The No. 26 ranked men's squash team could not have picked a better time to get hot. It has been a bumpy ride this year for the Jumbos, who entered Thursday's match at Northeastern having lost seven in a row. But with nationals now less than a week away, the team rediscovered its stroke, pulling off a dramatic 5-4 win on Thursday and an 8-1 thrashing of Boston College on Saturday.
After a day off on Friday, Tufts hosted the 35th-ranked Eagles at Belmont Hill School on Saturday and earned hard-fought wins up and down the ladder. In all but two matches, the Jumbos set the tone by winning the first set, but five Tufts players later found themselves trailing 2-1. The Jumbos refused to say die — all five came back to pull off five-set victories.
"It was the mentality to go out and win in three that kept us confident," junior Andrew Meleney said of the team's mindset against BC. "We want to go out and crush it every time."
That never-say-die attitude was just what the Jumbos needed against the Eagles. Freshman Zach Schweitzer and sophomore Jeremy Ho walked away with 3-0 sweeps, and senior captain Henry Miller won 3-1, but most of the victories did not come so easily. Freshmen Gordon Silverman, Hugo Meggitt, Elliot Kardon and sophomore Michael Abboud each fell behind before coming out on top, and Meleney triumphed in a five-set thriller over BC's Danny Gleason in the No. 9 match.
Freshman Alex Nalle's inability to finish his match due to injury resulted in the Jumbos' lone loss of the day. The final score was 8-1, but the Jumbos by no means cruised past their opposition.
"All the matches were pretty close," Silverman said. "Every game was a tough fight, but everyone seemed to pull through in the end."
Two days earlier, the squad got off to a great start against national No. 31 Northeastern. Meggitt kicked things off by winning in four games while Miller won in three, but a five-game loss for senior Eli Borek in the No. 9 spot cut the Tufts lead to 2-1. Victories for freshmen Gordon Silverman and Elliot Karden in the No. 5 and No. 8 spots, respectively, gave the Jumbos a commanding 4-1 advantage, but the Huskies came roaring back to win three straight and tie the match at four apiece.
With one match remaining, the Jumbos' fate rested on the shoulders of freshman No. 1 Zach Schweitzer, who squared off against senior John Ghublikian. Schweitzer fell behind two games to one, but with his back against the wall he won the next two games to give the Jumbos the 5-4 victory and snap their seven-match losing streak.
The pair of victories ended the squad's regular season with a record of 6-10. This weekend, the team will head to Princeton University for Nine-Man Nationals, the drawing of which will be released later this week. Until then, the Jumbos will have to prepare for all possible matchups — that includes teams in the NESCAC, against whom the Jumbos are 0-6 this season.
Now seems like as good a time as ever to take on some of the nation's best competition.
"We are peaking at the right time," Silverman said. "The team is as close as ever and it's very exciting with Nationals right around the corner."
