Nov. 29, 2007
Williamstown, MA - Just before Thanksgiving break, the Stanford Women's Squash team headed east to kick off their second varsity season. The Cardinal Women finished last season ranked 12th but packed their weekend schedule with top-10 opponents. As the underdogs in all of their matches, Stanford fought hard and came away with an exciting win against Williams. Stanford's win against Williams was the first time in the history of the program that Stanford has beaten a top-10 opponent.
On Friday afternoon, the Cardinal battled against the Yale bulldogs. Facing a homecoming crowd, the Stanford women fought hard but were unable to pick up a single match, falling 9-0. Yale, ranked 4th at the end of the 2006-2007 season, proved too strong for the Cardinal and freshman Cecelia Haig was the only Stanford player to win a game. Despite being somewhat disappointed with their performance at Yale, the Stanford team regrouped and prepared for their upcoming matches against Williams and Harvard.Saturday afternoon Stanford faced off against Williams. The Cardinal fell to Williams 8-1 last year, but knew this match would be close and fought hard for their first season upset. The Cardinal came away with a difficult 5-4 victory. The match was contested on three courts, making it very exciting as all of the players and fans were aware that the match might be decided by just a few points. Numbers 9,6 and 3 took to the courts first where senior Brooksie Riley finished a quick match and secured the Cardinal's first match victory at number 6. Karrisa Hazy fought hard at 9 but fell in four close games. Tied 1 and 1, it was Stanford number 3, freshman Sam Buechner, who quickly became the star of Stanford's close victory. Buechner dropped the 1st game, but mounted a tremendous comeback winning very tight 2nd and 3rd games. Buechner then lost of the 4th game and was trailing 4-8 in the 5th before she caught her opponent off-guard and stormed back to capture the 5th game 10-8 in the tiebreak. Inspired by Buechner's amazing comeback Stanford was able to secure 3 more wins for the match victory. Cecilia Haig, Esther Cheng and Pam Sherwood all helped Stanford in their exciting upset.
On Sunday morning the Cardinal fell to Harvard 8-1. Although Stanford only picked up one match win, six Stanford players lost in tight 4 or 5 game contests making the match much closer than its 8-1 result. Early in the match it even looked as if the Cardinal might have a strong shot at victory when Katy Brewster, Cecelia Haig and Brooksie Riley all won the first games of their matches. Unfortunately they could not hold on for victory. Senior Steph Kwok played very well at number 9 and picked up the Cardinal's only match win in a decisive 3 games.
The Stanford women finished their first road trip 1-2, pleased with their close upset win over Williams. It was a good first step towards reaching their goal of competing with the top eight ranked teams in the A Division end of season Collegiate Championships in Feb. With just three weeks of practices left before the holiday break the Cardinal women are working hard to prepare for their next matches in Jan. when they travel to Maine to play Bowdoin, Bates and Dartmouth.