The Tufts men's squash team continued its solid play with a 6-3 defeat of Fordham University on Saturday at the Cousens Courts. The win was Tufts' seventh of the season, placing the team four wins ahead of last year's mark, with still more than a month until Nationals.
Junior Colin O'Higgins called the Jumbos' turnaround a natural development for the team. "We were a young team when we were losing," O'Higgins said. "Now we have matured and grown together."
That maturation continued against the Fordham Rams behind strong performances from a focused Jumbo squad. Junior Neil Pallaver led the way at the number one spot, defeating John Reiss easily in three straight games 15-11, 15-7, and 15-6. O'Higgins, seniors Dylan McPhetres and Bennett Kolasinski, sophomore Nathan Anderson, and freshman Jordan Kolasinski also posted 3-0 victories for Tufts.
Sophomore Chris Choi fought hard at the number two spot, coming back from two games down to tie Fordham's Ryan Voege and send the match into a fifth and decisive game.
"The first two games I was very tense, then I started to relax and stay on my toes," said Choi. "[Voege] is a pretty big player, and I had a hard time seeing the ball during the first two games. Then I found a slight weakness in his forehand, and tried to keep at that."
The strategy helped Choi battle back before falling 15-13 in a final game that saw the lead change several times.
O'Higgins' victory came a little easier as he swept his opponent in a short, one-sided victory at the third spot.
"Colin has been consistent most of the season," coach Doug Eng said. The compliment couldn't have been more true on Saturday as O'Higgins used smooth and simple play to assure victory and attributed his success to "not making any mistakes."
Anderson echoed his teammates' explanations for his victory at the seventh spot. "I tried to keep it tied to the walls, and simple," he said. "[On Friday] I seemed a little out of control, but today I pulled it together."
Although in his second year, Anderson is still a squash neophyte. A tennis player in high school, Anderson decided to bring his talents indoors this winter, and the decision was a beneficial one for the Jumbos.
"Nathan, our newcomer, has been consistent all year and has been a major contributor," Eng said. He is one of the reasons behind Tufts' improved record and ranking in the national polls.
That ranking stood at 17th before Eng and his team traveled to Yale to take on Wesleyan and Navy on Friday. Seventeenth was the best ranking the men's squash team has seen since the 1991-1992 season, and is a drastic improvement from a 3-10 record just last year. Unfortunately, the ranking may not last long, as Tufts lost both of its matches on its trip to Hartford.
Navy, ranked ninth in the last national poll, was the obvious favorite in the showdown with the Jumbos and played to a solid 8-1 victory. The Jumbos' loss to the Wesleyan Cardinals however, was much harder to swallow.
"[Wesleyan] was ranked four spots below us going in to the weekend, so we might drop down to 20," said Coach Eng. "The whole season we have been a little inconsistent. We are the hardest team to rank because sometimes we play great and sometimes we come out flat. Against Wesleyan we weren't executing the basics of the game."
Those basics returned to the squad on Saturday and lifted it to the victory over Fordham, but the damage to the team's ranking was already done with the loss to the Cardinals.
"We knew that Wesleyan was the one team we had to beat to solidify our 17th ranking," Eng said. "We won't get a number one [regional] seed at Nationals now, but we just have to try to stay in the top three or four of our bracket and see what happens."
Tufts' efforts continue today at Harvard against a formidable Dartmouth squad. "Dartmouth is ranked well, but soft this year. I think we have a shot at taking some matches," Ang said.
