Coming into the weekend, Wesleyan squash players knew that they had two tough matches on hand. In addition to the fact that they were playing two potent teams, they were playing rivalry games on both the men’s and women’s sides.  As any sports fan will tell you, rivalry games bring out the best in athletes and teams. The Little Three match-ups were played at Amherst College this past Saturday, and Wesleyan was looking for its first win this year against either team

The men’s team came into the weekend in search of bettering their impressive 10-5 record, but fell far short in both matches.  Williams beat the Cards 9-0 on matches, and even more impressively, did not drop a single game in the entire match. The Wesleyan men fared slightly better against Amherst, posting an 8-1 loss, with the lone highlight being freshman John Steele’s 3-1 victory at the number one slot.  None of the other players managed to win a game, making that two matches in one day in which each of the Cardinals’ second through ninth players couldn’t muster a win.

The women fared slightly better in their Amherst match, losing a 5-4 nail-biter, but they also saw their hopes dashed at the hands of a strong Williams team, 9-0. Unlike the men, the Lady Cards were able to win a total of three games against Williams, thanks to Diana Edwards ’14, Grace Zimmerman ’13 and Kar-Anne Tan ’14 (seeds two, three, and eight, respectively). The women’s match against Amherst was the best chance that Wesleyan squash had for a win this weekend. With wins coming from Mary Foster ’14, Tanesha Jackson ’13, Danielle Craig ’13, and Meherazade Sumariwalla ’12, the women looked poised to win on the strength of these gutsy performances, but they were unable to pull it off.

In other news from the day, the women from Williams toppled Amherst 7-2, while the men from Williams won by an identical score. With these wins, Williams was proved the clear winner of the squash Little Three for this year in convincing fashion on both the men’s and women’s sides. Wesleyan will have yet another chance to prove their abilities at the NESCAC Championships of squash (again, both men and women) this Friday through Sunday at both Trinity and Wesleyan. Hopefully the home court advantage will help the Cardinals elevate their games to contend for a title, although a championship for Wesleyan’s men seems unlikely, given Trinity’s 224 match win streak, spanning 12 straight seasons.