Squash: Men finish third; women fall to Trinity

After the first round of matches in Saturday’s national semifinal hosted by Yale, the men’s squash team held a 2-1 lead over No. 1 Trinity. If only the No. 4 Tigers (12-4 overall, 5-1 Ivy League) could split the remaining six matches, they would break Trinity’s 222-game win streak and prevent the Bantams (22-0) from winning their 12th consecutive national title.

In the next round of matches, senior tri-captain and No. 5 Santiago Imberton led Trinity’s Randy Lim two games to one and looked poised to add to Princeton’s lead. The match took a sudden turn in Trinity’s favor, however, when Imberton twisted his ankle and was forced to forfeit the fourth game. The senior returned for the fifth, but he was not at full strength as Lim won the deciding game and Trinity swept the round, eventually winning 7-2.

Sophomore No. 3 Chris Callis saw this as the turning point of the contest.

“I think we gave Trinity their biggest scare of the season,” Callis said. “It was dead even up until Santiago went down with the ankle injury.”

Even though this is the first time since 2005 the Tigers have failed to win the Ivy League and reach the national final, their performance this weekend — which also included an 8-1 win over Harvard (7-5, 4-2) in the semifinals on Friday and a 7-2 win over Rochester (10-4) in the third-place match on Sunday — was impressive nonetheless.

“We got pummeled by Trinity [9-0] last weekend, so we could have just said, ‘We’ve had a tough year, and we’ll come back next year,’ ” Callis added. “But instead, we gave Trinity a pretty good run. Then, playing without any seniors on Sunday, we beat the third-best team in the country, and we beat them badly.”

Princeton was playing without any seniors against Rochester because of the injury to Imberton and an injury to senior tri-captain David Canner. The Tigers were also looking to avenge the 5-4 loss that Rochester handed them in the regular season. Junior Nikhil Seth, who was competing in the national tournament for the first time, sealed the Rochester win for the Tigers by winning his match at No. 8, Princeton’s fifth win of the day.

“I didn’t know what the scores were in the other matches, but I knew it was an important match because it was so close the last time we played Rochester,” Seth said. “Losing was not an option.”

Callis was the only Tiger to win all three of his matches this weekend, including a five-game thriller over Rochester’s Hameed Ahmed. Ahmed won two match points before Callis rallied to secure a 7-11, 11-8, 10-12, 11-8, 12-10 victory.

“Chris played some of the best squash of his career this weekend,” Seth said. “That’s even more impressive since he was coming back from a recent injury.”

Though on paper the result does not seem as exciting as last year’s 5-4 loss to Trinity in the national final, for Callis it was a promising sign of what is in store for the team next year.

“At times, we’ve struggled to get the best out of ourselves for the big matches,” Callis said. “But in this tournament, even though we were banged up, we came together as a team because of how hard we fought.”

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Trinity went on to beat Yale to win its 12th consecutive title. Some, including ESPN analyst Merril Hoge, questioned Trinity’s sportsmanship in its victory. The top 10 plays on ESPN’s SportsCenter on Monday included footage of Trinity’s captain and No. 1 Baset Chaudhry yelling in the face of Yale’s Kenneth Chan as Chaudhry celebrated his victory over Chan, which clinched the title for Trinity.

While the men were taking on Trinity at Yale, the No. 4 women’s squash team (7-4, 4-2) hosted No. 2 Trinity (14-1) at Jadwin Gymnasium.

Despite being up 4-2 after the first two rounds of matches, Princeton failed to complete the upset, allowing Trinity to sweep the final round and win 5-4.

Senior No. 6 and co-captain Kaitlin Sennatt captured Princeton’s lone win in the first shift with a 3-1 victory over Jo-Ann Jee.

Down 2-1 heading into the second shift, the Tigers pulled off an impressive three-match sweep to go ahead 4-2 and move within one match of victory.

Senior No. 5 Neha Kumar managed a 3-1 win over Robyn Hodgson and sophomore No. 8 Katie Giovinazzo eked out a thrilling 3-2 win over Robyn Williams.

Freshman No. 2 Julie Cerullo won her match over Trinity’s Nour Baghat, last year’s individual national champion, to give the Tigers their fourth win.

The women’s national championship will be held at Yale next weekend. The Tigers will be seeded fourth in that tournament, which puts them on the same side of the bracket as undefeated No. 1 Harvard. Though Princeton lost 6-3 to the Crimson earlier this year, the team has confidence in its ability to pull off the upset. The Tigers gave Harvard its toughest match of the year and three of its individual losses came in four games.

Like the men, the Princeton women failed to defend their Ivy League crown this season, but the three-time defending national champions certainly know how to win on the biggest stage.