ITHACA, N.Y. — The squash teams will return to action this weekend after a five-week hiatus from matches, resuming Ivy League play with home tilts against Brown on Saturday and Yale on Sunday at Belkin International Squash Courts. Both matches start at noon.
The Cornell women's team is not only off to a 4-0 start to the season, it has also shut out each of its opponents in those matches — No. 7 Stanford, No. 8 George Washington, No. 9 Columbia and No. 12 Williams. Those results have allowed the Big Red to hold steady at sixth in the College Squash Association national rankings. Of the Cornell's seven competitors with a 4-0 individual record, junior
Reut Odinak, senior
Lindsay Seginson and freshman
Emma Uible all have yet to drop a single set.
Eleventh-ranked Brown (1-0) hasn't been in action since Nov. 22, when it topped Wesleyan, 8-1, in its season opener. Senior Mina Shakarshy is the only returning player who finished last season individually ranked, finishing the season ranked 83rd. She played at the No. 4 position in the Bears' first match behind freshman Quincy Beck, sophomore Hannah Hay-Smith and junior Emily Richmond. Yale (2-0), which is ranked fourth in the country, has blanked No. 11 Williams and No. 13 Franklin & Marshall in its first two matches of the season. Seniors Shihui Mao and Issey Norman-Ross were ranked 18th and 19th, respectively, at the end of the last year.
The Big Red is 9-12 all-time against Brown, though it has won the last six meetings between the teams by 8-1 or 9-0 margins. Yale has won 21 of 22 meetings against Cornell, with the lone Big Red victory in the series coming on Jan. 20, 2001 in a 6-3 decision in Ithaca.
On the men's side, Cornell is 3-1 and ranked seventh in the country. The Big Red swept three matches against No. 18 Western Ontario, No. 15 Williams and No. 17 George Washington at the season-opening Cornell Round Robin. The victories — coupled with Navy's upset victory over Princeton — allowed the Big Red to move up a spot from eighth to seventh in the CSA rankings. Cornell then suffered a 7-2 loss to No. 6 Columbia in the teams' Ivy League opener on Dec. 7. The Big Red has two individuals with 4-0 records to date — senior
Aditya Jagtap, exclusively from the No. 1 position, and sophomore
Harry Freeman from positions 3, 4 and 5.
Brown (2-0) is ranked 16th in the country, while Yale (2-0) is ranked third. The Bears have topped No. 20 Wesleyan and No. 17 George Washington. No incumbent player on Brown's roster finished in the CSA national individual rankings last spring. The Bulldogs have topped No. 10 Franklin & Marshall and No. 15 Williams by a combined score of 17-1. Juniors Zach Leman (No. 30) and Sam Fenwick (No. 31) are the highest-ranked returning competitors for Yale. The Bulldogs moved up a spot in the team rankings from fourth to third after St. Lawrence toppled previous No. 1 Harvard.
Cornell is 21-9 all-time against Brown, including 9-0 victories in each of the last three seasons. The Big Red owns a 14-match winning streak in the series, dating back to a clash in the 2002 National Intercollegiate Squash Racquets Association national tournament. The Big Red is 3-53 against Yale, narrowly dropping a 5-4 decision in last season's meeting in New Haven, Conn. The Big Red topped the Bulldogs, 8-1, in the quarterfinals of the CSA's Potter Cup in 2012, which eventually powered Cornell to a program-best fourth-place finish in the national rankings that season.
