No. 6 Men's Squash Picks Up Two Ivy Wins

HARVARD 6, COLUMBIA 3

After ending the fall semester with a 1-3 record, No. 6 ranked Harvard men’s squash team (6-2, 5-0 Ivy) came back this semester with five straight wins against competitors ranked in the top-11 in the nation. At the Murr Center this Sunday, the Crimson took on a top-three Ivy team and won in a 6-3 upset.

“I suspect [Columbia] was thinking they would come away with a victory,” Harvard coach Michael Way said. “And you can’t blame them for thinking that when they have a strong team.”

No. 3 Columbia came out strong with two 3-0 sweeps by the Lions’ senior Ramit Tandon and freshman Osama Khalifa in the top two ladder spots.  However, Harvard was able to hold onto all but one of the next seven matches.

“Columbia was really our biggest challenge of 2015,” captain Tyler Olson said. “I would say it’s our biggest win of the year. We knew that there were going to be some matches at the top of the ladder that would be tough to win, and that we needed to win one or two of those.”

Those two Crimson wins came at the number three and four seeds. Freshman Bradley Smith improved his record to 3-0 at the number three spot with a hard-fought five-game win. Sophomore Bryan Koh won another close match, 3-1, playing at the fourth spot.

“Bradley Smith had an outstanding match. It’s tough for freshmen to get their heads around the mental challenges of the game,” Way said. “Usually they will toughen up a lot more by junior year, but it’s not often you see freshmen doing that.”

Freshman Seif Eleinen, after recovering recently from a back injury, gained his second win at the ninth position in three games. Classmate David Ryan won his match, 3-1, despite having to sit out because of illness in Saturday’s contest.

“We graduated five seniors last year out of our top nine,” Olson said. “Luckily we’ve had these freshmen come in and be very strong performers. They all played really well, and have stepped up to fill the gap that would have been there otherwise.”

HARVARD 7, CORNELL 2

In Saturday’s contest, Harvard took down No. 7 Cornell with only two losses. Both freshman Madhav Dhingra and junior Matt Roberts fell to Cornell players, 3-0.

“With respect to the Cornell team, we are a little stronger than they are with the exception of their number one player, who is phenomenal,” Way said. “Apart from that, I thought the team was very workman-like in its approach to the games and it turned out very well.”

Olson lost his first game of the match, and fought hard to win the next three as the seventh ladder spot. He remains undefeated in this season. In the six other contests, the Crimson’s players swept their Big Red opponents in three games.

On Friday afternoon, the Crimson will be competing against the No. 5 Yale (8-3, 3-1 Ivy) in a game that significantly affects Harvard’s chances at winning Ivy League champion title.

After having defeated University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Dartmouth in recent competitions, this past weekend’s two victories place Harvard at the top of the Ivy rankings. If the Crimson defeats the Bulldogs, it will only have to defeat Brown to clinch the championship for the third consecutive year. The Bears are ranked far below their Ivy competitors, making Harvard’s contest against Yale the matchup that would most likely determine who wins the conference.

“With respect to Brown, they are not one of the strongest teams in the league,” Way said. “On paper, we are much stronger than them. It would be likely that we would win the Ivy title if we can get through Yale, but they are a very strong team and Friday night will be an awesome match.”

At the Ivy Scrimmages this past season, the Crimson suffered a tough 6-3 loss to the Bulldogs. Yale went on to defeat Columbia, 5-4, in the same weekend, to place first in the tournament. However, in the Bulldogs’ official contest against the Lions, Columbia came out on top by one match.  After Harvard’s upset against the Lions this weekend, this next match could favor the Crimson more than Yale had anticipated.

“Right now, we’re ranked below Yale,” Olson said. “But we’re confident that we’re stronger than them. Obviously anything can happen on match day, but we’re hoping that we can beat them on our home court.”

—Staff writer Emily T. Wang can be reached at emilywang@college.harvard.edu