PENN TODAY: Coming Up Clutch with Jana Dweek
The women’s squash team won the 2026 national championship by defeating Princeton 5-4 in the College Squash Association National Team Championships, Penn’s first national title in 26 years.
Fourth-year Jana Dweek clinched the Howe Cup for the Quakers by beating Princeton’s Sonya Sasson 3-0 in straight sets (11-8, 11-8, 11-9).
As they say in sports parlance, Dweek—born in Egypt and raised in Alberta, Canada—came through in the clutch. Prior to the team championships, she hadn’t played much all season due to an injury, and she wasn’t expected to compete in the semifinals or finals. But she was called into action after third-year Anne Leakey tore her ACL.
“Going into that [final] match, I didn’t feel anything,” Dweek says. “My body was numb. I was thinking, ‘I’m just going to give it my best shot.’ I knew it was the decider match and I was like, ‘Don’t be the person that loses it for the team. You’re a captain, and you’ve wanted this moment for so long, and it’s finally your time to shine.’
“I think in the first two points, I just felt like myself and I knew this was going to be my day.”
Penn Today sat down with Dweek, a philosophy, politics, and economics major in the School of Arts & Sciences, to discuss the women’s squash team’s championship season.
How long have you been playing squash? Not that long, honestly. I started competitively when I was 13 or 14, so maybe seven, eight years. My brothers and my cousins were all into squash, and my family played. [Her brother Abdelrahman Dweek previously played for the men’s squash team.]
What do you enjoy about the sport? The competition. I love competing. Also, outside of college, squash is a very individual sport, so you never play with a team. I never grew up with any other girls playing at my club because I only trained with guys. Coming to Penn, I love the sisterhood of the team. That was a new aspect of sport that I never had growing up.
As a captain, could you tell at the beginning of the season that the women’s squash team had national championship potential? In October? No. Maybe when we first started practicing, I thought, ‘Yeah, we can definitely do this,’ just based on skill, but if you don’t have that unit component of a team and everyone working together, you’re not going to make it. We were a little divided in October, but we hit some pretty good milestones this year, like beating Harvard [ranked No. 1 at the time] for the first time in my four years being here. After that, I think everyone realized that if we just put all of our personal issues aside and we just work as one team, we can actually do this.
The women’s squash team steadily improved across your four years from 9-9 to 11-6 to 15-4 to 17-2. To what do you credit the improvement? There were a lot of factors. One, we had amazing recruits come in. One thing we say at Penn is we don’t necessarily just recruit the best squash players, but we recruit missing pieces to the puzzle to our team. I also think the sisterhood we’ve built this year was a big factor. We’ve been through a lot together.
You beat Princeton for the Howe Cup after losing to them in the regular season (6-3) and Ivy League Tournament (5-1). How did it feel to beat Princeton for the championship after the two earlier outsized losses? Insane. It felt like we earned it instead of something that was given to us. I think a lot of people didn’t expect the outcome, so it was rewarding. We had already lost to them twice, and we were expected to lose, so we just told each other, ‘Don’t played scared, and play like you want to win.’ That one felt nice.
Clinching the national championship in your final match is like the textbook or fairytale ending to your squash career. Is this the end? I think it is. I think it’s time to retire. I think I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted out of it. Playing in college was my dream, and playing on a competitive women’s team with people who care about you as a person and as an athlete too is all I ever wanted. I think I’ve accomplished that, and it feels good to leave it on a really good note. I can retire in peace.