Surprising loss to Quakers fuels victory over Bulldogs

When sports fans think of the Ivy League, their first thought is not typically “premier sports conference.” Yet in the collegiate squash world, the Ivy League dominates.

Thus, it was a pair of premier matchups when the Princeton women’s squash faced two Ivy League rivals over Intersession. In a battle between the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked teams, the Tigers fell to second-ranked Penn in a 5-4 heartbreaker.

The Tigers jumped out to an early 4-0 lead. Freshman Jackie Moss, seniors Casey Riley and Carly Grawbowski, who is also a senior writer for the Daily Princetonian, and Margaret Kent won the number 3, 6, 8 and 9 spots on the ladder, respectively.

Leading the match 4-0, theTigers could not find a fifth victory as the Quakers claimed five consecutive matches.

“It was hard to see our undefeated streak broken, especially by a team like Penn,” senior tri-captain Casey Riley said. “Although they deserved to win that night, they certainly will not be as successful by the Howe Cup [the National Finals].”

Having snapped their 14-match win streak, the Tigers should only be more formidable. A healthy loss might be a necessary obstacle for another successful national championship, as Princeton responded with a 6-3 win against Yale.

“We were really pumped up for the Yale match,” Grabowski said. “The loss to Penn a few days before really woke us up. It brought us together as a team better than anything else could have. Before we knew how to play for ourselves, but after, we understood how to play for the team.”
The Tigers needed wins at the bottom of the ladder because the Bulldogs’ top players are very talented.

In the course of the match, sophomore No. 5 Kaitlin Sennatt was down 2-0 in games and came back to win 3-2, while sophomore No. 4 Emery Maine at also had a five-game battle.

“Without that grit that Kaitlin and Emery showed against Yale, we wouldn’t
have come away with the win,” Grawbowski said.

Princeton feels good heading into February’s championship season, as it has shown an ability to battle for each match.

Men take on Trinity

The last team to defeat the Trinity men’s squash team was Princeton in a closely fought 5-4 match on the Tigers’ home turf. That was in 1998.

The top-ranked and nine-time defending Collegiate Squash Association (CSA) National Champion Banthams (10-0), who currently have the longest winning streak in any intercollegiate sport with 177 victories, took on the only team capable of disrupting their perfect record — the second ranked Tigers (5-0) — last Wednesday in Hartford, Conn.

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Princeton freshman David Letourneau dropped the first game in his match against Manek Mathur but managed to rally back for a 7-9, 9-7, 9-1, 9-5 victory at the No. 3 spot.

Sophomore teammate David Canner also registered a win for Princeton with a tight five-game victory against Andres Vargas 9-4, 3-9, 0-9, 9-5, 9-1 at the No. 4 spot, while the Tiger’s No. 5 man, junior Hesham El Halaby took out opponent Parth Sharma 9-7, 9-4, 2-9, 10-8.

Junior No. 1 Mauricio Sanchez of Mexico City, the top-ranked individual player nationally, struggled with a hip injury in the weeks leading up to the match and was defeated by Trinity top dog Baset Chaudhry of Lahore, Pakistan, 9-2, 9-2, 9-0.

“The courts there used a crystal backing instead of the glass we were use to, so the ball took a bit of a different bounce,” Sanchez said. “He surprised me and played very well — I started out playing aggressively, and when that didn’t work I tried a more passive game, which also didn’t work.”

The last time the pair had met was in the CSA Team Finals last season, which Chaudhry also won.
Junior No. 2 Kimlee Wong also lost his match in straight games, as did freshman teammates Peter and Philip Sopher at the No. 8 and 9 spots. The Tigers’ No. 6 sopohmore Santiago Imberton failed to consolidate a two-game lead against his opponent and lost a close five-game match. No. 7 senior Tom McKay also lost in four games, which brought the final score to 6-3 in Trinity’s favor.

It wasn’t all bad news for the Tigers, however, who on Saturday took on fourth-ranked Yale at Jadwin Gymnasium.

The Bulldogs raced to early 1-0 leads in three of their matches but were unable to maintain their momentum and were handed a convincing 9-0 defeat by the Tigers.

Wong, Canner, Imberton and McKay all won their matches in straight games, while Letourneau, Hesham El Halaby, and the Sopher twins each needed 4 games to defeat their opponents.

Yale’s No. 1 Max Samuel threw in the towel after the third point of the opening game against Sanchez and retired, giving the Tigers a perfect match score.

The next opponents will be Penn in a road match Thursday, followed by two more matches this week before the CSA Team Finals at Harvard next week.

“Apart from being better prepared, every other team will be rooting for us because they want Trinity to lose,” Sanchez said. “So I think we’re going to surprise some people when we play them again next week.”