In its last regular-season matchup, the women's squash team took a thrashing from the nationally ranked No. 9 Brown Bears. But with Nationals on the horizon, the Jumbos have picked themselves up by the bootstraps to train, condition, and scrimmage in their brief break before the Howe Cup this weekend.
The Jumbos finished the regular season on a low note, as the non-conference Bears clawed the competition by a count of 9-0 in the Jumbos' final outing before this Friday's tournament opener. The loss marked the end of a less-than-stellar regular season that finished 4-13.
"I was impressed by all the girls [Tuesday] despite the loss," senior tri-captain Jessica Herrmann said. "The score looks as though we went out there and didn't get off a shot. The rallies were lasting for long periods of time, so the score doesn't reflect our success in keeping play alive."
"With a team like Brown, they've always been extremely competitive," senior tri-captain Simone Grant added. "We tried to keep positive, and it's always a learning experience playing talented schools."
While the Bears broke a four-game losing streak with their win over Tufts, bumping up their record to 5-8, the Jumbo squad faced its own fourth straight loss. While the Jumbos have fallen to the Bears in many past showdowns, the outcome was solidified by the team's inability to extend any of its matches beyond three games. The event's closest contest came early in the No. 1 position, with senior tri-captain Victoria Barba battling the Bears' senior Breck Haynes. Barba worked the court well, but a strained quad put a damper on the decision and she fell in three games, 9-4, 9-3, 9-5. Playing through the injury, Barba succeeded in putting up the most points (12) among her fellow Jumbos.
"It was easy for Brown to control the pace of the game," Herrmann said. "To see Victoria go out and surprise her opponent a little bit reflected her overall talent as a player."
While Barba got off to a good start, the middle and back ends of the lineup were handily swept by the Bears' dominant performance. Hitting cross-court shots and executing kill shots, the Brown squad successfully put to rest the struggling Jumbos' game of retrieval.
"Brown was really good at drawing the ball deeper than we could," Grant explained. "When a player sends the ball ricocheting off of the glass and into the corners, it makes it very difficult to return the shot. They played a really good deep game in combination with some perfectly placed drop shots."
Despite the loss to their Ivy foe, the Jumbos had the chance to use the match to practice their techniques and improve their retrieving skills before heading into the Howe Cup this weekend. The Jumbos introduced different shots into their games and strengthened their shot-positioning skills by testing them on the formidable Brown squad.
"We went in knowing it was going to be tough," Herrmann said. "We each had our own goals we wanted to work on during the match because there are things we want to refine before going into Friday. We put that into play against a much tougher team so that when we play teams around our level, the skills will stick with you because you've executed them on much stiffer competition … Come this weekend, we'll be playing with skills that we practiced against Brown in a more balanced setting."
The Howe Cup has traditionally provided Tufts the chance to face NESCAC rivals in hotly contested rematches. Placing in the C division, along with Amherst, Colby, Franklin and Marshall, Vassar, Wesleyan, William Smith and St. Lawrence, the Tufts squad foresees tooth-and-nail matches against conference foes. Losing to Amherst 5-4 while securing a close 5-4 decision against Colby, the Jumbo squad hopes to get revenge with a healthy roster.
"Our outing with Amherst the first time around doesn't account for our usual gameplay," Grant said. "I personally think that the second time we faced them it should've gone at least 6-3 in our favor, but you can't control injuries or players not being around to compete. This time around, we have a better chance to come out with more success. We may be a little nervous and that's natural. We just can't and won't be intimidated."
"It's going to be a tough division this year," Herrmann added. "Colby is ranked a few spots behind us, and we pulled off a close win against them 5-4 earlier this season. I'm pretty sure all of the teams in our division have had 5-4 matches. We lost 5-4 to Amherst, who's ranked one above us, so they're all very close and competitive. We're going in with the goal to win the division, which is a definite possibility if we can show what we've overcome this year and we play our best."
