Harvard Win Fourth Consecutive Howe Cup

Harvard’s pulled off a fourth consecutive undefeated season culminating in a fourth Howe Cup. (image: Michael T. Bello/mtbello.com)

The Harvard women’s squash team completed an undefeated season by claiming a fourth consecutive Howe Cup Sunday at Harvard’s Murr Squash Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Crimson entered the 2018 College Women’s Team Championships with a fifty match unbeaten streak, spanning back to their 2014 Howe Cup final loss against Trinity.

Harvard reached the final courtesy of two 9-0 victories against Cornell in the quarterfinals and Yale in the semifinals.

The bottom half of the draw provided a surprise as three seeds Trinity upset two seeds Princeton in the semifinal to reach their first Howe Cup final since their 2014 triumph.

In the final, Harvard emphatically completed a perfect tournament, winning in all nine positions. The Crimson’s fourth consecutive Howe Cup the program’s eighteenth, more than any other program in history.

With the victory, head coach Mike Way becomes the first active college women’s team coach to win a sixth national title.

In the Kurtz Cup (B Division), Drexel avenged their 2017 Kurtz Cup loss against Dartmouth, winning the final rematch 6-3 to claim the Dragons’ first B divisional title.

Bates won their first college women’s team nationals titles since the 2006 Kurtz Cup with a surprise title run in the Walker Cup (C Division). Bates, the three seeds, upset two seeds Tufts in the semifinals 7-2, and pulled off another 7-2 victory in the final against top seeds Dickinson.

Forty-two programs competed across five divisions—Howe Cup (A), Kurtz Cup (B), Walker Cup (C), Epps Cup (D) and the Emerging Division—at Harvard University and MIT.

View all results here. For more tournament coverage visit csasquash.com.

Watch live stream replays below.