Four months and 26 matches since its first practice, the men’s squash team ended its season with a third place finish in the National team tournament at Princeton this past weekend.
Since they finished third in the Conroy division or the D-Flight, the Cards came in 27th overall at Nationals and finished the season with an overall record of 11-15. The finish was a slight disappointment for the men’s team as it was seeded second in the flight and had beaten the top seed, Northwestern, earlier in the season.
The team started the Nationals off promisingly with a 6-3 defeat over MIT. In the match, the middle and the bottom of the ladder easily defeated their competition. Positions four through nine only lost one game combined.
In its semifinal match, the team played a very tough opponent in third-seeded and 27th-ranked University of Rochester. Though it was closely matched overall, Rochester came out on top, dominating the top of the ladder and holding its own in the middle and bottom sections. For Wesleyan, only number four Omair Sarwar ’06, number five Ian Carbone ’06, number seven Benjie Messinger-Barnes ’09, and Pete Sikora ’07 were able to pull out victories.
The victory by Rochester was a tough loss for the Cardinals as they felt they had a great shot to win the entire draw.
“As a team, I was a little disappointed. I believe that had we put everything together and had everyone played to their potential, a D division championship would have been ours,” said Messinger-Barnes.
Wesleyan’s final match was in the third place match against top-seeded Northwestern who had been upset by Vassar in the other semifinal. In this match, Wesleyan played some of its best squash of the season, handily taking a 7-2 win to Northwestern, a team that it squeaked by earlier in the season 5-4. Again the depth of the men’s team was the deciding factor as numbers four through nine were all victorious. co-captain Andrew Rozas ’06 also pulled out a solid victory at number two to end his college career. Rozas dropped the first game of his match and came back to win the next three.
“It was great to go out on a good note with a convincing victory over Northwestern, in which all the seniors won,” Messinger-Barnes said.
The seniors, who include Rozas, co-captain Sarwar, and Carbone will be missed but the team looks to play even better squash in the coming years. Six of the nine starters will return to next year’s team.
“Well, I definitely see Wesleyan squash improving tremendously over the next couple of years,” said Carbone. “I just hope the program does not change too much. This past season, we played because it was fun, we liked each other, and we all improved. I think we have a pretty cool thing going.”
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