PHILADELPHIA – The Cornell women's squash program has seen some incredible talent over its 26 years with 20 All-America selections and two four-time All-Americans in Olga Puigdemont '02 and Danielle Letourneau '15. But on Sunday, senior Sivasangari Subramaniam added a new milestone to Big Red squash history – an individual national championship.
 
Subramaniam completed a perfect season at a record of 19-0 with a dramatic victory over Harvard's Hana Moataz in the finals of the College Squash Association National Collegiate Individual Championships at Arlen Specter US Squash Center. Just as when the two clashed during their respective teams' annual dual match earlier this season, Sunday's match went the maximum five games before Subramaniam ultimately prevailed, 11-4, 2-11, 11-9, 12-14, 11-7.
 
"We knew it would be a hard match going into the final," said David Palmer, who has now completed five season as the James Broadhead '57 Head Coach of Squash at Cornell. "Siva started fantastically and totally dominated the first game. Then Hana stepped up in the next games with some powerful hitting, and the two of them were having some great rallies."
 
Adding to the intrigue was the familiarity the foes had with each other. While Subramaniam took the college squash world by storm with a midseason arrival during a freshman season that saw her advance all the way to this very same championship match in 2019, she was unable to get back to the finals in 2020 because of a loss to Moataz in the semifinals.
 
More recently, Moataz was among the select few legitimate challengers for Subramaniam this season. Of her 19 victories on the year, Subramaniam only needed more than the minimum three games in three of them – two against Moataz. While one those occasions was on Sunday, it didn't look like it would even get that far with Subramaniam serving for the match at 10-7 in the fourth game. But Moataz rallied to win the game, 14-12, to force Subramaniam to regroup before the winner-take-all fifth.
 
"In the fifth game, Siva really worked her all over the court, and we could see Hana starting to get tired," Palmer said ."That's when Siva slowed the pace and exposed her slow movements with some great angles to win points, and this time she converted the championship point. We were really proud of how Siva kept her mental strength in the fifth. That made the difference in the end."
 
There were 80 qualifiers for the CSA National Collegiate Individual Championships, broken into five draws. The top 16 entries were grouped together in the Ramsay Cup bracket, including Subramaniam and her teammate, sophomore Wen Li Lai. While Lai was eliminated by Moataz in the quarterfinals, her first-round victory on Friday guarantees her a spot on the CSA All-America first team – giving the Big Red two selections to that elite group of 10 in the same season for the first time in program history.
 
"We are very happy for Siva, the team and the program overall, and this result will help us continue to build the program," Palmer said.

CSA National Collegiate Individual Championships

Sivasangari Subramaniam
Ramsay Cup bracket

• Round of 16 (12:05 p.m. Friday): def. Andrea Lee (Colby), 11-3, 11-4, 11-2
• Quarterfinals (6 p.m. Friday): def. Alina Bushma (Drexel), 11-7, 11-5, 11-4
• Semifinals (2 p.m. Saturday): def. Marina Stefanoni (Harvard), 11-5, 12-10, 11-9
• Championship (1:15 p.m. Sunday): vs. Hana Moataz (Harvard)

Wen Li Lai
Ramsay Cup bracket

• Round of 16 (1:45 p.m. Friday): def. Jana Safy (Trinity), 11-8, 11-4,
• Quarterfinals (7:45 p.m. Friday): lost to Hana Moataz (Harvard), 11-6, 11-4, 11-7