5-Women Team Event Debuts at Williams
Dartmouth & Middlebury Win Inaugural Team Event
By www.squashtalk.com, © 2007 SquashTalk.com
all electronic and print rights reserved.
Pioneering "5-Women" Team Event Takes Place
January 7th - Middlebury College, hopeful that their newly
appointed Coach, John Illig, could bring to their teams the same
laid-back enthusiasm and nose for success that he had already
displayed over several seasons at Bates College, were rewarded with
their first concrete win, as the Middlebury women came away with
the "B" trophy in a five-team field, with Dartmouth collecting the
"A" trophy.
The first ever CSA five Women Team Championship took place this
past weekend at Williams College in Williamstown MA. This event
arose from the imbalance in the college schedules created by the US
Squash - run Men's five man team tournament, heavily populated with
CSA men's teams and traditionally held in mid December.
Zafy Levy, Williams College Coach, provided the venue, obtained a
hotel sponsor, Orchards Hotel, and recruited the teams, to launch
this event. In all, ten five-person teams traveled to
Williamstown.
Coach Levy commented, "it was my dream to get this event off the
ground for 3 years now, I am so happy we did it and the feedback we
received from all the coaches was fantastic. We had a highly
competitive field with Harvard, Dartmouth Williams and Bowdoin
leading the field of the A division. The B Division was a huge
success of close battled matches. We look forward to hosting
this event again next year and we are aiming for 20 teams in 4
division."
With the teams fresh off their Christmas break, Saturday morning
kicked off two days of squash in the packed Simon Squash
Center. Ten teams representing six schools entered the
event.
The B Draw featured Williams III, Amherst I, Amherst II, Bowdoin
II, and Middlebury. Playing a round robin format, Middlebury
stormed through the draw winning each matches by identical 4-1
scorelines. Middlebury demonstrated mid-season form as they
worked through their opponents all weekend. Williams III came
in second, followed by Amherst I + II, and Bowdoin II.
In the A Draw, the teams were: Williams I, Williams II, Harvard,
Dartmouth, and Bowdoin I. The teams had traveled with "
balanced rosters" made up of players from various positions in
their lineups and creating opportunities for players to get matches
they normally wouldn't in dual match play. Saturday, each
team played two matches and the tournament looked to be all
Dartmouth as they took care of Harvard and Williams II. In
the last match of the day, Williams I played spoiler and took
Dartmouth 3-2 to put Harvard and Dartmouth into a tie each with 3
wins and 1 loss.
In the tie-break, both teams had an identical record of individual
wins over the weekend with 12 each. So the tie break went to
Dartmouth as they had beaten Harvard head-to-head on Saturday.
Teams enjoyed a wonderful winter weekend in the snowy Berkshires
as well as great squash.
2008 A Division Champs: Dartmouth
2008 B Division Champs: Middlebury
"It was a great opportunity for us to have our players play
against stronger opponents so they can improve their level of
play," said Eph coach Zafi Levy. "The bottom of our line up is very
young and they played very well this weekend and made an impressive
improvement. We look forward to playing this weekend in Maine
against very strong Bowdoin and Bates sides."
The Ephs mixed up their lineups this weekend in creating two
5-person teams.
Williams results:
Division A
Williams 1 -- lost to Bowdoin -- 3-2
Williams 1 -- lost to Harvard -- 3-2
Williams 1 -- beat Dartmouth -- 4-1
Division B
Williams 2 -- beat Amherst 1 -- 4-1
Williams 2 -- beat Amherst 2 -- 4-1
Williams 2 -- lost to Middlebury -- 4-1
Williams 2 -- lost to Bowdoin -- 3-2
Thanks to Ron Beck and squashalk.com for sharing information
contained in this article.
