Squash: Harrity reaches individual final

Heading into this weekend’s Collegiate Squash Association Individual National Championship at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., freshman squash sensation Todd Harrity had lost to only two opponents all season. One of those opponents — Trinity senior and two-time defending individual champion Baset Chaudhry — voluntarily withdrew from the tournament after a display of poor sportsmanship in the team championship two weekends ago, leaving his title up for the taking.

In Chaudhry’s absence, Harrity moved up to the No. 2 seed in the 32-man bracket. He won two matches on Friday and two matches on Saturday to become the first freshman to play in the finals of the individual championship since Princeton’s Yasser El Halaby ’06 in 2003. El Halaby went on to win four individual titles and was recently named Princeton’s top male athlete of the last decade by the official website for Princeton athletics. Unfortunately for Harrity, Harvard senior and top seed Colin West — the other player he lost to earlier in the season — was waiting for the Princeton freshman in the finals.

After dropping a close first game 11-9, Harrity had game point in the second before allowing West to fight back and win 13-11. West then cruised to an 11-1 win in the third and final game of the tournament. Head coach Bob Callahan ’77 saw West’s comeback at the end of the second game as the sequence that decided the match.

“Often a match comes down to a few key points, and whoever wins those points gets a huge psychological lift,” Callahan said. “Both Todd and Colin played great squash in front of a big crowd, and Colin showed why he deserves to be champion. Colin made a great impression not only with his play but also with his sportsmanship.”

Having already earned two close victories over Harrity — one in the regular season and one in the national team quarterfinals — West may have had the mental edge going into the match. West also may have had more left in his tank on Sunday, since he did not drop a game in the entire tournament, and Harrity took five games to defeat Trinity’s Antonio Diaz Glez in Saturday night’s semifinal.

After Harrity, sophomore Kelly Shannon went the deepest into the tournament for Princeton, reaching the quarterfinals after two impressive five-game wins. In his second-round match, Shannon was down 2-0 to No. 7 seed Hywel Robinson of Yale before he fought back, completing the upset with a thrilling 13-11 win in the fifth game. Unfortunately, the draw did not favor Princeton. Shannon met Harrity, the only other Princeton player still alive, in the quarterfinal.

This is the second year in a row that Shannon has played perhaps his best squash on the final weekend of the season and made a run to the quarterfinals after missing several weeks due to injury.

“Kelly is such a hard-working player,” Callahan said. “He’s been somewhat frustrated the last couple weeks because he’s been training very hard, but his game hasn’t come back as quickly as he wanted after his injury. It’s great when good things happen to people who work hard.”

Princeton’s other entrants in the A Division, sophomore Chris Callis and junior No. 4 seed Dave Letourneau, were both hampered by injuries in first-round losses. In the B Division, junior Peter Sopher, the No. 2 seed, made it to the quarterfinals, and sophomore David Pena, the No. 3 seed, made it to the semifinals. Both lost to No. 6 seed Jason Michas of Harvard.

The women’s Individual Championships were also hosted at Trinity this weekend. Freshman Julie Cerullo, junior Jackie Moss and senior Neha Kumar played in the A Division, and sophomore Katie Giovinazzo and junior Nikki Sequeira represented Princeton in the B Division. The trophy given to the women’s individual champion, the Ramsay Cup, is named after Princeton head coach Gail Ramsay, who is the only player to have won four consecutive individual titles.

Last weekend at the team championships, Cerullo defeated Trinity’s Nour Baghat, the defending individual champion, so some expected Cerullo to make a surprise run at the title. Cerullo fell in the first round to Harvard’s Alisha Mashruwala, however, who also knocked Kumar out of the tournament.

Cerullo and Kumar both reached the finals of their respective consolation brackets. Cerullo dropped only one game in four consolation bracket victories. Her run included a 3-0 win over No. 8 seed Nirasha Gurgue of Harvard. Last weekend, Harvard won the national team championship, ending Princeton’s streak of three straight titles.