With the season rolling down to its last week of regular season matches, the Drexel University men’s and women’s squash teams looked to close out on a high note. With strong wins from both teams the week before, the Dragons fought to keep that fire alive through the regular season against George Washington University Feb. 9.
However, for the men’s team, this was not the case. The entire team fought hard to push out wins, but only one player was able to do so. Freshman Noel Heaton pushed his match to five games and eventually came out with the win. He lost a close first game, but after splitting the next three games, Heaton turned the final set around to win 11-6 and take the match. The rest of the team was not this lucky. Senior Ryan Leslie made his debut at the No. 7 position and played well in his match, but was unable to overcome his opponent and lost in four games. Freshman Filip Krueger didn’t start off the match very strong as he lost his first two games, but he gained some steam and won the next two games. He started the last game weak again, but was able to tie it up, 9-9. From there, he lost the next rally and GW’s Inaki DeLarruri was able to come up with the win. Freshman Matias Knudsen was up 2-1 in his match, but struggled to finish the match out as his opponent Mahmoud Abdel-Maksoud came back to win the next two sets in a row to take the match 8-11, 11-9, 4-11, 11-8, 11-7. This pattern spread to the rest of the team, and the Dragons ended up losing to GW, 8-1.
The women’s team has the exact opposite outcome. Junior Anna Hughes had an amazing match that went down to the last wire. Hughes won the first game in extra points, 13-11, but her opponent took that loss to her advantage and won the next two games. In the fourth game, down 9-6, Hughes took the next five points and the game. At the end, they were tied 8-8 before Hughes gathered the strength to pull off the win for a final score of 11-9.
The rest of the team took a similar path and won their matches. Except for senior Fiona Power, every other winner took their match in three games. The only loss for the Dragons came from sophomore Hannah Blatt at the No. 1 spot. Her opponent was very skilled and took the first two games. These losses gave Blatt the fire she needed to grab the next two games. However, she could not keep this up for the fifth game and lost the match. This was a small blip for an overall great performance from the women’s team, as they won over GW, 8-1.
The men will travel to New Haven, Connecticut, for the Men’s Team National Championships Feb. 15-17. The women will focus their attention to the Women’s Team National Championships at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, which is coming up Feb. 22-24.