Squash: Victims pile up in sweeps

Last weekend, both teams annihilated squads from Brown, Williams and Bowdoin, as Princeton won all six away matches 9-0. The women’s side did not drop a single game, and the men only were felled twice.

While the win looks pretty after the fact, the individual matches often are completed simultaneously, and it is impossible to know the direction of the whole match until the end. Amid all the mayhem, the Tigers stayed perfect.

Beginning their weekend in Providence, R.I., the Princeton men faced Brown. The Tigers rolled without the play of injured senior tri-captain Hesham El Halaby near the top of the ladder. Returning senior Mauricio Sanchez, perennial No. 1 player and last year’s Ivy League Player of the Year, headed the lineup after a two-week break with a nagging hamstring pull.

Sanchez recovered nicely against Brown’s Adrian Leanza , winning 9-3, 9-0, 9-3. Sanchez played one more match against Williams on Saturday before resting through the Bowdoin match, winning 9-5, 9-6, 9-1 over the Ephs’ Ethan Buschbaum. While his last match was definitely a tighter match, the result was the same.

“The recovery is going great,” Sanchez said. “I feel that I’m 100 percent healthy now. I only need to get back in shape. The winter break is going to be really important for me in terms of training. My movement is getting better, and hopefully when I come back my game will be back where it used to be last season.”

On the women’s side against Brown, highlights included freshman No. 9 Katie Giovinazzo’s 9-0, 9-0, 9-0 performance and sophomore Jackie Moss’ return from injury. Playing at No. 4, Moss won, 9-2, 9-6, 9-1. Her return gives the Tigers a touch more depth and allows head coach Gail Ramsay to tinker with the ladder that lost two individual matches to Cornell the season’s opening weekend.

“The ladder is still changing some,” Ramsay said. “They are all very competitive and on a given day in certain parts of the line matches could go either way.”

The Tigers’ superior depth has carried them well so far this season, so good health in the new year could spell more success for the twice-defending national champions. While Moss’ return signals good tidings, junior Neha Kumar did not enter the court this past weekend. The two-time All-America selection has seen time at No. 1 this season, including in the crucial win against Cornell.

But the injuries have not really mattered, yet. After dispatching Brown, the Tigers moved on to Williams. On the women’s side, junior Amanda Siebert won a gritty final game 10-8 to defeat the Ephs’ Jennifer Coxe, who had taken a game over Cornell’s top player.

On the men’s side, sophomores David Letourneau and Peter Sopher each lost a game, but they still won handily. Junior Santiago Imberton ground a win out in his first game, 10-8, then zipped through second game 9-0 before winning his final game 9-6. Three freshmen, Kelly Shannon, Jesus Pena and Clay Blackiston, also won easily against Williams, with none of them dropping more than five points.

Freshman Chris Callis stepped in at the No. 2 slot against Bowdoin and cruised 9-1, 9-0, 9-4 for his second win in two attempts on the weekend. Sanchez did not play the final match, so senior tri-captain Kimlee Wong took over the top spot, winning 9-6, 9-0, 9-0. Though Wong did not play the weekend’s first match against Brown, he won easily against Williams and Bowdoin.

Again not to be outdone, the women’s side put up a squadron of zeroes on the scoreboard against Bowdoin. Both senior tri-captain Joanna Scoon and Giovinazzo, who scored her second triple-goose-egg on the weekend, won 9-0, 9-0, 9-0.