The women’s squash team fell to Amherst in the C Division finals of the College Squash Association National Tournament at Harvard last weekend. The Polar Bears were competing in the Walker Cup, which consists of teams ranked from 17 to 24 in the country. Bowdoin concluded its season with a 10-12 record.
Going into Nationals, the team was focused on improving on its performance at the NESCAC Championships, where it placed seventh.
“Our goals going into Nationals were trying to work on what we were doing in practice—things like serve and returns and being more confident in our abilities as a team as a whole and making sure we kept calm and focused,” said Alden Drake ’15.
On Friday, No. 19 Bowdoin beat No. 22 Wesleyan 8-1. Bowdoin had previously beaten Wesleyan in a tightly contested 5-4 match during the regular season. Drake, Torey Lee ’15, Tully Ross ’18, Diya Chopra ’18, Sara Wlodarczyk ’15, Chloe Polikoff ’17 and Emily Simonton ’15 all cruised to 3-0 victories. Alex Moreno ’18 won 3-1.
“Team dynamics were really good going in,” Chopra said. “We were really focused and we had practiced hard the week before.”
“We were pumped about the weekend,” Drake said. “It really came out in that match. People were fighting really hard. They were going for every point and every ball. There was a different kind of energy that was present in that match. We couldn’t have been prouder of that performance.”
The following day, Bowdoin beat No. 18 Hamilton 6-3 in the semifinal. The Polar Bears lost to Hamilton 6-3 in a consolation round of this year’s NESCAC Championships.
“It was huge that we refocused and came together to figure out what we had done wrong and then to knock them out of the semifinals,” Drake said. “They were ranked above us, and we weren’t supposed to win that match, and we ended up winning. That invokes everything we had been trying to work on over the season.”
Sarah Nelson ’17 and Polikoff both won their respective matches in five games. Ross, Chopra and Simonton claimed 3-0 wins, and Wlodarczyk won 3-1.
Bowdoin lost to No. 17 Amherst 6-3 in the season in January but had hopes of an upset victory in the cup final. On Sunday, Lee and Chopra earned 3-0 victories, and Nelson won 3-2. However, no other Polar Bears were able to win and Bowdoin lost the contest 6-3.
“We really grew as a team,” Chopra said. “When we initially started, we played some really tough teams. When we started practicing a lot more, our goal was focusing on Nationals, and I think we did a really great job to reach the finals. Even though it didn’t work out in the finals, it was a good point to reach.”