The women's squash team extended their season opening winning streak to three games with an 8-1 win over Wellesley on Tuesday.
The Jumbos have gotten off to a hot start, handily defeating their first three opponents. First off for the Jumbos was Vassar College, winners of the Division D NCAA title last year (Tufts plays in Division C), but winless so far this year. The Jumbos had no problem with the Vassar squad and did not give up a match in their 9-0 win.
Assistant Coach Missy Meo enthusiastically described this first meet as being "Very good for this team. All the girls got a win under their belt in the first meet."
Next up was Hamilton College, who Coach Doug Eng had called one of Tufts' major rivals going into the season. Last year, Hamilton handed Tufts two of its ten losses in some very disappointing meets. In their first meeting last year, the Continentals defeated the Jumbos 8-1 in a meet that Eng promised was much closer than the score implied. Later in the season, Hamilton again dismissed Tufts, although this time, Tufts lost by only one close match, 5-4.
However, this year, Tufts turned the tide and sent a message to future opponents with a 7-2 win over Hamilton. In this meet, the Jumbos only dropped two matches, in close contests to Hamilton's three and four seeds. In collegiate squash, the first player to reach nine points wins a game, and the player to win three out of five games takes the match.
Most recently, on Tuesday, the team defeated Wellesley 8-1. Upperclassmen Justine Kurland, a junior captain, and senior Kate Peterson led the team with 3-0 victories over Wellesley's five and six seeds.
So far this season, the team has received solid contributions from all of its players, five of which are freshman or sophomores. Sophomore Winnie So is the number-one seed and has only lost one game during the first three matches of the season. Sophomore Abi Cushman is another highly-ranked undergraduate, who, despite some early tough losses, will contribute a lot to the team this year.
Sophomores Iffy Saeed and Eileen Connors (the seven and eight seeds respectively) are undefeated so far this season and highlight the depth of this team. Freshman Leigh Checchio, the only freshman on the starting team, is also undefeated and promises to make a strong contribution to the team this year. Coach Eng describes his team as being, "young but very deep," and they have certainly proved to be solid in the first three matches of this young season.
After the first couple of seeds, everyone's skill level is very close, and the lower seeds should prove an important commodity throughout the season. The five through nine seeds have not yet dropped a match. In addition, Eng described last year's team as being "top heavy," and the top two seeds from last year, sophomore Winnie So and graduate student Zaina Al-Awadi have returned and are both undefeated. The combination of these two stars and the depth at the lower seeds may prove to be a lethal combination this season.
This convincing 3-0 start for the team makes its coaches and players optimistic, but the season is long, and difficult opponents lie ahead. Eng realistically predicts a national ranking of 17 for his team at the close of the season. This would be a two position improvement from its ranking of 19 last year. Eng expects a very strong start to the season while its entire team is in tact, and thinks their national ranking would be even higher if the team were to stay complete.
"We could be competitive for the 11 or 12 seed [in the nation]," Eng said. Unfortunately, two of Tufts most consistent players, Zaina Al-Awadi and junior Anne Montesano, are not going to be able to play all of the season. Al-Awadi will likely miss about one third of the season due to the commitment to dental school.
Montesano will be going abroad for the second semester of this year, so she will definitely miss all of the matches in the second half of the season. Eng and the rest of the team hope that they can ride their momentum from the first half of the season and their depth throughout the roster into a successful second half of the season.
Overall, Eng is pleased with the squad's start, but he is not completely satisfied the play so far. Eng points out that, "All of our matches so far have been winnable," and he attributes the teams three individual losses to "not managing ourselves well on the court."
"It's a matter of knowing ourselves," Eng said. He is optimistic that similar matches will be won as the season progresses and this young team learns more and more about itself.
The team will participate in the Wesleyan Invitational on Friday, and will head down to Brown on Sunday to play one of the top teams in the country.
