STAFF WRITER
On a weekend packed with matches, the Fordham squash team had a great opportunity to show its skill. Overall, the weekend proved to be a success. The Rams split their four matches while playing well throughout.
Saturday brought the Bard Round Robin, an event where Fordham faced three familiar opponents. Bard and Siena were easy competition for the men in maroon, but facing Swarthmore was a much more formidable task. Fordham swept Bard, and the Rams only lost one game the entire matchup. Fordham’s No. 4 player, freshman Jimmy Shinnick, was defeated in the second game of his match against Bard. He came back to win the next two and take the set 3-1. Every other player overmatched his Bard counterpart in three games.
With a 9-0 victory already under its belt, Fordham sought continued dominance over Swarthmore. Although it was a closely contested battle, the Rams were ultimately defeated 4-5. After losing to his challenger in the first game, No. 1 Kincade Webster stepped up and rallied to win his next three games 11-7, 12-10 and 11-7. No. 2 sophomore Jeremy Keller struck for a three game sweep of his opponent. No. 3 and No. 4 for the Rams, sophomore Paul Monaghan and Shinnick respectively, each fought valiantly but fell short in five games. Monaghan’s loss was especially bitter after leading by two games and then not being able to finish off Swarthmore’s player. The last three games of his match, 11-8, 11-9, 13-11, were close but not enough in the end. After capturing games two and four, game five was knotted at 10 points for Shinnick. He dropped the next two points and thus the match.
With the top four players splitting, Fordham’s other players would need to be precise. No. 5 and No. 6 for Fordham, juniors Ross Garlick and Carlos Ortiz, both went down, but sophomore Matthew Crowe returned from losing his first two games to become victorious in the seventh spot. At the eighth position, senior Raymond Chen came up short in four games, after an extended 15-13 third game. No. 9, sophomore James Potts, swept his three games, but Fordham came just shy, losing to Swarthmore 4-5.
“It was a tough loss,” Potts said of his team’s defeat. “We could have won. We should have put a few matches away, and we could’ve [won].”
Fortunately, Fordham bounced back against Siena and completed its second sweep of the day. Eight of the nine players won their individual matches using just the minimum three games.
The Rams came back home to play NYU on Sunday for their first home match of the season. Initially a very competitive match, Fordham became unwound by the consistent, tough fight put up by the Bobcats. The match seemed much closer than the final score of 8-1 would suggest. The one bright spot for Fordham was Monaghan’s strong play; he dominated in his three games. In a set tied at 1-1, Ortiz overturned a 9-7 deficit and by scoring the next four points, took the victory 11-9. During the forced fifth game, Ortiz and the NYU player battled fiercely, but Ortiz did not have enough to go home victorious.