M. Squash Falls to Trinity At USSRA Team Championship

When the Harvard men’s squash team competed in this weekend’s USSRA Team Championship in Hartford, Conn., the results weren’t particularly encouraging.

But the weekend wasn’t about results.

The depleted Crimson entered two squads into the competition. The first team was shut out by Trinity’s top quintet, seeded second in the tournament, in the quarterfinals of the 16-team draw. That Crimson entry eventually placed fifth, while Harvard’s second squad lost each of its three matches.

Yet, the entire team gained valuable experience against both professional and premier college players. The Harvard program, too, was able to see how it stacks up against the nation’s best teams.

The contest with the most significant ramifications for the Crimson’s season was its quarterfinal matchup with Trinity’s top five.

With Harvard junior intercollegiate No. 5 James Bullock still sidelined with a groin injury, sophomore No. 2 Asher Hochberg and co-captain No. 3 Dylan Patterson each lost in four games to their Trinity opponents, intercollegiate No. 7 Nick Kyme and freshman Yvonne Badan, respectively.

Meanwile, freshman Will Broadbent, sophomore intercollegiate No. 8 Mike Blumberg and co-captain Thomas Storch suffered straight-game losses at Nos. 1, 4 and 5, respectively.

The match, though, wasn’t as one-sided as it appeared. Broadbent dropped three close games to defending intercollegiate champion Bernardo Samper, while Blumberg made things difficult for Reggie Schonborn, who had to fend off a game ball in the third game.

Despite the loss, the Crimson expects the familiarity it gained from simply competing against the Bantams to aid it when the two teams square off in a dual meet on Feb. 1.

“We went there to play a team like Trinity,” Patterson said. “We know they’re human now. I’m not afraid of these guys at all.”

Still, even having broken through Trinity’s mystique, Harvard knows it will face an uphill battle against the Bantams.

“On that specific day we’re going to have to come with a great effort,” Storch said. “We know that we’re capable of it. It’s just going to be a matter of performing.”

To advance to its match with Trinity, Harvard blanked a team of Boston-based players that later recovered to win the consolation bracket over the other first-round losers.

In that matchup, Hochberg defeated Rohan Bhappu, a 2002 First Team All-American for Trinity.

The Crimson’s loss to the Bantams relegated it to the Plate bracket. There, it shut out both Princeton’s second five and a New York-based quintet to finish fifth.

Against Princeton, the Harvard players were fatigued after playing Trinity, but they managed to clinch the victory before Patterson took the court against Nate Beck, the Tigers’ No. 7. That allowed the Crimson senior to experiment with different strategies during the match.

“I could have beaten him just playing drop shots and being cheap about it, but I wouldn’t beat anyone better playing that way,” Patterson said.

Thus, he took a different tact.

“I went out there and said to myself, ‘I’m going to beat Beck only playing rails to the back of the court and crosscourts’,” Patterson said.

But Patterson had difficulty putting the ball away, leading to long points that further exhausted him. He tried to end the match quickly, but found Beck fitter than he had expected and made several unforced errors before recovering from the brief hiccup to win.

In the Plate final, Storch overcame Rob Endelman—an opponent so intense he twice sprawled across the court, bloodying his hands—to win 3-1 and spearhead the Crimson’s victory.

Harvard’s inexperienced second team—comprised of four sophomores and junior Peter Wallach—struggled throughout, falling to fourth-seeded New Jersey, Hartford I and Trinity’s second quintet.

Sophomore Vikas Goela, playing at No. 5, earned the Crimson’s only win over Hartford I, while his classmate Gaurav Yadav took Trinity’s intercollegiate No. 14 Nadeem Osman to five games at No. 1.

The Harvard players also got to catch up with some old friends. The second-seeded Harvard Club of New York, led by former Crimson captain and four-time All-American Tim Wyant ’00, 1996 intercollegiate champion Daniel Ezra ’98 and last year’s co-captain, Peter Karlen ’02, fell 4-1 in the semifinals to Trinity I.

All of the Crimson players expect to benefit from having watched their predecessors and other professionals play.

“A lot of those guys have played so much they’ll play shots and do things that some of the college players won’t do,” Storch said. “So they’ll give you a bit of a different look. It’s those sort of matches that you can glean things from.”

And using what it gleaned this weekend when it faces the Bantams and Princeton, who beat Trinity in the final, will go a long way toward helping Harvard forget the unimpressive results that were the cost of that experience.

—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.