ITHACA, N.Y. — The women's squash team returns to action after a five-week break for final exams and the holidays, hitting the road for the first time to play a pair of Ivy League matches this weekend in New England. Cornell starts off at noon Saturday against Yale, then heads over to Brown for a match starting at 1 p.m. Sunday.
 
Cornell (2-1, 0-1 Ivy League) opened its season with a pair of 9-0 sweeps against St. Lawrence and then against William Smith, then suffered an 8-1 loss to Columbia in its first league contest. Sophomore Sivasangari Subramaniam accounted for the lone Big Red point in the Dec. 8 match against the Lions, winning handily in three games at the No. 1 position.
 
The results leave the Big Red ninth in the College Squash Association national rankings. Yale (4-0, 1-0) sits in fourth after a clean start to its season, including a 6-3 victory over fifth-ranked Drexel on Dec. 7. The Bulldogs open play this week with a pair of non-league matches at home against Amherst and Mount Holyoke on Tuesday. Brown (0-1, 0-1) is ranked 12th, having only played once in the the fall semester – an 8-1 loss to Yale on Dec. 4. Isabel Young had the Bears' lone victory from the No. 4 position.
 
Yale's all-time record against Cornell is now 28-1, with the lone Big Red victory in the series coming on Jan. 20, 2001 in a 6-3 decision in Ithaca. The Bulldogs won last year's match, 8-1, with the point coming from Subramaniam at No. 1. In just her fourth collegiate match, she won in four against three-time All-America first team selection Lucy Beecroft. Senior Madison Miles also a win against Yale in her career, taking a match at No. 5 for the Big Red in the meeting between the programs in 2017.
 
Cornell expanded its lead in the all-time series with Brown to 14-12 after a 6-3 victory last year at Belkin International Squash Courts. The victory helped the Big Red – ranked 12th at the time – leapfrog 11th-ranked Brown in the CSA tables. The Bears entered that match having a lot of success from its bottom third of the order, but the Big Red swept those three matches – including a victory from Lucy Martin at No. 7. That match went to five games, as did Colby Gallagher's win at No. 5.
 
Saturday's match at Yale will be broadcast on ESPN3, a separate link available for each of the six courts in use at Brady Squash Center in New Haven, Connecticut.