Women's Squash Season Recap

It may not have had the perfect ending, but that may have been the only flaw in the Harvard women’s squash team’s impressive 2013-2014 season. The Crimson, which was ranked first in the country for the entire year, went undefeated in the regular season in its quest to defend the 2013 CSA Team Championships, college squash’s naional title, ultimately falling just short, 5-4, in the Howe Cup final to Trinity.

“As coaches, we were very proud of the team,” Harvard coach Mike Way said. “The reason I say that is because even though we didn’t win the national title, we did not think we were the best team in the league at the beginning, and the girls had to step up. There was no way that we would have sat here and said, ‘Okay, these are all going to be W’s.’ So then [having] the [undefeated] season  and winning the Ivy title was just fantastic.”

The national title contest was a rematch of last year’s final, a 5-4 Harvard victory, as well as a rematch of the teams’ regular season matchup two weeks earlier, which the Crimson also took by a 5-4 margin.

The latest iteration was no less dramatic, as the match saw four contests go to five games and came down to the last match to crown a national champion.

With Harvard down, 4-3, freshman Dileas MacGowan came back from two sets down at the sixth position to stay undefeated in her first collegiate season. However, Trinity freshman Anna Kimberley stayed tough against sophomore Saumya Karki despite losing the first set. Kimberley worked her way back in, winning two straight games and going up, 10-8, in the fourth game to give herself two match ball opportunities. Karki managed to get within one with a strong shot, but Kimberley held on for an 11-9 win, giving the national title to the Bantams.

“Perhaps [the difference] had to do with this level of expectation,” Way said. “We just went in there [in the regular season]...going into that cauldron of Trinity is tough, but we didn’t really have that huge target on our back. But we were very impressed with them in the nationals.... If you’re going to lose to a team, you want to lose to a team like that.”

Despite the loss in the Howe Cup finals, the Crimson earned wins over tough competition to stay undefeated in the regular season. While the team was ranked at No. 1 for much of the season, Harvard went into several matches as the underdog on paper, and prevailed over perennially difficult opponents like Trinity, Princeton, Yale, and Penn on its way to a perfect record and the Ivy League title.

“The Penn match had such a big impact on the season,” assistant coach Luke Hammond said. “We knew that they were so strong on paper and there was so much parity, and we didn’t really know if there was one strong team that was going to emerge…. That was where the momentum shifted and I felt all of the girls starting to really feel like we were the team to beat.”

Individually, the Crimson saw junior Amanda Sobhy win her third consecutive national championship with a straight-sets victory over Trinity’s Kanzy El Defrawy. Sobhy was named Ivy League Player of the Year, while junior co-captain Haley Mendez and rookie Katie Tutrone were named to the All-Ivy team at the conclusion of the season. The Crimson received notable contributions from freshmen Tutrone and MacGowan, who posted 11-2 and 15-0 records in the third and seventh positions, respectively.

“Dileas MacGowan was the standout,” Way said. “What a ridiculous season she had. She’s just a lovely kid. There’s no one that would have predicted, what, 15-0? No one would have predicted it. And Katie? What an attitude from both of those young women. They went beyond expectations. When we recruited them, we were not expecting what we got. Bloody wonderful, we’ve got them for three more years.”

With Harvard’s entire starting lineup returning, the team is looking forward to avenging its national championship loss next season.

“We were so close this year, and next year everyone knows that we’re only going to be stronger,” Mendez said. “The team is ready to come back with a vengeance. Everyone is planning on training their hardest this summer and throughout next season, because we don’t want to be in the same position we were in this year.”

—Staff writer Glynis K. Healey can be reached at ghealey@college.harvard.edu.