ITHACA, N.Y. — The men's and women's squash teams open the home and Ivy League portions of their schedules this weekend, hosting Columbia and St. Lawrence on Saturday after the men play host to Western Ontario the previous evening.
The Big Red men's team is 2-0 and ranked sixth in the latest College Squash Association rankings after a pair of convincing 9-0 victories against Williams and Middlebury two weeks ago at the Williams Round Robin. The seventh-ranked Cornell women's squad won three straight at the season-opening event against Middlebury, Williams and Mount Holyoke after a loss to No. 6 Stanford in the opener.
Eleventh-ranked Western Ontario visits at 5:30 p.m. Friday, only bringing its men's team. The Mustangs won the Hoehn Cup at the College Squash Association Championships last March, which is a second-flight title essentially boiling down to ninth place. Western Ontario is 3-0 in CSA competition with victories over Northwestern, Kenyon and Denison.
Columbia will be making its first trip to the Belkin International Squash Courts in the second year of the school's squash programs. The Lions played a non-league schedule in 2010-11. The match will kick off the Ivy League schedule for both Big Red teams at 11 a.m. Saturday. Columbia's women's team is ranked 16th, though the teams are familiar with each other after tangling at the Ivy League Scrimmages on Nov. 12. The men's team is ranked 20th and hasn't played an official match yet. The Lions lost all three of their matches to Yale, Dartmouth and Brown at the Ivy League Scrimmages
A little later Saturday, the Big Red will take on St. Lawrence in non-league matches. The Saints' women's team arrives on the heels of a 9-0 victory over William Smith, lifting the team to 27th in the rankings. The Big Red won the teams' last meeting on Feb. 6, 2010 with a 9-0 sweep. The St. Lawrence men are ranked 12th with a 3-1 record. The Saints' one loss was a tight 5-4 affair with No. 4 Rochester, in which all of St. Lawrence's points came from the bottom portion of the lineup.
