Two Easy Wins Mark Season Start

With matches sandwiching The Game on Saturday, the Harvard men’s squash team came through the weekend’s distractions unscathed and overcame both of its opponents in convincing fashion. The Crimson notched its first two victories on the season by defeating Brown and Williams at the Murr Center without dropping a single contest.

“Considering they had such a tough weekend with the match on Friday, and with Harvard-Yale, I think most of them have come through it very well,” Harvard coach Satinder Bajwa said. “They look rested, they look like they came ready to play, which was an achievement in itself. We dropped a few games [yesterday], but that just shows the strength of Williams.”

Harvard now prepares for a midweek match on Nov. 29 against Dartmouth, ranked No. 7 in the nation, and will then travel to Cornell to play the Big Red—ranked No. 9—and Western Ontario.

In preparation for the early matches, which will get harder, Bajwa has the team going through “crisis training.”

“That’s when [we pretend] it’s 8-all and the game is riding on one or two points,” he said. “We’re not going to make mistakes. I feel that last season we lost so many 10-8, 10-9 matches, so we’re just focusing on making sure that’s not going to happen, and if it happens it’s going to be because the other guy took it, not because we made a mistake.”

“These matches will give us a pretty good competitive first half of the season,” Bajwa added. “But in terms of finding out how we’re going to do [this season], we’ll find that out in February.”

HARVARD 9, WILLIAMS 0

The Crimson faced a tougher opponent in Williams yesterday, which required gritty performances from its top players.

“Today was definitely harder, for sure,” senior Siddharth Suchde said. “I was trying to work a few new things into my game like my coaches told me to, played well overall but definitely had to push, had to concentrate a lot more.”

Still, Harvard only dropped one game in the eighth spot, where sophomore Niko Hrdy defeated his opponent, 3-1.

Freshman Colin West, who made his collegiate debut on Friday, continued to play at a high level at the third position, winning 9-4, 9-1, 9-1.

“West has a tremendous amount of improvement to go,” Bajwa said. “By February, he’s going to be even better than he is now.”

Senior Garnett Booth, at No. 5, had the easiest match of the day, winning 9-2, 9-0, 9-0. Senior Jason De Lierre, at No. 4, won a tough third game to clinch, 9-3, 9-3, 10-8.

HARVARD 9, BROWN 0

The Crimson started its season with a solid performance over the Bears, winning every contest and not dropping a single game.

The most dominant match on the day belonged to captain Ilan Oren, who defeated his opponent by giving up only 2 points, all in the third and final game.

Suchde, who played at No.1, also notched a three-game sweep, but had to struggle a bit more, finishing with scores of 9-2, 9-5 and 9-1.

“I tried out a few new things, and was a bit rusty,” Suchde said. “It went on a bit longer than expected, but at the end I got the job done so you can’t complain. Ilan played brilliantly—a captain’s performance—hopefully he can keep that kind of determination and focus for the rest of the season.”

“All of the guys are improving various parts of their games and adding to it,” Bajwa said. “This is a good match for them to see what’s working, when there’s not too much pressure.”

—Staff writer Tony D. Qian can be reached at tonyqian@fas.harvard.edu.