M. Squash Crushes Opponents at Tourney

The men's squash team got a big bounce of confidence last weekend, handily winning the United States Squash Racket Association's five-man tourney at Yale University.

The No. 2 Crimson (4-0, 2-0 Ivy) trounced No. 3 Princeton 4-1 in the finals yesterday, wrestling away the championship from Princeton's tough-to-beat top five players.

Going into the tournament, Princeton was the top seed ahead of Harvard because of the clout of its best five players and because Princeton was the defending champion. The last time the teams faced one another was in a preseason scrimmage, which Harvard won 5-4, but the score was 4-1 Princeton at the upper end of the ladder.

Yesterday's win, a reversal of the scrimmage score at the higher spots, was an encouraging sign that the Crimson may be on track to reclaim the national championship they surrendered to Trinity College last year after five years of dominance.

Captain Tim Wyant had no particular explanation for the lopsided victory, except to say that each team member played some sober squash.

"We won because all five of our guys competed and played well," Wyant said. "It was a big turnaround."

The Crimson bageled three teams (5-0) en route to the finals, defeating Williams on Friday, and Yale and an Atlanta-based club team on Saturday. The sole loss of the tournament came in the finals from the team's No. 2 player, junior Gray Witcher.

Against Princeton, Wyant won his match at the number No. 1 spot against Peter Yik, to whom Wyant lost in the individual national championship finals last year.

No. 3 freshman Dylan Patterson defeated Will Evans. At the No. 4 spot, sophomore Peter Karlen defeated Eric Pearson, while junior Andrew Merrill beat Peter Kelly at the No. 5 spot.

The B-team lost 3-2 in the first round of the 16-team draw to a New York City based club team and then fell to a Midwest-based club team 3-2 in the finals of a consolation draw.

Merill said Patterson and Wyant, who both were up against skilled players, had "breakthrough" victories.

"For those two it was a big win," he said. "For the rest of us it was a really strong first step for the rest of the season."

Wyant, while pleased with the win, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions.

The USSRA's tournament--which falls outside the purview of college athletics, with amateurs, professionals and non-collegiate teams all competing--is a prestigious one, but it is not the most coveted competition of the year.

The national championship in March and upcoming matches against other top-ranked teams such as Princeton and Trinity are much more important to the Crimson, according to Wyant.

When the Crimson meets the Tigers again on Feb. 13, it needs to maintain its mettle.

"We're a fairly evenly matched team, so it could go either way," Wyant said.