Broadbent Wins in M. Squash Debut

The No. 3 Harvard men’s squash team began its quest to regain the Ivy League title with a resounding defeat of No. 8 Brown on Friday evening at the Murr Center.

The Crimson (1-0, 1-0 Ivy) wasted no time in asserting its dominance over the Bears (0-1, 0-1), winning 9-0 without dropping a single game. By the time a large crowd arrived to watch the most-anticipated event of the day—heralded No. 1 freshman Will Broadbent’s first match as a collegiate squash player—Harvard had already won five matches and clinched the victory.

“It’s hard to tell of our progress in a one-sided match like that,” Harvard coach Satinder Bajwa said of his team, which ceded last year’s league crown to Princeton. “I think that the overall attitude and will to want to perform and play was there, though. So that was good to see.”

Co-captain Thomas Storch, playing in the No. 6 position, and sophomore intercollegiate No. 8 Mike Blumberg came out and set the tone early for Harvard.

Storch dominated Brown’s Justin Wong, 9-0, 9-0, 9-1, disposing of his opponent in an astonishingly short time.

“Tom played really well early,” co-captain Dylan Patterson said. “I thought that set a good tone for the match.”

Southpaw No. 4 Blumberg gave Brown freshman David Krupnick a rude welcome to the Ivy League, defeating him 9-0, 9-0, 9-2.

Junior No. 2 James Bullock, the intercollegiate No. 5, and sophomore Asher Hochberg, playing in the Crimson’s third spot, also looked very strong against the overmatched Bears in their performances.

With the emergence of Hochberg and Blumberg, along with the addition of Broadbent, Patterson has gone from playing at No. 1 for a time last year to filling the No. 5 slot to begin this season.

He employed the experience he gained as a junior in quickly dispatching his opponent, Brown’s Robert Park, in three games.

As Patteron was finishing, the highly-touted Broadbent dropped the first two points of his match against Brown co-captain Ben Oliner.

“It was my first collegiate match, and I was a bit nervous out there,” said Broadbent, a U.S. Under-19 finalist this year. “I came out a bit flat, but by the third game I was feeling pretty good and playing well.”

Broadbent quickly righted the ship against Oliner, losing only four more points en route to winning in three games.

Throughout the match, Broadbent used his 6’3 frame to run his smaller opponent all over the court. By the third game, Oliner was visibly tired and unable to manage even a point against the Harvard freshman.

Despite the dominating performance against Brown, the players said they realized that they will face much stronger opposition in their quest to regain the Ivy title that Storch and Patterson helped claim as sophomores in 2001.

“We met as a team before the match and talked about setting a tone for the whole year,” Storch said. “Overall, I’m impressed with the way we played today, but we’re working hard and sprinting after the match because we know we’ll face much tougher competition this year.

“Dylan and I are just showing these guys the way to compete because it’s a learning process and it’s important that they learn something every day.”