The women’s squash team earned two wins on Saturday, beating Smith College and Columbia University to push its final regular season record to 9-15. The Cards await their final seeding in the season-ending Howe Cup, the national team championship for women’s squash.
Smith hosted Saturday’s three-team match and the Cards opened the day’s play against the hosts. In its most dominant performance of the season, Wesleyan downed Smith nine games to zero. The Cards dropped just four games en route to sweeping six of the nine matches.
In their second match of the day, the Cards faced up against Columbia, a team that sat just ahead of the Cards in the national standings heading into the day’s play. Continuing their strong play from the morning match, the Cards defeated Columbia by a score of 6-3. Casey Simchik ’10 (#1), Andrea Giuliano ’09 (#3), Liz Demakos ’09 (#4), Keera Bhandari ’08 (#6) and Katie Kalafus ’09 (#8) earned two victories and Jenny Chu ’11 had one.
Saturday’s matches marked the end of an impressive second half of the season for Wesleyan. After going 1-6 prior to winter break, the team finished out at 8-8. Demakos led the way at the number four position, completing her season at 10-6 following her return from abroad. First-year varsity member Bhandari, who started playing pickup squash during her sophomore year, ended the season with an impressive 12-12 mark mostly playing in the six and seven positions.
“I am proud of us as a team,” Bhandari said. “We had a rough start this season, especially with so many players who had never formally played squash before. This weekend I saw a confident team step onto those courts. We’ve been playing with a lot of heart and it’s going to be a great weekend at nationals.”
Indeed, Wesleyan had seven newcomers to the team on the roster at the beginning of the season. Of those seven, however, only one, Chu, is a freshman. The mixture of new players and returnees like Simchik, Giuliano, and Demakos proved a successful formula once the new players picked up just a few matches of experience.
The Cards now enter the Howe Cup confident. The schedule and seedings for the Howe Cup will be available later this week at www.squachtalk.com
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