No. 3 women’s squash (11–2 overall, 4–2 Ivy League) capped off a strong regular season with two dominant wins at the Meadows Facility, sweeping the No. 15 Georgetown Hoyas (5–10, 0–0) 9–0 on Saturday before knocking off the No. 6 Virginia Cavaliers (9–5, 0–0) 8–1 in Sunday’s senior day match.
“It was just a really special weekend,” senior captain Josephine Klein explained to The Daily Princetonian. “Everyone played with such grit, worked really hard, and also just carried ourselves in a way that made us proud to be Tigers and to represent Princeton.”
The result means that Klein and four other seniors — Molly Chadwick, Katherine Sapinski, Connie Nelson, and Kristen Weil — finish their final season at Princeton undefeated at home, with an impressive 8–0 record at Meadows. Klein was one of seven players to sweep their matches 3–0 on Saturday afternoon, with her fellow senior and captain Katherine Sapinski also in the mix.
At line two, junior Charlotte Bell dominated Cecilia Curran of Georgetown in their first two games before Curran got one back in the third. Bell managed to narrowly knock off Curran in an intense 11–9 fourth-game victory, winning the line 3–1.
But the highlight of the day occurred in line nine, where senior Connie Nelson walked onto the court for her varsity debut.
“She absolutely crushed it,” said Klein. “She worked so hard, and for her to be able to shine like that on our senior weekend was really special.”
Nelson defeated Georgetown’s Valentina Cuccolo 3–1 in the same fashion as Bell’s match, completing the sweep for the Tigers on Saturday afternoon.
Saturday’s match against Virginia proved to be much more competitive, with five lines going to five matches. Lines five and seven were swept by first-year Caroline Eielson and sophomore Sonya Sasson respectively. Meanwhile, line one was a battle between internationals — sophomore and national champion Zeina Zein of Egypt versus Meagan Best of Barbados — which resulted in a 3–1 Zein victory.
The three lines below Zein were all 3–2 victories. Sophomore Emma Trauber staged a comeback after losing her first two games in line two. Senior and captain Molly Chadwick also lost her first game but pushed through a grueling back-and-forth on her senior day in line three.
“Being a captain of this team makes me so proud,” Chadwick wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “I really couldn’t think of a better way to end our regular season than by getting a win on our home court and I’m really proud of how the team competed.”
In line four, Bell had to channel the same energy in her Georgetown match the day before to knock off Virginia’s relentless Maria Moya 3–2. Another senior, Sapinski, showed her grit in line six with a grueling back-and-forth 3–2 victory.
Finally, junior Liyen Teoh played an exhausting fifty minutes of squash against Virginia’s Nasreen Hashmi in line eight, each trading one win at a time until Teoh prevailed in the fifth game. Teoh’s 3–2 win sealed a dominant 8–1 scoreline in a very competitive matchup.
“UVA is a really good team, and I think beating them 8–1 is just a testament to how strong our entire team is, how hard we work,” Klein said. “Not everyone was even feeling their best today, and we still came out and won really decisively.”
The win capped off a very successful regular season for the Tigers, ending with the third-best record in the nation. Motivated by a second-place finish at the College Squash Association (CSA) national team championships last year and the debut of Princeton’s new Racquet Center at Meadows Campus, the Tigers were after the national title from the get-go despite a big transition.
“At the start of the season, we had graduated seven seniors, and four of them were really key players in the top ten,” Head Coach Gail Ramsay told the ‘Prince.’ “This group of seniors, and, actually, the juniors, hadn’t been in the mix of the real heavy competition for years, so I was really wondering how it would go.”
The Tigers started the season off with three sweeps over No. 9 Drexel, No. 14 Williams, and No. 7 Yale, before carrying this momentum into a rematch of last years’ nationals final against No. 1 Trinity, a thrilling 5–4 Princeton win at the Meadows.
“[Defeating Trinity] hadn’t happened in my three other years here,” Klein noted. “It was a really exciting match.”
After a statement win, the Tigers roared past No. 13 Amherst, No. 8 Cornell, No. 10 Columbia, and No. 12 Dartmouth, before dropping their first match of the season in a tight rally at No. 2 Harvard. The Tigers bounced back to defeat No. 4 Stanford in a thrilling 5–4 affair at the Meadows, with the exhausted roster falling by just one game, 5–4, at No. 5 Penn the same weekend.
Undoubtedly, the team has all the tools they need to go all the way at the CSA National Team Championships this year, which take place from March 6 through March 9.
“We felt like we could have won all the matches that we didn’t win, which were just two,” Ramsay commented. “I think there’s pressure on us to do well, but I think it’s good, good pressure and confidence from that pressure that’ll really set us up for, I think, a pretty, pretty good event.”
While the Tigers await their first-round draw, Klein looked back on the team’s highly successful time donning the Orange and Black.
“The on-court memories are very special,” Klein said. “But I think just the team in general, how close we’ve got, and the things we’ve been able to do off the court are things that I’ll probably remember even more.”
“I’m very grateful,” she continued. “It’s bittersweet to be leaving them, but I know it’s in good hands.”
Bryant Figueroa is an assistant Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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