M. squash wins season's first match

Men's squash found its footing on Wednesday with an 8-1 match victory over Franklin & Marshall (2-3 overall) for its first win of the season.

Princeton (1-1, 0-1 Ivy League) took every match but the No. 3 spot. Of the matches it won, seven of the eight were by 3-0 margins.

"We wanted to go out and rebound after the loss to Cornell," sophomore No. 2 Mike Gilman said. "We wanted to show we were still a strong team, and we're only going to get better as we get healed up."

The Tigers were without sophomore Yasser El Halaby, but freshman Robert Hong competed against the Diplomats' George Edwards in the No. 1 position and defeated him, 3-0.

Hong and Edwards extended their first game to 10-8. Hong held on to edge out his opponent and then won the second, 9-4. Spent, Edwards dropped the last game without scoring a point, handing Hong the match.

I was a little bit nervous playing No. 1," Hong said. "Especially since I'm a freshman. I'm a slow starter. [Edwards] was playing well, but he lost his focus, and I was able to win the next two games."

Gilman took his match at No. 2, 3-0, but Satyajit Seshadri made him work for it. Gilman won the match, 3-0, with game scores of 9-6, 9-2, and 9-5.

Sophomore No. 3 Parker Sutton recorded the only loss for Princeton, starting with a drawn-out 10-9 battle in the first game that he eventually dropped. Sutton lost the next two, 9-3 and 9-4, challenging his opponent for every point. Sutton was still recovering from an injury that took him out for Fall Break and limited his ability to practice.

"I wasn't quite as sharp as I usually have been," Sutton said. "He deserves credit, but it wasn't my sharpest match. It was a good game, though, and it builds confidence. We know what we're capable of. We haven't had an opportunity to get all our players healed up."

Sophomore No. 5 Preston Comey defeated his opponent, William Reinhoff, without allowing him to score a single point. He swept each of the three games, 9-0, to win the match, 3-0.

Junior No. 9 Hop Wells took the first nine-point game, 9-1. Franklin & Marshall's Arthur Degen, however, pulled off a 10-8 win in the second game to keep this match alive. Wells was able to outlast his opponent, however, taking 9-1 and 9-2 wins to defeat Degen, 3-1, for the match.

Also competing for the Tigers were sophomore No. 4 Tim Callahan, senior No. 6 Rob Siverd, freshman No. 7 Tom McKay, senior No. 8 Greg Callahan and freshman No. 10 Townie Wells. All won their matches, 3-0.

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The Tigers will look for their first Ivy League victory of the season when they travel to Providence, R.I., to play Brown (0-1, 0-1). The Bears dropped their first match of the season, 9-0, to Harvard (3-0, 2-0). The Crimson is currently No. 1 in the conference, but it is still too early to make predictions.

"We just have to take it one step at a time," Sutton said. "We're focusing now on February and January where most of our big games are."

Both Princeton and Brown will be looking to post their first league wins in this match.

"The results were good," Gilman said. "We want to carry over what we did well last game. We want to start from point one to match point, and hopefully we'll see the same results as we saw against Franklin & Marshall."