In Sunday’s national championship match, junior No. 1 Amanda Siebert went down two games to one to Harvard’s Nirasha Guruge. When Guruge earned an early lead in the fourth game, a Crimson victory seemed imminent until Siebert dug out a 9-5 win, quieting the home crowd in Cambridge, Mass. Siebert glided to an easy 9-1 win in the fifth game. Head coach Gail Ramsay and her players ran onto the glass-walled court, hugging, cheering and laughing because the final two matches would only be played for pride, not for the championship: The Tigers had secured the five victories necessary for their third straight national title. The final score was 5-4, and the Howe Cup found its way back to its comfortable home in Princeton.
It is fitting that Siebert, who has the most individual match losses of any player on the team, put the Tigers over the top: She faces tough top-ranked opponents regularly, while others lower on the Princeton ladder rack up winsagainst lesser competition.
Siebert’s only win of the weekend came against the Crimson. In Friday’s quarterfinal against Williams, Siebert fell to Toby Eyre 9-7, 9-7, 9-1. The following day against Trinity’s Nour Bhgat, one of the most prized recruits out of squash powerhouse Egypt, Siebert went down 9-4, 9-2, 9-0. If anyone deserved a win against Harvard, it was Siebert.
It was junior Kaitlin Sennatt’s win, however, that clinched the date with the Crimson. In the 5-4 semifinal victory capped by several long matches, Sennatt was gripped in a five-game deadlock with Trinity’s Jo-Ann Jee that closely paralleled Siebert’s win against Harvard. Sennatt won the first game 9-4, only to be put off her stride in the next two games, losing them 9-7 and 9-5. As Jee livened the pace in the middle games, Sennatt, like a clay-court tennis player, slowed the pace of play and composed herself. Sennatt won the fourth game 9-5.
“I was just trying to stay in it the last game,” Sennatt said. “I knew that our match with Trinity was going to be very close ... I just tried to take it one point at a time. The earlier four games had been long, and I was pretty tired, so really my main goal was to just keep it in play and get to all of her shots.”
It appeared early in the fifth game that Sennatt would win easily, as she jumped to a 6-1 lead over Jee. Then the fifth game turned into a brawl. After Jee pulled even at six, the match continued to seesaw back and forth. Each player broke the other’s serve several times, matching the other point for point. The score was tied at nine when Sennatt got the final point for a 10-9 win, earning the Princeton victory 5-4.
After the Williams match, an 8-1 Princeton victory, there were only three Princeton three-game sweeps, and almost every Tiger lost a match this weekend; only junior two-time All-American Neha Kumar and freshman Katie Giovinazzo won all three of their matches. It was a team effort in every sense of the phrase.
“Ultimately, it didn’t even matter who the opponent was,” junior Emery Maine said. “This title is something that we have worked extremely hard for all year ... I am so proud of all my teammates. Everyone totally laid it out there and showed so much heart today.”
The senior tri-captains, Joanna Scoon, Maggie O’Toole and Aly Brady, must be happy. Leaving with three national championships, their legacy is intact after last weekend’s exciting victory.
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