Ephs Fall to Yale and Trinity

HARTFORD, CT – Women's squash returned to the courts after the Winter break with two road matches versus Yale and Trinity. Williams fell to both teams 9-0, but played well to have a solid start of the second part of the season.

Tuesday began with Williams traveling to Yale for a 2 pm match with the Bulldogs. Playing in a five-court system, the even numbers went first. Hayley Parsons (#2), Charlotte Walsh (#6) and Alyssa Ritchie (#8) all stepped up to the challenge but were each defeated 3-0 in their respective matches. Co-captain Ellie O'Neill (#4) had the closest match of the day and put on a skillful display of squash. After falling 13-11 in the first game, O'Neill proved resilient and fought back from a 2-0 game deficit to win the third. O'Neill was eventually defeated in four games.

Next came the odds: Nicole Friedman (#1), Nicole Feshbach (#3), Ellen Coombe (#5), Ananya Mahalingam-Dhingra  (#7) and Caroline Hogan (#9). All players for Williams lost in three games. However, Feshbach had two close games with scores of 12-10 and 11-9.

Williams came close to having their full team present for the day with both juniors, Nicole Feshbach and Lily Grant, returning from their semesters abroad. However, co-captain Caroline Sawin was out for the day due to illness, so the bottom half of the ladder had to step up their play.

After the Yale match, Williams traveled to the reigning champions in Connecticut. Co-captain O'Neill sat out of the match due to injury, so the Ephs were down two players for their tough second match. Most matches clearly favored Trinity, but Williams put up a fight. Lily Grant (#9) returned to the line-up in her first match back from abroad to a tough Trinity opponent. The closest match of the night came from Hayley Parsons (#2) who fought hard in the second game but ended up losing 11-7 and the match 3-0.  

O'Neill was pleased with how the day went, even with two losses on the books. "Today we started the second half of our season against two very strong teams," commented O'Neill. "I was pleased with the way we performed as we continue to prepare for our biggest matches of the season. It was particularly exciting to have our juniors home for their first match of the season and I'm looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish now that we have our full squad."

Head coach Zafi Levy agreed with his co-captain. "This has been a good start for the season," added Levy. "Yale and Trinity are two of the best teams in the country and we definitely benefited playing them. We have four more matches this week so we need to keep improving our standard of play."

As Levy alluded to, the week is far from over for the women's team. The Ephs return to Williamstown to play in their first home match of the season on Wednesday, January 7^th at 4 pm against St. Lawrence. In addition, Williams has an important home weekend when they will play Colby, Bowdoin and Bates at the Simon Squash Center. Williams will look to improve their current 1-4 record with their remaining matches this week and hopefully finish Sunday with a winning record.

Individual Results vs. Yale: