Friday was a busy day at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center in Philadelphia with 160 players stepping on court in pursuit of individual postseason glory in the 2022 CSA National Collegiate Individual Championships. Each player was guaranteed two matches on Friday, and the winners will progress to main draw and consolation semifinals on Saturday.
Both national championship draws – the Ramsay Cup for the women and the Pool Trophy for the men – played out primarily to seed on Friday. Only three players scored upsets in the first round, while no player lower than a 5-seed will compete in tomorrow’s semifinals.
In the Ramsay Cup, top seed Sivasangari Subramaniam, second seed Hana Moataz, and 4-seed Marina Stefanoni all cruised to the semifinals with dual 3-0 victories. Third-seeded Malak Kamal from Trinity withstood the pressure from Harvard’s 11-seed Amina Yousry over five games to clinch the fourth semifinal berth. Yousry would have been the only double-digit seed to qualify for either national championship semifinals had she pulled out the victory.
The only other first round upset in the Ramsay bracket was Yale’s 12-seed Sneha Sivakumar outlasting hometown favorite Karina Tyma of Drexel in five games.
Similar to the women’s draw, the Pool Trophy for the men’s national championship played almost strictly according to seeding over the first two rounds. Number 1 seed Youssef Ibrahim and second-seeded Victor Crouin were clean through the first two rounds, winning both matches by 3-0 scorelines.
Penn teammates Andrew Douglas, the third seed, and fifth-seeded Aly Abou El Einen are the other two Pool semifinalists after strong performances of their own. Douglas gave up a game each in the first two rounds, but his quarterfinal win is most notable because it prevents Harvard’s 6-seed Marwan Tarek from defending his title from 2020. Abou El Einen tangled with a familiar foe in Drexel’s Matias Knudsen, the 13-seed who had upset Virginia’s Aly Hussein in the first round, and won in four, including convincing Game 1 and 3 wins.
Cornell’s Veer Chotrani, the ninth seed, was the only other lower seed to win a first round match in the Pool Trophy bracket.
The winners of the consolation semifinals in both the Ramsay and Pool draws tomorrow will clinch First-Team All America status, along with all eight of the first round winners. Additionally, the winners of all eight B Division brackets on Sunday will be honored as Second Team All-America selections.
In the four Molloy (men) and four Holleran (women) draws, the vast majority of the top seeds have advanced to tomorrow’s semifinals, including six of the eight Number 1 seeds. Only Penn’s Roger Baddour, the 10-seed in the Molloy West draw, and Princeton’s Emily Rose, the 9-seed in the Holleran West bracket, scored two upsets on Day 1 of the competition.
For the full results in the draws, please visit the Club Locker Tournament Page.
