Equity has offices in Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Connecticut.

By Nicholas Gerlach

So far in the 2008 Olympiad Michael Phelps is 3 for 3 in his pursuit of an unprecendented 8 swimming Gold Medals. This would shatter the previous mark of 7 set by Indiana University swimmer Mark Spitz’s moustache at the 1972 Munich games. Phelps, who is…….Alright….I can’t do this anymore…I’m not Bob Costas…I can’t pretend that I care about the Olympics.

Somebody let me know when the Jamaican Bobsled team comes on.