Gemmell Shines at National Tourney

Everything wasn’t going to be handed to freshman Laura Gemmell so easily.

She’s made winning seem effortless throughout the season, but it all came down to a grueling championship match against Trinity’s Pamela Hathway at the 2010 CSA Women’s Individual Championship in Hartford, Conn. yesterday. Ending the season 16-0, Gemmell maintained perfection in her first year of collegiate squash and has set the bar high for next year when the team and Gemmell seek to defend their respective titles.

“I was very pleased for Laura because she deserved the win,” said Harvard coach Satinder Bajwa. “Based on her overall record, there was a lot of pressure on her. She could see the pressure and handled it well and came through with the win.”

In their first encounter this season, Gemmell had no problems defeating the once top-ranked player in the country. The score line shows that the Bantam player didn’t put up much resistance back in January, losing to the freshman, 11-6, 11-6, 11-7.

This time around, the situation was much different.

Hathway summoned some of her best play for a matchup where everything was on the line. The junior from Trinity knew that this would be one of the few chances left in her collegiate career to shine before the emerging Gemmell would assume the throne.

The rising star started off the day with a solid win in the first game, 11-7, giving the impression that the matchup would be a repeat of what happened earlier in the season. Hathway had different ideas, answering back with a strong 11-5 victory of her own—just the second game Gemmell had dropped all season. The first one came in the first-round matchup against Cornell’s Rebecca Hazwell, a contest Gemmell won, 3-1.

Tied at one, Gemmell and Hathway duked it out in the third game, each one trying to assert her superiority over the other. Hathway took the match, 15-13, giving herself some breathing room and putting all the pressure on Gemmell to come from behind.

The freshman was undeterred. Hathway tried to stand her ground, but Gemmell overcame the German national player in the fourth game, 11-8.

There could only be one champion, and the parity was broken late in the fifth set. With the game tied at nine, it could have gone either way. But Gemmell successfully completed what she started, becoming the first Crimson player to take home the Ramsay Cup since Kyla Griggs ’07 won it in 2007. Gemmell won two straight points to win the fifth game without overtime, 11-9.

“To win anything is difficult,” Bajwa said. “It’s so great to achieve something you fight so hard to win. To win in five is hard to get.”

But Gemmell wasn’t the only Harvard player competing this weekend. Nine Crimson women’s squash players represented Harvard in two simultaneous competitions. Six players, including Gemmell, were entered in the “A” Division, while three competed in the “B” Division.

Harvard showed its depth and finesse at the tournament, with many players making deep runs in each bracket, and ultimately having two champions.

Co-captain Katherine O’Donnell ended her collegiate career with a bang as she captured the Holleran Cup, the “B” Division title. She defeated another Trinity player, senior Jo-Ann Jee, by the same 3-2 margin.

“I felt really excited,” O’Donnell said. “It’s a good way to cap off my college career. During the weekend I had a lot of matches, and it felt good to win them all.”

Fellow co-captain Johanna Snyder also fared well in competition play for the Ramsay Cup, the “A” division prize. She defeated sixth-seeded Trinity player Nour Baghat to reach the quarterfinals, where she ultimately lost to Penn’s Kristin Lange.

“Johanna was wondering whether she would be in the top nine last year, so she worked hard and improved,” Bajwa said. “She had an amazing finish. Both captains really led by example.”

After winning the team national title last week, this was a fittingly perfect end for the Crimson, a program that will graduate three seniors but will still have a core of strong players to defend those crowns next season.

—Staff writer Brian A. Campos can be reached at bcampos@fas.harvard.edu.