January 7th
- Middlebury College, hopeful that their newly appointed
Coach, John Illig, could bring to their teams the same laid-back
enthusiasm and nose for success that he had already displayed
over several seasons at Bates College, were rewarded with
their first concrete win, as the Middlebury women came away
with the "B" trophy
in a five-team field, with Dartmouth collecting the "A" trophy.
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| Harvard's
Diana Willson
(photo © 2007 Chris Smith) |
The first ever CSA five Women Team Championship
took place this past weekend at Williams College in Williamstown
MA. This event arose from the imbalance in the college schedules
created by the US Squash - run Men's five man team tournament,
heavily populated with CSA men's teams and traditionally
held in mid December.
Zafy Levy, Williams College Coach,
provided the venue, obtained a hotel sponsor, Orchards Hotel,
and recruited the teams, to launch this event. In
all, ten five-person teams traveled to
Williamstown.
Coach Levy commented, "it was my dream to get this event
off the ground for 3 years now, I am so happy we did it and
the feedback we received from all the coaches was fantastic.
We had a highly competitive field with Harvard, Dartmouth
Williams and Bowdoin leading the field of the A division.
The B Division was a huge success of close battled matches. We
look forward to hosting this event again next year and we
are aiming for 20 teams in 4 divisions” .
With the teams fresh off their Christmas break, Saturday
morning kicked off two days of squash in the packed Simon
Squash Center. Ten
teams representing six schools entered the event.
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| Dartmouth's Toby Eyre (photo © 2007
Chris Smith) |
The
B Draw featured Williams III, Amherst I, Amherst II, Bowdoin
II, and Middlebury. Playing
a round robin format, Middlebury stormed through the draw
winning each matches by identical 4-1 scorelines. Middlebury
demonstrated mid-season form as they
worked through their opponents all weekend. Williams
III came in second, followed by Amherst I + II, and Bowdoin
II.
In the A Draw, the teams were: Williams I, Williams II, Harvard,
Dartmouth, and Bowdoin I. The teams had traveled with
" balanced rosters" made up of players from various positions
in their lineups and creating opportunities for players to
get matches they normally wouldn't in dual match play. Saturday,
each team played two matches and the tournament looked to
be all Dartmouth as they took care of Harvard and Williams
II. In
the last match of the day, Williams I played spoiler and
took Dartmouth 3-2 to put Harvard and Dartmouth into a tie
each with 3 wins and 1 loss.
In the tie-break, both
teams had an identical record of individual wins over the
weekend with 12 each. So the tie break went to Dartmouth
as they had beaten Harvard head-to-head on Saturday.
Teams enjoyed a wonderful winter weekend in the snowy Berkshires
as well as great squash.
2008 A Division Champs: Dartmouth
2008 B Division Champs: Middlebury
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