Quibell Edges Quick to win Pool
May 24 2004, Rob Dinerman, SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2004

Michell Quibell, Intercollegiate champ, beat Meredeth Quick in the trials.  photo © 2004 Debra Tessier.

Michelle Quibell and Latasha Khan won their respective round-robin pools in the second day of the U. S. women's team trials, which will conclude this afternoon. Khan defeated Louisa Hall in a hard-fought but fairly decisive four games to clinch her bracket, but the outcome of Quibell's match with Meredeth Quick quite possibly would have been reversed had the Yale sophomore and recently-crowned Intercollegiate Individual champion not secured a crucial 10-8 tiebreaker win in the second game after Quick had taken the first 9-7. Buoyed by her narrowly-gained equalizer, Quibell then romped through the third game 9-0 and maintained control pretty much throughout the 9-4 final fourth.

Khan and Quibell, the two pools winners, will now oppose each other today to decide first and second place in the overall trials competition.
Similarly, the pair of last-place pools finishers, former Harvard classmates/teammates Carlin Wing and Margaret Elias, who lost on Sunday to Lily Lorentzen and Ivy Pochoda respectively, will go head-to-head late this morning in the 7th/8th place match.

CRUCIAL CROSSOVER MATCHES
The remaining pair of today's match-ups were determined by the results of the two post-pools "crossover" matches, which were held yesterday evening.

Pochoda, whose pools five-game victory over Quick on Saturday afternoon enabled her to finish second behind Quibell in her pool, played Lorentzen, the Connecticut high-school star and newly-ensconced U. S. under-19 champion who had pushed her to five games when they met in the Nationals fifth-sixth play-off in Seattle a few months back, and this time Pochoda prevailed in straight sets.

And in the other crossover match Quick, stung by her pair of pools defeats at the hands of Pochoda and Quibell and highly motivated to retain the No. 2 standing among American women that she held going into the weekend, dominated Hall to the unexpectedly one-sided tune of 9-0, 1 and 1. The two had exchanged five-game wins in important matches earlier this season, with Hall winning in the Harvard Club of New York Invitational final January and Quick doing the same when they met in the semis of the Nationals two months later.

But this time it was all Quick, who was on fire right from the start, while Hall, who had rushed to the Greenwich Academy host site after completing her last final exam Friday afternoon, appeared mentally drained both from her match several hours earlier with Khan and by the weekend as a whole.

She will therefore face Lorentzen, whom she has defeated three times they have played this spring, including in her pools opener Saturday morning, in the fifth-place play-off, while in the third-place play-off Quick will attempt to avenge the two-day-old five-game pools defeat she suffered at the hands of Pochoda.

Shortly after the conclusion of the trials early this afternoon, the overall point scores will be computed and the names of the four top finishers will be sent to the USSRA Executive Committee, which is expected to officially confirm those four as the members of the U. S. team that will participate in the Pan American Federation Cup next month and try to defend the Pan American Games gold medal won by the Americans last summer.

SUNDAY RECAP

Pools:

Latasha Khan d Louisa Hall, 3-1; Lily Lorentzen d Carlin Wing, 3-0; Ivy Pochoda d Margaret Elias, 3-1; Michelle Quibell d Meredeth Quick., 3-1.

Crossover Matches:

Pochoda d Lorentzen, 3-0; Quick d Hall, 3-0.

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