Squash Finds Consolation At USSRAs

This past weekend the Harvard men’s squash team placed fifth at the USSRA National Five-Man Team Championships out of an elite 16-team field that included national-title contenders Princeton, Yale and tournament host and three-time defending NISRA national champion Trinity, as well as alumni teams from both Harvard and Trinity.

The Crimson entered three teams in the single-elimination competition. Only the first team, which featured Harvard’s top-five players, advanced past the first round before bowing out in the quarterfinals.

The Crimson teams found greater success in the consolation bracket, however, as Harvard’s second team won the eight-team bracket of first-round losers. Harvard’s first team swept Trinity’s second team and Yale’s first team en route to winning the consolation bracket of quarterfinal losers.

A Trinity alumni team, competing under the moniker of “Trinity Infinity” brought an early end to Harvard’s championship hopes, defeating the Crimson three matches to two.

Co-captain and Harvard No. 1 Peter Karlen had the most notable individual victory of the day, defeating Infinity’s Preston Quick—ranked third in the country—in three games. Karlen also beat him at men’s nationals last year.

Harvard’s best chance to turn the match around came from sophomore Ziggy Whitman, who had several match balls at the No. 4 spot, but fell in five games.

With freshman Michael Blumberg coming out on top at No. 5 and sophomore James Bullock falling at No. 2, the match came down to junior No. 3 Dylan Patterson against Infinity’s Joe Pentland. With both sides looking on in the final match, Patterson led 7-5 in the fourth game, but couldn’t hold on and fell in four games.

“Dylan was a bit disappointed to have lost. He thought he’d win.” Karlen said. “It was a good learning experience.”

The Trinity alumni were knockedout in the semifinals by Princeton, who was then beaten in the finals by Trinity’s first team. The shorthanded Trinity team had been seeded second in the tournament behind Princeton, but the hosts came through in the end.

Harvard’s second team was swept by Yale’s first team in the first round, but then marched through the consolation bracket by defeating the Maccabeah team, the U.S. Under-19 team and then Yale’s second team. The last victroy came in five games.

Harvard’s third team lost all three matches for the weekend as it fell to the Harvard Club of New York team—which included former Crimson All-American Tim Wyant ’00—then lost to the U.S. Under-19 team and Maccabeah team.

Karlen said that most encouraging thing about the consolation performance was that the regulars in Harvard’s usual nine-player lineup—the NISRA format for intercollegiate squash—all performed well. The starters not on Harvard’s first team had been split between the second and third team.

With USSRAs behind them, the Crimson men will now look ahead to a winter-break training session in Jamaica.

“It’s pretty rigorous,” Karlen said. “We’re getting up at seven in the morning, doing double sessions. Our coaches aren’t messing aroud with it.”

Harvard has a long layoff ahead. The Crimson doesn’t have a match until Jan. 24 at Williams. The highlights for the rest of the season include a match at Trinity on Feb. 2 and the NISRA championships from Feb. 22-24.