Northampton MA, Nov 17 2007 - 

Mt Holyoke and Wellesley face off for first place.

What do Madeleine Albright, Rachel Carson, and Hillary Rodham Clinton , all have in common? They graduated from a "women's college" , where graduates are more than twice as likely to earn doctoral and professional degrees as their peers at co-educational institutions. Despite recent rising popularity in both applications and enrollment, women’s colleges traditionally draw upon a much smaller pool of recruited athletes in all sports, including squash.

Mount Holyoke won the inaugural 2007 U.S. Women’s Collegiate Team Championship, coming out on top in the three team round robin by virtue of their 8-1 and 9-0 wins over Wellesley and Smith College at Smith College on Saturday. Wellesley clinched second place with an 8-1 win over the host team.

In welcoming participants, Smith Coach Tim Bacon said "We feel this event is very important for women's colleges. As good as Seven Sisters competition has been for us, as Sisters have moved to co-ed education, the Fairplay notion of a 'level playing field' in terms of recruited athletes has diminished somewhat for us. We have chosen Rosie the Riveter as our tournament symbol of hard work, as many of the women on our teams have not played squash prior to college, and we feel it is important to celebrate that with competition amongst like institutions." Several of the most exciting matches were amongst the extra players that the teams had brought to Northampton.

According to Bacon, 58 women’s colleges across the country had been sent invitations to Sunday’s individual event by Susan Lennon, Executive Director of the Women’s College Coalition, who is currently working on broadening the scope of the Coalition to include Athletics. Athletic Directors Laurie Priest from Mount Holyoke and Bridget Belgiovine from Wellesley traveled to the competition to support their teams.

Mount Holyoke dominated play throughout with a strong contingent of international recruits, even without their injured number one Pam Ankerman from Guatemala. With no former high school players on their roster, Smith struggled gamely to keep up. Captain Kate Whitesell, the only four-year players on the squad came out on top of a tough four-game struggle with Wellesley’s number one Sarah O’Dell. Wellesley’s lone win over Mount Holyoke came at the number eight spot, a win for Oly Fernando over Hillela Simpson in five tough games.

Smith and Wellesley face off for second place.