Trinity Women's Squash Heads To Princeton For Howe Cup National Championships This Weekend by David Kingsley February 22, 2017 Hartford, Conn.
- The Trinity College women's squash team, which has an 14-2 record
after closing the 2016-17 regular season with a convincing 8-1 win
against Princeton on Saturday, will vie for a fourth national title in
the College Squash Association (CSA) National Team Championship (Howe
Cup) title this weekend at Princeton University. The three-day event
will take place from Friday, February 24 to Sunday, February 26. The
Bantams, which earned their 11th-straight New England Small College
Athletic Conference (NESCAC) crown earlier this month, are the No. 3
seed in the field and will open post-season play against the No.
6-seeded Stanford University Cardinal (6-6) on Friday, February 24 at
2:30 p.m.
The Bantams, coached by Wendy Bartlett (33rd season, 389-105), will
face the winner of Friday's match featuring No. 2-seeded Pennsylvania
and No. 7-seeded Cornell in the CSA Semifinals on Saturday, February 25
at 2:20 p.m. if they win against Stanford, and the CSA Finals will take
place on Sunday, February 26 at 2 p.m. The Howe Cup consists of
the top eight teams in intercollegiate squash in a three-round, single
elimination tournament. The other CSA Quarterfinal matches are
top-seeded Harvard against No. 8-seeded Columbia, and No. 4-seeded
Princeton against No. 5-seeded Yale. Trinity, which blanked
Stanford, 9-0, on January 28, earned previous Howe Cup titles in 2002,
2003, and 2014. The Bantams came in third in the Howe Cup last
year after appearing in the previous three Howe Cup Finals, and posted
a 5-4 win over Harvard to win the CSA National title in 2014 at
Princeton.
Trinity has a combined individual match record of 123-21 in its 16
matches this year, including wins over five of the eight teams in the
tournament. First-year Vanessa Raj (Telek Kumbar, Malaysia) leads
the Bantams with a 15-1 record, while sophomore Jenny Haley (Newport,
Wales) is 14-1, and rookie Lakeesha Rarere (Gold Coast, Australia) is
12-1. Senior co-captain Anna Kimberley (Colchester, England) and junior
Raneem Sharaf (Giza, Egypt) are both 12-2 predominantly at the No. 2
and No. 1 spots on the ladder, respectively, while junior Julia LeCoq
(Creteil, France) and first-year Salma Alam El Din (Cairo, Egypt) are
both 14-2 in the middle of the lineup, and juniors Salma El Defrawy
(Cairo, Egypt) and Karolina Holinkova (Prague, Czech Republic) have
combined to go 16-4 since returning from a semester abroad in
January.
