Harvard Women’s Squash Places Second at National Championship

The No. 2 Harvard Women’s squash team (13-1, 6-0 Ivy) fell just short of the national title Sunday, placing second in the Howe Cup after losing 5-4 to No. 1 Trinity (17-1, 4-0).

Harvard came into the weekend with high hopes after winning the Ivy Championship during the regular season. The Crimson opened with a throttling 9-0 win against No. 7 Yale (6-8, 3-3), then stayed in control with an 8-1 domination of three seed Princeton (12-3, 4-2) to reach the national finals.

Harvard 9, Yale 0

Harvard entered competition with a first round bye after earning the team’s ninth Ivy title in as many seasons.

The team’s campaign therefore began on Friday in the quarterfinals, where the Crimson eagerly awaited Yale — a team it had bested 9-0 only a few weeks prior.

All-Ivy sophomore Lucie Stefanoni opened the floodgates on her opponent at the three spot, beating Yale freshman Spring Ma in three quick games.

Ma’s identical twin, Harvard freshman Ocean Ma, took inspiration from her teammate’s performance, defeating the Bulldogs’ Meha Shah in the same amount of time as Stefanoni and letting up just one more point.

Two strong wins at the three and five spots set up Harvard for success for the rest of the day.

Senior Emma Carney was up next, playing against Lindsay Westerfield in the ninth spot. Westerfield took the first game, marking one of just three that the Crimson would lose all day. Carney responded with a sweep the other way, and got a big win for the Crimson.

Playing number one for Harvard was last year’s individual national champion Saran Nghiem. She had one tough game to start against Yale’s Heng Wai Wong, giving up 6 points but coming out with a win. The next two were smooth sailing, as Nghiem lost just one point in each game. On and off court in less than twenty minutes, Nghiem barely broke a sweat.

The clincher for Harvard came from captain Brecon Welch. Welch took on Layla Johnson, winning in 3 games. While the scores were close, especially in a 12-10 second game, Welch took care of business in 21 minutes, and walked off court with her eyes on the next day’s match against. Princeton.

The next four went smoothly for Harvard. Junior Molly Stoltz won her match 3-1 against Whitney Taylor. Freshman Caroline Fotus defeated Christy Tin Yan Lau in 3-1. These would be the last dropped games for Harvard for the day.

Immediately afterwards, senior Habiba Eldafrawy swept Yale’s Meghna Sreedhar with a 3-0 match score. The final blow came from senior Amira Singhwho sealed the deal with yet another 3-0 victory versus Rashi Goverdhanam.

With a 9-0 sweep and 27-3 cumulative match score, the Crimson dominated the Bulldogs from start to finish. Beating their historic rivals, Harvard was one step closer to the Howe Cup and moved the eyes to their next Ivy League challengers: the Princeton Tigers.

Harvard 8, Princeton 1

Harvard’s matchup against the Tigers also gave the Crimson a chance at redemption as the team was eliminated by Princeton at last year’s Howe Cup.

Freshman Caroline Fouts opened up the scoring early, with a quick 3-0 win over Molly Chadwick. On court for just 23 minutes, Fouts never let Chadwick find any sort of rhythm. Senior Amira Singh followed along with a 3-0 win of her own. The Tigers’ Sonya Sasson was unable to withstand Singh’s onslaught in the third game, as she fell in tiebreaks.

Princeton got on the board for the first and only time at the sixth position, thanks to Liyen Teoh’s 3-1 defeat of Stoltz.

Harvard responded quickly with a win at the ninth spot. Carney took back the thread of the match, dominating Josephine Klein 3-0.

Then it was Nghiem’s turn to shine. Playing against Zeina Zein, the reigning individual champion, Nghiem was looking for vengeance after being eliminated by Zein in the championship. After falling behind 2-1, Nghiem dug deep for any chance at victory. By the middle of the fourth game, it was clear that Zein didn’t have enough in the tank to push back, as she looked winded throughout the match. Nghiem saw this weakness and fully exploited it, winning the fourth and fifth games handily. This put Harvard up 4-1, and a berth to the national finals was in sight.

Ma officially clinched the match for Harvard, throttling Princeton’s Katherine Sapinski in a comfortable three games and only letting up three points.

Although the win was already secured the Crimson did not take the foot of the gas. Stefanoni took the next match 2-0, denying the Tigers any consolation victories.

Senior Brecon Welch gave up her first game to Princeton’s Heromine Cao in a close 10-12 loss. Welch quickly responded, however, with three clean victories, finishing the match with a 3-1 win. Immediately after, Eldafrawy sent the Tigers home for the season with a 3-0 victory over Princeton’s Caroline Eielson.

Four rounds into the national championship tournament, the Crimson was on a hot streak and headed to the Howe Cup. They had lost only one of their 18 matches for the weekend, and had an impressive 52-7 for cumulative match score.

Harvard 4, Trinity 5

The Crimson failed to convert on the momentum in the final matchup of the weekend, coming up just short against the Bantams.

The team pushed Trinity to the very brink, with multiple chances to win the match, but never got across the finish line. Three separate five game matches were played, and Trinity won two of them by the slimmest of margins, which ended up deciding the match.

Harvard opened up strong, with Welch putting the team up 1-0. She defeated the Bantams’ Fabiola Cabello in four strong games. She slipped slightly in the second, but Welch recovered her focus and dominated the last two games to a win in her final college squash match.

Next, Stefanoni and Eldafrawy played their matches. Stefanoni was able to finish strong, closing out the fifth game convincingly. Her opponent, Noa Romero, failed to capture the energy she had at the start of the match. Despite Romero’s best efforts to hype herself up and use the large Trinity fan base to her advantage, Stefanoni’s shot making and powerful movement proved too much.

While Eldafrawy had a hot start of her own, taking a 2-1 lead over Hannah Chukwu, her energy level was clearly dropping in the fourth and fifth games. Chukwu took advantage of this and pressed Eldafrawy beyond the brink, handing Harvard its first loss.

In the second wave of matches, Stoltz faced off against Lujan Palacios. Palacios took the first game, but Stoltz fought back in the second, winning a marathon 15-13 game. The third was smooth sailing for Harvard, with Stoltz comfortably winning 11-2. However, Palacios refused to lose that easily. She rallied back and won the fourth and fifth games, defeating Stolz 3-2 and tipping the scales in Trinity’s favor.

Singh was then taken to town by Janna Ashmawy. Three quick games gave the Bantams their first lead of the day, and from there it was neck and neck, but Harvard could never fully recover.

In the second seed, Fouts clawed it back to even with a huge win over Jana Safy. Playing for the third time this year, Fouts completed her season sweep of Safy, this time in four games. In a matchup of freshman versus senior, the youth and energy of Fouts, specifically in her movement, was too much for Safy to handle.

Going into the third wave, the match was knotted at three apiece. Trinity struck first, with Varvara Esina taking down Carney in four games. This put the Bantams just one match away from a national title. However, Nghiem responded with a statement win over Malak Ashraf Kamal cruising through the first two games. She appeared to spend the third resetting and recovering her strength, then turned it back on in the fourth to take a big win.

All eyes then turned to Ma, competing against Kara Lincou. Ma opened strong, leading 10-8 in the first game. However, Lincou put her body on the line, diving across the court multiple times in a marathon rally to bring the score back to 10-10. A small slip in focus from Ma let Lincou successfully convert the first game.

Then, Lincou took control in the second, winning 11-7, and didn’t let up. At 10-8 in the third game, Lincou hit a straight drive down the left wall, and Ma couldn’t scrape it off. Trinity rushed the court in celebration, killing Harvard’s hopes of returning to the mountaintop.

As Harvard’s season ended with an Ivy League championship and a strong fight in the Howe Cup under its belt, the Crimson will look to retool and recover yet again, still searching for the national success that had been as easy as breathing for the team in years prior.

—Staff writer Daniel Hochberg can be reached at daniel.hochberg@thecrimson.com.