Women's, Men's Squash Still Rule Hemenway Gym

Kansas may have the basketball team this winter, Michigan may have the hockey team, but Harvard has, as always, the squash team.

If you are a Harvard sports fan and starved for a win, you need only walk over to Hemenway Gym. What you'll see are some of the top players in the country--men and women--combine dazzling footwork, vicious angle shots and devastating rails to make mince meat out of their hapless opponents.

That is precisely what the Harvard men's and women's squash teams did, in identical fashion, this past Saturday against the University of Pennsylvania (7-2), Princeton (5-4) on Sunday and most recently against Dartmouth (8-1) on Wednesday.

But before you dismiss last week's happenings as just another routine massacre at Hemenway Gym, read on.

Against Princeton, there were actually some very interesting matches and momentum swings, or what other teams have probably come to know as Hemenway Hell.

Pennsylvania

But first things first--before Princeton the team had to face the unlucky Quakers. To put it bluntly, Pennsylvania simply is not, and has not been a match for the men's and women's squash team for some time. As a result, the women used Penn like a cheap one-night stand to get ready for its toughest challenge the next day.

"We were really nervous for [the match against Penn] because we had Princeton on Sunday...so we wanted to beat Penn with really high intensity," said sophomore Lindsey Wilbur, the number-three player on the team. "It was a really good match for us to warm up at so we got some of our jitters out, and Sunday we were more calm."

"Getting our jitters out" and "warming up" translated into nothing more than a 7-2 Crimson bloodbath by the women.

And it was business as usual for the Crimson men as they made Quaker Oats out of Penn with a 7-2 victory. Each of the men's first seven players handed Penn a 3-0 blanking.

This is not surprising when you consider that the Crimson men's squash roster includes national powerhouse stars like juniors Daniel Ezra and Joel Kirsh, the number-one and number-two players on the team. Ezra, for example, can beat some of the top squash professionals in the country. One can only imagine what he does to his Ivy League foes.

Princeton

The story of the weekend for the men and the women was to be found against Princeton. The women especially, who lost to Princeton earlier in an unofficial scrimmage, were given a run for their money as they came very close to losing the meet (a huge no-no in squash)--only to pull off a stunning comeback in the last match of the day.

In squash, a victory by the number-nine player means just as much as a victory by the number-one player, and on Sunday it was the work of the lower ranked players on the team which saved the day.

The Crimson women were trailing 4-1 with only four matches left to play. All of a sudden, three of the matches ended at the same time, and Wilbur, sophomore Vanessa Hoerman, and freshman Blair Endresen emerged victorious from their courts to tie the Tigers at 4-4.

All the pressure landed squarely on senior Lucy Cumming's shoulders--a win would mean a Crimson victory for the day and a loss would mean, well, shame.

And it couldn't get much closer. With a huge crowd cheering her on, Cummings came through with a clutch win in her very last game to seal the Crimson victory over the Tigers. The women were not displaced from their throne.

The Harvard men also finished with a 5-4 nail-biting win, but it did not enjoy any of the drama of Cumming's victory. Unlike the women, it was the reliable top Crimson men who helped secure a victory.

Dartmouth

There really isn't much to say about the Dartmouth meet on Wednesday except that the slaughter was over pretty quickly. Wilbur mentioned that it was hard for the team to maximize its intensity level because it felt very confident in a victory--a luxuary few teams enjoy--but its confidence paid off as it belittled the Big Green with an 8-2 pounding.

Dartmouth may be improving its squash program but it certainly is not even close to Harvard's level yet.

The men barely broke a sweat against the Dartmouth contingent, calmly winning 8-1. It is like the Boston Celtics against the Chicago Bulls. As a spectator there's nothing you can do but sit back and watch the stars tear up the court.

The women used the Dartmouth meet as a chance to gear up for its Ivy matchup against Trinity on Saturday and for the all-important Howe Cup on Friday, Feb. 14 (which the women won last year and which is their most important tournament of the season).

The Crimson men had similar intentions as the women. Today, they face their toughest competition of the season against Trinity in Hemenway Gym.

Maybe this time the men will have to break a sweat, and provide us with some real excitement.