Squash: Stars head to individual championships

This weekend, Princeton’s men’s and women’s squash teams will play in the final competition of the 2012-13 collegiate squash season, as the CSA Individual Championships commence Friday at Trinity College.

A tough 5-4 loss in the semifinals of last Saturday’s CSA Team Championships crushed the hopes of Bob Callahan’s men’s team of winning a repeat national championship. A solid victory over Yale the next day, however, the next day gave the Tigers the bronze medal in a weekend highlighted by many strong individual performances.

The Tigers are entered in two different brackets: Senior Todd Harrity, junior Dylan Ward and sophomores Samuel Kang and Tyler Osborne will compete for the Pool Trophy in the A division, while sophomore David Hoffman, and freshmen Vivek Donodia and Michael LeBlanc will play for the Molloy Cup in the B division.

Harrity, the 2011 CSA national champion, will be in the spotlight. Harrity has earned the top seed in the tournament, but it did not come easily. Regular season wins over fourth-seeded Ramit Tandon of Columbia, as well as defending national champion Ali Farag of Harvard, have solidified Harrity’s position atop the Pool Cup bracket.

“This is a huge weekend for Todd,” said teammate Steve Harrington, who will be on the road with the baseball team over the weekend. “Todd and three other guys — Tandon, Farag and [St. Lawrence’s Amr Khaled] Khalifa — are pretty much the untouchables in this tournament. It will be very hard for anyone to take them down as they head toward the seminfinals. But Todd’s definitely ready to go this weekend.”Harrity said that he has been “very satisfied” with the way he has played this season.

“It was great to beat Farag and Tandon, but now it puts the pressure on me to perform up to that same standard of play,” Harrity said. “It’s also a little harder competing as an individual, since the entire team isn’t together and isn’t preparing to compete as one. That absence of camaraderie can be tough to face.”

The hegemony that Harrity, Tandon, Farag and Khalifa hold, however, is not deterring the rest of Princeton’s squad from performing at the highest possible level. Players that do not qualify for the semi-final matches can still be be First-, Second- and Third-Team All-America.

“I want to try and right some losses that I’ve had during the season, and to just play at my best,” Kang said. “It’ll be a lot of fun to compete with these guys at such a high level, and to see what happens.”

Regardless of the weekend’s outcome, the Tigers will bid farewell to Harrity come Sunday, as his impressive collegiate career reaches its end, with or without another national title. The balancing act comes for the rest of the Tigers as they say goodbye to Harrity, while also focusing on their own matches.

“It’ll be sad to see Todd go,” Kang said. “He’s meant so much to me over these last two seasons. It’s been wonderful watching him play and being able to train with him. He’s just on a different level from the rest of us.”

Harrity has high expectations for himself as well as his teammates.

“I’m hoping to win this weekend, but ultimately I just want to play my best and make it a strong final performance and good end to my college career,” Harrity said. “And I wish the same for my teammates, too. I know that they’re all ready to go, and I expect them to do really well this weekend.”

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The women’s squad will be sending eight players to Trinity this weekend after a disappointing end to their postseason hopes as well. The fourth-seeded Bantams dropped Princeton 6-3 in the semifinals of the Howe Cup two weeks ago.

Senior Julie Cerullo, freshman Rachel Leizman, junior Libby Eyre and sophomore Nicole Bunyan will compete for the Ramsay Cup in the A bracket, while juniors Alex Sawin and Lexi Saunders, sophomore Hallie Dewey and freshman Tara Harrington are entered in the B division for the Holleran Cup.

“It is my last weekend of college squash, and it is competitive squash, so I really do want to play my best squash out there on the court just go out with some confidence, focus on my volley and cutting the ball off early, and hopefully that will lead to some positive results,” Cerullo said.

Cerullo is the Princeton player with the best chance at winning — she is a two-time semifinalist as well as a three-time first-team All-American. Cerullo could possibly play against Leizman, who was a consistent presence at the No. 4 spot this season.

“I’m happy with how my game has come together, but just looking at the draw, it’s incredibly strong,” Cerullo said. “I am the No. 4 seed, but first round matches aren’t easy, second round matches are that much tougher, so even playing to my seed is a big challenge that I’m looking forward to.”

Cerullo also noted that the team has worked very hard this season and she expects her teammates to play well. Eyre, should she beat Penn’s Pia Trikha in her opening match, could find herself locked in a battle against Stanford’s No. 1 Pamela Chua, this year’s Richey Award recipient. Bunyan will face an immediate challenge in the first round in a matchup with Yale’s Shihui Mao. Mao won 12-10 in the fifth game when the two played each other in early February, and Bunyan will be looking to avenge her regular season loss. Each of Princeton’s players entered in the B bracket have first-round byes.

Competition begins Friday and concludes on Sunday, when the men’s championship match will start at noon and the women’s final will begin at 1 p.m.