Men's Squash goes 1-2 and Women's Squash goes 3-2 during opening weekend with great efforts from David Sneed '17 and Laila Samy '18

Jonas Powell/Assistant Photo Editor

The Wesleyan men’s and women’s squash teams kicked off the 2014-15 season this weekend at home at the Wesleyan Round Robin. The Rosenbaum Squash Center was packed with spectators as both squads faced serious opposition right off the bat. Rife with individual battles, compelling storylines, and incredible talent, this weekend reminded fans how thrilling squash is to watch.

Both teams faced tough challenges throughout the weekend but had a chance to tune themselves up in the first match on Saturday against NESCAC opponent Tufts; they both swept the Jumbos with matching 9-0 victories. Despite the victory, this match had the feel of the first game of the season.

“Our opening match against Tufts wasn’t our best squash,” said Head Coach Shona Kerr. “Tufts was obviously a weaker team, and sometimes it can be difficult to impose your game on a weaker team rather than raise your game against a stronger team, but it was the first match, and things weren’t probably where we wanted them to be. I kind of expected that to happen, and throughout the weekend things began to fall into place a bit more.”

Later on Saturday, the women faced Middlebury in a tough match in which they fell 8-1, with Laila Samy ’18 garnering the only victory at the number-one spot.  Samy swept each of her five opponents this weekend, including against the Bates number one who was 31st-ranked nationally at the end of last season.

After an encouraging but humbling Saturday, the women prepped for a three-match marathon on Sunday. The Cards professionally dispatched the morning and afternoon matches as the squad felled 27th-ranked William Smith College 8-1 and 25th-ranked Mount Holyoke College 9-0. The midday match proved a much tougher test for the Cards, as they lost a hard-fought 6-3 battle to 14th-ranked Bates.

Kerr was happy with the women’s performances.

“The main takeaway on the women’s side was that the intensity of their play and level of competition was there, which is what I’ve been asking them to do,” she said. “Particularly impressive were the three freshman players and the intensity that they brought, and I think that’s going to be a huge asset to the team.”

While the women fought through five matches in two days, the men faced two big tests following their initial match against Tufts. After losing John Steele ’14 to graduation and Dan Sneed ’15 to injury, the Cards went into the weekend relying on their depth. Sneed was at the number-two spot on the squad at the time of the injury, so all of Wesleyan’s players from numbers 3 through 10 were bumped up one spot for this weekend’s matches. The Cards hosted 19th-ranked Middlebury on Saturday afternoon and 14th-ranked Bates on Sunday at lunchtime. The Middlebury match was closely contested, but the Cards fell 6-3 despite tantalizing wins from number one Guy Davidson ’16, number-five Chris Hart ’17 , and number seven David-Sneed ’17. The younger Sneed, who was the only Cardinal to come out of the weekend with three wins, broke down the strategy behind his success.

“I’m a sophomore and those were my first competitive matches, so when I got into these matches where the pressure’s on and the intensity’s up, it brings out a new level of competitiveness that I hadn’t had during inter-squad matches,” David Sneed said.

The men’s team went into Sunday confident that they could compete with a strong Bates outfit that sat seven places above them in the national rankings and included number-one Ahmed Khalek, one of the best individual players in college squash. Despite a fierce fight full of long matches, the Cardinals fell again 6-3. Still, encouraging signs abounded with number-four Alex Kamisher ’17, number-seven David Sneed, and number-eight Zachary Roach ’17 coming out with victories. Most entertaining, perhaps, was the high-quality show put on by the virtually untouchable Khalek and the valiant Davidson, which, despite ending 3-0 in Khalek’s favor, featured an intense third game where an exhausted but ever-dogged Davidson pushed Khalek to game ball, only to be thwarted by the pure ability of the Bates’ number one.

Kerr was proud of the fight the men put up against Bates.

“I’m pretty sure Bates had no idea we would be that close to them,” Kerr said. “Although that’s a loss, it’s a hell of a good loss, and if we see them again I think now we know that we will be able to actually beat them.”

Despite the team losses, Kamisher, who went 2-1 over the course of the weekend, also saw serious positives in the team’s performance.

“I was pleased with how everyone stepped up their game, especially without John Steele and now Dan Sneed,” Kamisher said. “Bates and Middlebury are two of the best teams in the country. We have a lot of room for improvement. A lot of the matches we lost went to 5 or 4 games, and maybe with a little fitness we can change those to wins for us in 5 or 4.”

The men will be a whole new team when Dan Sneed gets healthy, but the signs are encouraging and the Cards will go into next weekend’s home match against Brown University full of confidence. After emerging from the weekend with a 3-2 record, the women will face huge challenges next weekend against 11th-ranked Brown on Saturday at home and 5th-ranked Princeton on Sunday in New Jersey.