Men's Squash Falls Short of National Championship

The No. 3 Harvard men’s squash team (10-4, 7-0 Ivy) came away with two wins and one loss in this year’s Collegiate Squash National Championship to place third.

“I’m very proud of the guys this season as such a young team, with winning the Ivy title and getting third in the country,” Crimson coach Mike Way said. “With this squad and with this age group, I think this is a good achievement, and we’ll take it.”

After an undefeated last season and a resounding 9-0 win against Trinity in the 2014 national championships, this weekend at Trinity fell short of matching the impressive previous showing. However, the 2015 championships proved that losing more than half of their starting lineup from last year would not keep the Crimson from claiming a spot among the nation’s best.

“We knew that we were going to have a tough time, being seeded third,” co-captain Tyler Olson said. “We knew that in order to win we were going to have to beat three teams that we had lost to during the regular season. From a strategy standpoint, we just wanted to play our game, be smart [on the court], and keep fighting no matter what happened.”

Sophomore Bryan Koh, freshman David Ryan, and co-captain Tyler Olson all left the Bantams’ home court with three wins each. Koh’s comeback in his St. Lawrence matchup to win three straight matches after losing the first two and Olson’s two five-game victories in the Saturday games were both notable performances that kept Harvard in the competition down to the final matches.

HARVARD 6, COLUMBIA 3

It was the middle of the ladder that helped propel the Crimson over No. 4 Columbia (13-4, 6-1 Ivy) for the second time this season. While Trinity and St. Lawrence played out the final championship contest, Harvard solidified its Ivy dominance by finishing highest out of the Ancient Eight teams that competed this weekend.

While freshman Madhav Dhingra and sophomore Dylan Murray dropped their matches against the number one and two opponents, the next five Crimson players notched wins against the Lions with relative ease, with no match going over four games.

In addition to these five victories, junior Sam Goldberg swept Tarun Nambiar in three games as the ninth seed.

ST. LAWRENCE 5, HARVARD 4

The No. 2 seeded St. Lawrence team (15-1, 4-0 Liberty) proved too strong again for the Harvard team in the semifinal of the championships in their second matchup this year. When the two teams met earlier this season, the matchup resulted in a 7-2 Crimson loss.

“I feel like a couple players may feel like a win slipped away,” Way said. “We feel like it was a winnable match but we just didn’t get the job done, but this is sports and that happens.”

In a hard fought battle, freshman Seif Eleinen was unable to recover from his injury early in the game and dropped his match at the number nine spot, 3-1.

Olson and Koh both pulled through five games to notch two more victories against the Saints and to finish the game with a 5-4 loss.

HARVARD 5, ROCHESTER 4

In its first encounter at the beginning of the 2014-2015 season, No. 6 Rochester University (12-5, 3-1 Liberty) could not pull of the win, as it was the Crimson who came away with the 5-4 advantage.

“We were seeded higher [for this weekend],” Way said. “But I think on paper they thought they were better. They’re a well-coached team, they’re strong top to bottom, they’re always tough to play, but the [Harvard] guys came through, and it was a job well-done.”

This weekend, it was up to Olson to sway the outcome of the game after his teammates succeeded in notching four victories. As his match reached 2-2, Olson ended the fifth game with an 11-9 win to advance his team to the semifinals.

“I would say I’m extremely happy with the season and how the whole year went,” Olson said. “Leading such an awesome group of guys for so many months and seeing the highs and the lows made it an amazing experience. All the guys really came together as a team and were playing for each other out there, I could see how much they were fighting, and I’m very proud of that.”

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