Where Students Become Champions: Olivia Weaver
by Rob Dinerman, College Squash Historian
One of only two American squash players (along with Amanda Sobhy) to attain a top-four PSA ranking, Olivia Weaver (nee Fiechter) has had a consistent and praiseworthy rise through the world rankings in recent years.
Weaver’s recent-years accomplishments have included winning both the Individual and Team gold medal at the 2023 Pan American Games (where she defeated Amanda Sobhy in the Individual final); her advance to the semis of the U.S. Open in both 2021 and 2023; her membership (as the No. 2 player) on the 2022 U.S. Team that earned silver in that year’s World Team Championships
Her career-best Calendar 2024 performance was highlighted by her winning the U.S. Nationals (after reaching the finals in 2023), the Gaynor Cup and the Silicon Valley Open; reaching the semis of both the U.S. Open and World Open; and playing No. 1 on the U.S. team that earned a silver medal at the World Team Championships in Hong Kong.
Getting over the pain
After capturing a total of nine U.S. National Junior and Junior Open titles (five in singles and four in doubles) and playing on U.S. Junior teams in international competition every year from 2011-14, Weaver went on to achieve first-team All-American honors in all four of her years (2014-18) at Princeton, despite the fact that her ability to play at her highest level was severely compromised during both her sophomore and junior years by back injuries — mostly frequent spasms in her left piriformis muscle, causing chronic discomfort and a pinched nerve — that inflamed her entire lower-back area and compromised its ability to fully rotate.
Finally pain-free during her 2017-18 senior season due to a summer-long program of three-times-per-week 5:30am physical therapy sessions while she was working as an intern in Manhattan, Weaver had an excellent winter as the team’s co-captain and No. 1 player, clinching the Tigers’ 5-4 victory over Trinity College with her four-game win over Bantam star Raneem Sharaf and then defeating Harvard’s No. 1 player Sabrina Sobhy, Weaver’s junior-years nemesis, on Sobhy’s turf at the Murr Center in Cambridge.
Finally overcoming Sobhy
When asked to identify a single stand-out match or moment in her college career that altered her perception of what possibly lay ahead, Weaver cited that latter victory, her first in nearly a half-dozen years over Sobhy — whom Weaver would also out-play six years later in a dominant 2024 U.S. Nationals final — as having given her a substantial positive nudge forward in terms of her perceived PSA prospects.
So did her growing confidence that the back issues, which for years had greatly constrained her ability to train all-out or enjoy the game, had finally been successfully resolved, causing her to feel liberated, free to renew her love for the game and to satisfy her curiosity as to how far she could progress with fully restored health.
Olivia’s Coaches/Mentors
During that time frame she also received enthusiastic encouragement and support about turning pro from her then-boyfriend/now-husband Bobby Weaver (a Princeton varsity lacrosse player, Class of 2016), as well as from both Princeton’s legendary women’s head coach Gail Ramsay — whom Weaver gratefully acknowledged as her role model and mentor — and the Tiger men’s coach Sean Wilkinson, who, at Weaver’s request, introduced her to Peter Nicol, his longtime friend and a former British Open and World Open champion.
Nicol, whom Weaver met in the spring of 2018 shortly before her graduation, served as Weaver’s primary coach from 2018-23, during the last few years of which she split her time working in New York with him and in her native Philadelphia with former Canadian National Team Coach Graeme Williams.
Starting in July 2023, Rodney Martin (like Nicol, a former World Open titlist) became Weaver’s primary coach — the club where he is based in Connecticut is located very close to the home of Bobby Weaver’s family — and his technical expertise and the intensity of the workouts he runs, complemented by the practice sessions she continues to have with Williams when she is in Philadelphia, have made Weaver the fittest she has ever been and added to her racquet weaponry as well.
Princeton Paramount
Weaver feels her Princeton years have significantly contributed to her PSA success on multiple fronts.
First, she is convinced that having majored in Anthropology, in addition to making her, in her words, “more aware of cultural differences and a more compassionate and curious person,” has also enabled her to better engage with and respond to the practices and methods espoused by her mental coach, Danny Massaro, who often references philosophers (Sartre and Nietzsche among them) in his approach.
In addition, her four years at or near the top of the Tiger lineup provided her with added skills and experience that have played a major role in the extraordinary degree of success that she has subsequently realized.
Still in her late 20’s and now well along in her seventh professional season, Olivia Weaver is perfectly positioned to accomplish even greater things in the years leading up to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, which has become the ultimate goal of every top-tier player on the PSA Tour.
