On Sunday, the Middlebury College women’s squash team defeated Williams College for the second time in a seven days, shredding any doubt that the Panthers’ 6-3 victory over the Ephs in the NESCAC Team Championships two weeks ago was, in fact, an upset. By a narrow 5-4 margin, Middlebury eclipsed Williams last weekend in a match that came down to the wire, a treat for the hometown Panther fans.
Playing in its third home match of the season, the women’s team provided a showcase of clutch performances in front on a roaring crowd in the Bubble. Before tallying the fifth and decisive win, however, the women needed to overcome early setbacks of the order not experienced in the team’s previous win over Williams.
For the match, which began simultaneously with the men’s team’s match against Williams, Middlebury coach John Illig elected to use the College’s five courts in a variation of the three-court match play system. In playing two separate matches (men’s and women’s) according to the three-court rubric, Illig necessarily staggered the start times of the men’s and women’s numbers seven, eight, and nine. The architecture of Sunday’s match was different from the five-court format at the NESCAC Team Championships. It would take longer for the Panthers to record five match victories as a result.
First on court for Middlebury were Virginia Shannon ’11, Lindsay Becker ’13 and Katie Yates ’14, playing numbers three, six and nine, respectively. For the second time in a week, Shannon suffered a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Alli Rubin while first-year Yates once again notched a victory for the Panthers by a 3-0 margin, an improvement on her 3-1 victory in the players’ previous meeting two weekends ago.
Though the first two matches completed yielded results virtually identical from the teams’ previous matchup, Becker’s match ended with a dramatically different result. After beating Williams’ number six in a close five-game match in their first meeting, Becker fell to Kavitha Mannava in three games on Sunday. Following the first round of matches, Williams held a 2-1 advantage over Middlebury.
Abby Jenkins ’14, Molly Hubbard ’13 and Annie Ulrich ’13 took to the courts next at numbers two, five, and eight, respectively. Due to the aforementioned space restrictions, however, Ulrich needed to wait for the completion of the men’s number nine match before beginning her match.
Although Jenkins suffered a 3-0 loss, sending two games into win-by-two tiebreakers, Hubbard secured a second victory for the Panthers with a grueling five-game marathon match. Trailing two games to one, Hubbard rallied to a stunning 12-10 victory in the fourth game, sending the match to a decisive fifth game, which she won 11-6 over Hannah Kaemmer from Williams.
“The match was so close at that point and we were almost in a position where we needed to win all of the remaining matches,” said Shannon. “Molly’s match re-energized our team at a crucial moment and set the stage for our remaining victories.”
It did not take long to realize that Shannon’s statement was all too true. Shortly after Hubbard secured the Panthers’ second victory, Ulrich notched a four-game win at number eight in which she won the second game 12-10 after trailing 4-10 and having lost the first game. Ulrich’s effort received less attention than it probably should have, however, as a loss in the second game of her match would have made a victory at the number eight position extremely difficult. Coming back to win a match after trailing two games to zero — “love” in squash lexicon — is as rare as it is both physically and mentally taxing. Overcoming a six-point deficit when an opponent is just one point from winning a game is almost unheard of in squash.
With the final round of matches set to begin, Elena Laird ’11.5, Kathryn Bostwick ’12 and Amanda Chen ’14 needed to combine for two victories at their positions, numbers one, four, and seven, respectively, for the Panthers to win.
As Bostwick battled to a 3-1 victory, Laird played valiantly but lost by the same margin and with the overall match now tied 4-4, first-year Chen would once again play a decisive role in the newfound Middlebury-Williams women’s squash rivalry.
Ahead two games to love, Chen nearly sealed the match for Middlebury with a 10-9 match point in the third game. A combination of an unreachable lob by her Williams opponent and perhaps some rookie nerves undid Chen’s bid for a clean sweep as Eliana Saltzman, her opponent, took the game 12-10.
The match’s third and fourth games reflected a competitiveness lacking in the first two games, which Chen won easily, 11-6 and 11-1, respectively. In a back-and-forth battle, the Middlebury first-year finally heard the crowd in the Bubble exhale collectively, winning the decisive fourth game 11-9. As she left the court, Chen’s teammates swarmed her in a group hug not seen in the Bubble in years.
“I felt relieved and happy [after the match]” Chen said. “I felt a lot of pressure during the match but I didn’t want to show it. Ultimately, we established that we can beat Williams and I was happy to be a part of the win.”
Chen’s teammates were equally thrilled with the unprecedented victory. “The depth of our team was critical in the overall win against Williams,” Shannon observed. “Without winning the top positions, we proved that we can get wins from anywhere on the ladder.”
The Panthers will head to Princeton, NJ, this weekend to compete in the National Championship’s B-Flight. Tenth-ranked Middlebury will likely face #15 Mount Holyoke College, a team the women beat 7-2 in January.
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