The 2022 College Squash Association (CSA) National Collegiate Women’s Team Championships began on Friday with matches staged at Harvard University’s and Tufts University’s competition venues. Despite the stormy conditions outside, 31 teams commenced play across four divisions with each having a cup championship set for Sunday at Harvard.
After a somewhat quiet start to the day, the action and intensity picked up in the afternoon matches with several close matches and a few notable upsets. Unfortunately, along the with the weather, COVID-19 is still rearing its ugly head to impact some teams’ rosters.
Howe Cup – National Championship Division
Top-seeded Harvard cruised to victory in round one, dropping only three games total to 8-seed Penn, but it was the 4-versus-5 matchup of Columbia versus Yale which got the Murr Center buzzing. Columbia won the regular season contest, 6-3, but it was Yale who took the game to the Lions on Friday, reversing a few of the results from the first match, especially at the bottom of the ladder. In the end, Yale held on for a 5-4 win to clinch a semifinal matchup with rival Harvard.
The momentum on the Murr Center’s front courts continued when the other Howe Cup quarterfinals got started. Higher seeds, Trinity (No. 2) and Princeton (No. 3) jumped out to 2-1 leads against Virginia and Drexel, respectively, but the fortunes gradually diverged from there. Despite several highly charged and close matches, Trinity rattled off six consecutive wins to capture an 8-1 victory. Drexel held firm, however, going 2-1 in the second wave to tie things up at 3-all. Then they made sure it would not be the year of the Tiger as they won all three matches in the third round, clinching a 6-3 win and a guaranteed national top-four finish.
The Kurtz Cup (B Division) went according to seeding this afternoon with the only real drama coming in the 4-5 matchup between Tufts and Williams. The NESCAC rivals had two close battles during the season with Tufts emerging victorious both times. Beating a team three times in one season is never easy, but the higher-seeded Tufts managed to even improve on the team score, running out to a 5-1 lead before finishing up 6-3. Tufts will face top-seeded Cornell tomorrow, who cruised past 8-seed Bowdoin. The other semifinalists are the second and third seeds – Dartmouth and Brown – who handled their opponents, Bates and Amherst, with relative ease. Dartmouth beat Brown in their most recent meeting at the end of the regular season.
Thanks to injuries and illnesses, the Walker Cup draw was turned on its head on Friday morning with three lower seeds notching upsets. The only higher seed to survive was No. 1 Franklin & Marshall, who dispatched Wesleyan by a comfortable 8-1 scoreline. F&M will face a familiar foe – fifth-seeded Dickinson – in the semifinal after the Red Devils took out 4-seed St. Lawrence, 8-1. This will be the fourth meeting between Dickinson and F&M this season. The other two higher seeds, Stanford and Middlebury, were short-handed on Friday, and their opponents – 7-seed Hamilton and sixth-seeded William Smith – took full advantage. William Smith’s win was the closest of the draw, grabbing the necessary five wins before Middlebury finished strong to win the other four matches.
Seven teams are now competing for the Epps Cup after Denison fell victim to travel issues due to the snow forecast in Boston. The top four seeds will compete in the semifinals of the Epps Division with each of the matches going to the higher seed by a comfortable margin. 8-seed Chatham took the two matches at the top of the ladder against No. 1 Georgetown, but they do not quite have the depth to contend yet in their first year of varsity competition. Georgetown faces Haverford in one semifinal after the Fords took out familiar foe Vassar, 8-1. Second seed Colby earned a walkover due to Denison’s absence, and they will face Conn College who also won by an 8-1 scoreline versus Mount Holyoke. Colby recently overcame Conn College in the NESCAC Women’s Championships two weeks ago.
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