ITHACA, N.Y. — The women's squash team will compete in its biggest weekend of competition to date, hosting Franklin & Marshall at 6 p.m. Friday before taking to New York for Sunday matches against Columbia and Stanford — the two teams directly ahead of the Big Red in the College Squash Association's national rankings.
 
Now at the midway point of its season, Cornell (5-2, 1-1 Ivy League) continues to be ranked eighth by the CSA. Juniors Margaux Losty and Emma Uible are tied for the team lead in victories with five, and sophomore Lauren Leizman is unbeaten in three matches. The Big Red took two of three matches last weekend with convincing victories over Drexel and George Washington. While no match yet this season has been closer than the 7-2 affair against 10th-ranked Brown, recent history hints at the possibility of that trend discontinuing.
 
First up for the Big Red is its penultimate home match of the season against Franklin & Marshall (5-10), which fell three spots to 16th in the rankings following a 6-3 loss last Saturday against Bates. F&M has been strong at the top of its lineup this year, with Fiona Murphy boasting an 8-3 record from the No. 1 position and Sheriyln Yang recorded a team-best nine victories from the No. 2 spot. Both competitors are on four-match winning streaks. Cornell has won its last 11 matches against the Diplomats. The match at Belkin International Squash Courts is free to attend and open to the public.
 
Cornell will then travel to SL Green StreetSquash for a pair of pivotal Sunday matches. Columbia (4-3, 1-1) remains one spot ahead of Cornell at seventh in the national rankings, staving off Brown and losing to sixth-ranked Yale last weekend. Cornell, however, won the last meetings between the two squads, 6-3, in the seventh-place match of the Howe Cup last year. That victory bumped the Big Red back up to seventh in the year-end rankings, only to have the CSA coaches' vote for the preseason rankings put Columbia back ahead to start this year. The top portion of the Lions' lineup has not wavered to date, with Maddie O'Connor going 5-2 from No. 2 and Colette Sultana 6-1 from the No. 4 position. Cornell is 5-1 all-time against Columbia's young program, with the Lions' lone victory coming by a slim 5-4 margin during the regular season last year.
 
Though not in the same league, Cornell and Stanford have engaged in some of the Big Red's biggest matches over recent seasons. They have traditionally been neighbors in the national rankings —
Cornell at No. 6 and Stanford at No. 7 from 2012 until the waning weeks of the 2014-15 season. Stanford (3-4) lost all three of its rare home matches last week, though against stiff competition like No. 1 Harvard and No. 2 Penn. The third loss was by a score of 5-4 against Yale, which moved the Bulldogs up to fifth in the rankings and the Cardinal down to sixth. Cornell is 11-4 all-time against Stanford, though the Cardinal ended a six-match losing streak to Cornell with a 6-3 win during last year's Yale Round Robin.