Report courtesy of College Squash Association.
Harvard’s Georgina Kennedy and Victor Crouin are seeded to retain their college individual national titles this weekend, March 6-8, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
All draws, live results, and live streaming of the six main courts at Penn can be found at the Tournament Homepage. The stream on Court 1, one of the two all-glass show courts in the new facility, will also have live commentary throughout the competition.
80 women and 80 men will compete across ten 16-player divisions over the course of three days starting Friday. The top draws – Ramsay Division for the women and Pool Division for the men – will feature 16 players each vying for the national championship of college squash and All-America honors. The winners of the four Holleran and Molloy (B) Divisions for each gender will be recognized as Second Team All-America selections, along with the bottom six finishers from the Ramsay and Pool draws.
Defending champions Georgina Kennedy and Victor Crouin, both from Harvard University, have earned the top seeds in the Ramsay and Pool Division draws, respectively. Kennedy will be shooting for her third Ramsay Cup championship and fourth final to cap off her illustrious college career. Crouin, who is only a sophomore, dominated the competition this season and will look to stay on track to be the next four-time winner of the Pool Trophy.
Kennedy will meet familiar foes on her quest for the championship. Second seed Sivasangari Subramaniam from Cornell reached the final in her rookie campaign last year and is seeded to meet Kennedy for the championship again. Yale’s senior captain Lucy Beecroft and Harvard teammate Amelia Henley round out the top four seeds.
If the results from the season are any indication, the 8-versus-9 match between Stanford’s Elena Wagenmans and Columbia’s Habiba Mohamed will be a first round match to watch. Several players are making their debuts in the national championship draw, including Drexel first-year teammates Karina Tyma and Alina Bushma, the first representative from University of Virginia, Emma Jinks, and host school favorite Jessica Davis.
The Pool Division draw is incredibly deep and talented, with every player having experienced success in international competitions at either the junior and senior levels. Freshman standout Miko Aijanen from Trinity College, a steady and methodical tactician, earns the 2-seed in his debut college championship event. Egyptians Marwan Tarek (Harvard) and Youssef Ibrahim (Princeton) nab the remaining two top-four seeds in the draw.
One of the many first round matches of note pits Rochester’s Ashley Davies, last season’s top seed, against host Penn’s No. 1 Andrew Douglas. Debutants Aly Hussein and Omar El Torkey from Virginia and Veer Chotrani from Cornell will hope to channel their World Juniors experience into success at the college level. Four players from the Men’s Team Champion, Harvard, enter the draw, including Crouin, Tarek, senior Saadeldin Abouaish, and junior Samuel Scherl.
Penn’s James Flynn, Yale’s Harrison Gill, Harvard’s George Crowne, and Franklin & Marshall’s Sanjay Jeeva are the four top seeds in the Molloy (B) Division draws. The top four women in the Holleran Division draws are Yale’s Helen Teegan, Harvard’s Eleonore Evans, Trinity’s Vanessa Raj, and Princeton’s Emme Leonard.
For more coverage visit csasquash.com.
