(updated 28-feb-09 23:29 )

The National Individual Squash Championships in Williamstown reached a high point Saturday night, with semi finals contests in both men's and women's competition.

In contrast to the quarterfinals, earlier in the afternoon (see report) this time it was the men's competition which provided the most compelling match.

BAGHAT AND LANGE DISPLAY VERSATILITY
In the women's semi final, first on court were Trinity's Nour Baghat against Yale's Logan Greer. Greer had pushed Baghat to a long and close five games during the regular season, and she and her supporters fully expected her to do it again. The expressive Egyptian Baghat had other plans in mind for the evening.

With the semi final stages refereed by non-players, in this case it was Princeton's assistant coach Richard Hankinson who handled the chore, Baghat's normal on-court activities were held closely in check. Once Baghat discovered this to be the case, she buckled down to just squash. If anything, this increased her intensity and level of play. And no matter what Greer threw at her (and her coaches had a few strategies in mind to get at Baghat's perceived weaknesses) it failed to dent Baghat's level of play, explosive speed, rapid changes of pace, misdirection shots, power when needed and defense when forced. In short, Logan Greer, who was playing well, forced Baghat to raise her level of play. Baghat raised it to the extent that her mastery of Greer was almost breathtaking. While the six total points that Baghat gave up over three games was not indictave of the extent to which Greer actually pressed Baghat and forced her to scramble and improvise, scramble and improvise Baghad did, and the speedy Baghat did so with flair and poise.

The second semi final saw Penn's Kristen Lange facing Williamstown's home town star, Toby Eyre. Eyre, who had put a fairly complete game on display in her quarterfinal against Princeton's Neha Kumar, had none of that in evidence in the semi final. Lange, whose game against Eyre could be best described as efficient, was not in the mood to unleash Eyre's ability to move the court, move the ball and put on pace. Lange used her pinpoint accuracy, crisp hitting, pace, ability to completely anticipate and ability to dictate the pace and the movement, to fully hamstring Eyre. As the English say, it was a "comprehensive win".

OTHER WOMEN'S HIGHLIGHTS
In the Holleran (second women's division), of note was the quarterfinal matchup between first seed Robyn Williams of Trinity and seventh seed Charlotte Steel of Brown. The third game was gripping drama, with Williams just barely prevailing in the game 10-8 and the match, while suffering apparent knee woes twice during the final game. Thus closed the career of the well-liked Steel, an anchor of the Brown lineup.

Of note in the consolation draws, in the women's Ramsay second-round losers draw, fifth ranked and seeded Amanda Siebert was ousted in the draw's semi final by Alisha Madruswala in five long games. Madruswala, who plays in the fourth position on Harvard's team thus defeated Princeton's #1 player, a landmark win for Madruswala. Siebert who battled back in the fourth, had no answer in the fifth for Madruswala, who rose to the occasion with touch and misdirection shots in the final stanza.

And so the action turned to the men's semi-finals.

The first semi was an intramural affair between two Trinity players - their number one player and defending individuals champion, Baset Chaudhry, and their current number eight player, newcomer Vikram Malhotra. Malhotra displays immense talent, to the extent that he shows almost complete disregard for any normal semi-conservative strategies, instead going for an undisciplined all-court attacking game at all times. Faced with the mature court control of Chaudhry's game, Malhotra was left in a completely reactive mode. Chaurdry simply stepped up and kept Malhotra on the move, an approach Malhotra's victims in the earlier rounds of the tournament would do well to study. So despite a lot of excitement created during each point, it was Chaudhry who won most of them and advanced to the finals.

WORTH THE WAIT
Which brought us to the last match of the evening, and it was worth the wait. This match pitted Harvard's Colin West and Princeton's Mauricio Sanchez. This match had only come about because of an unusual adjustment made to the already completed and posted draw, after the second round of play (!) A crash meeting of the coaches tournament committee had determined that the third and fourth seeds had been wrongly reversed in the draw, and the change was made in mid tournament --- which led to the intramural Trinity match as well as the West - Sanchez battle.

Colin West came out completely on fire. While Mauricio Sanchez was playing a basic game, trying to work himself into the match, West gave him no time to do so. West combined an immediate, repeated and devastating attack on the front, especially the front backhand corner, with an extremely accurate length game that apparently caught Mauricio quite off guard. It seemed that no matter what Sanchez did, West was going to attack the front on the backhand. And then every time Sanchez tried to take it to the forehand, when his accuracy wasn't perfect (which it wasn't) West would attack to the forehand front, putting Sanchez under even more pressure.

The result was a long a well played first game, with almost no errors from either player but with almost all the winners from West, with West winning the first game 9-3.

Everyone expected Sanchez to come storming out into game two. But again, West didn't give him a chance. Sanchez had increased his work level and intensity, but with West's continued focus and attack, he built an 8-0 lead in the second. The situation seemed dire for Sanchez. One tin changed everything. At 8-0 and with the serve, West worked Sanchez out of position but then tinned the winning short shot on the forehand side. That gave Mauricio back the serve and some life.

Mauricio worked and worked and got it back to 6-8, during a stretch when all of a sudden some chinks in West's armor were appearing. A loose shot here and and there, an error here and there, gave Sanchez reason to have hope and confidence.

And though, after a few exchanges of serve at 8-6 in the second, West took the game and the 2-0 lead on a terrific attacking shot, the momentum shift had happened.

A COMEBACK IS BUILT
Sanchez came out in the the third with all the momentum and energy on his side. He ran through West in the third and then the fourth. The difference in these two games was almost not a single severe attack from West, at the level he had produced in the first two games, combined with heightened awareness from Sanchez so that each attack that did occur was immediately countered by Mauricio.

Also, Sanchez now knew that West was after the front court attack, so each opening that West offered, Sanchez was no longer squandering, producing some pinpoint drops of his own to give West further fits.

Which brought us to two games each.

Sanchez started quickly again inthe fifth, building a 3-0 lead. But suddenly West seemed to have collected himself in a "second wind" and reeled off a series of fine shot, vintage game one, that evened things at 3-3.

With the score knotted at three, West's elbow suddenly developed a cut.

A break was required to bandage West's bleeding elbow.

And though after the forced break, West was able to win the next point, and take a 4-3 lead, that was all she wrote. West was tired, Sanchez was sensing it. And with the moments collecting his thoughts conveniently provided, Sanchez didn't waste a move, quickly forcing several strokes against the tiring West and closing a wonderful comeback and a wonderful match to set up his third meeting in three weeks with Baset Chaudhry. They stand one win each this season. And in their last meeting, as you will recall, Sanchez held a 5-0 lead against Chaudhry with the national team championship at stake. Of course on that occasion he could n't hold that lead.

The Williamstown audience will see what will develop tomorrow in the final chapter of this particular collegiate rivalry.

Men's "A" Potter	Women's "A" Ramsay
Men's "B" Malloy	Women's "B" Holleran
Men's A Potter Consolation	Women's A Ramsay Consolation
Men's A Potter 2nd Round Consolation	Women's A Ramsay 2nd Round Consolation
Men's B Malloy Consolation	Women's B Holleran Consolation
Men's B Malloy 2nd Round Consolation	Women's B Holleran 2nd Round Consolation
Men's B Malloy 3rd Round Consolation	Women's B Holleran 3rd Round Consolation

 

 

 

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