This past weekend, the Middlebury men’s and women’s squash teams traveled to Philadelphia for the College Squash Association Divisional Team Championships. Both teams narrowly missed out on qualifying for the top bracket of the tournament, which is reserved for the top 12 teams, and competed in the second tier of the competition.
The women’s team earned the top seed in the Kurtz Cup and narrowly bested a resilient Bates College team in the quarterfinals. In the next round, the Panthers fell one step short of the finals, losing in an upset to Williams College, whom they had beaten in regular season play.
Even though Captain Maya Bardorf described losing to Williams '24 as hard and sad, she said, it only showed how much the team supports one another.
“Also, it was such a close and good match and everyone performed well, so that’s honestly the best you can ask for,” she said.
Despite coming home without a trophy, this was one of the women’s squash team’s most successful years in recent memory. Heading into the championships, the team was ranked 13th nationally, a ranking the team has not reached since 2013. During regular season play, they only lost once to another NESCAC team and had nine wins against nationally ranked opponents.
Bardorf said this season was her most positive thus far, both in terms of how well they did and how close-knit the team was.
“We just kept surprising ourselves. We treated this season like we were underdogs, but we were actually just a really solid team, and I think our regular season shows that,” she told The Campus.
This year’s squad has demonstrably improved from the team the Panthers fielded last year. Not only did they move up from the third to the second division in the College Squash Association Divisional Team Championships, but they did so by leaps and bounds, only missing out on the premier level of the tournament by one spot.
“I was really proud to be on a team with such great people and that as a senior it was really great to finish my time playing squash at Midd with our best season yet,” Captain Eva Finney ’24 wrote in a message to The Campus. “I have never been on a team that is this competitive with a group of people who still have so much fun together and make the most of everyone win and loss.”
The women’s squash team is well positioned to only improve from here next season. While they will lose captains Bardorf and Finney, as well as the recently graduated Kieran Suntha ’23.5, the roster is full of talented young players. The three players who slotted in at number one this season for the Panthers — Lindsey Burnham ’26, Izzy Ronda ’26 and Sabrina Schwarz ’27 — are all underclassmen with several years remaining to improve.
The men’s side enjoyed a similarly strong campaign, qualifying for the Hoehn Cup as the 18th ranked team. The Panthers squared off against the University of Rochester in the quarterfinals, where they fell in a 6–3 defeat. In spite of the playoff loss, captain Kian Lalji ’24 was proud of the way the team played, particularly in the first half of the season.
“This season started off really, really strong,” Lalji said. “We beat a lot of teams that were close matches in the past and we just annihilated them.”
After stringing together a six-game win streak at the start of the season, however, the squad struggled to find wins in the latter half. In late January, the 10–2 Panthers suffered their first consecutive losses of the season to MIT and Tufts University. The latter served as a wake-up call to the team, as they fell to their rivals 0–9.
“After the Tufts match, we were on the bus and we were all planning out how we were going to double session everything,” said David Zhao ’27, a first year player who started in 17 games this season.
The agony of defeat was further compounded by a fledgeling rivalry with Tufts, who have historically outranked the Panthers. A week before competing in the College Squash Association Divisional Team Championships, Middlebury met Tufts again in the quarterfinals of the NESCAC tournament. Despite a second loss, the closer score increased the team’s confidence going into the national championships.
“Our biggest driving factor was that we played Tufts the weekend before, which is a team that made it to A’s, and we lost 5–4 against them, so we were pretty confident going into the tournament,” said Charlie Clifford ’27, another of the team’s five first years.
Despite this increased confidence, the Panthers found themselves against a formidable foe in Rochester, and they ultimately lost in quarterfinal action. The team can hold their heads high despite the loss, however, as Rochester would ultimately prove to be the best team at the Hoehn Cup.
Similarly to the women’s team, there is a lot of hope for the future on the men’s side. The men will only lose three seniors for next season: captains PK Keller ’23.5 and Alex Stimpson ’23.5 graduated earlier this month, and Lalji will follow in May.
“I’m really excited for what the team can bring next year when we only lose [Keller] out of the top nine and the other two co-captains who aren’t playing top nine right now,” Lalji said. “So I think that we have a really good chance of being a strong team and a contender for doing better.”
Both men’s and women’s squash teams saw major improvements this season and could pan out to be some of Middlebury’s most exciting teams for years to come.
Managing Editor Katie Futterman ’24 contributed reporting.
Jonathan Buchholz (he/him) is a Sports Editor.
Jonathan is studying International Politics & Economics, with a focus on Mandarin. He is a member of the club rowing team, Treasurer of the Middlebury InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, is a Residential Assistant, and has a community friend. He hopes to work in public service or consulting in the future.
