Top Jeffs Compete At CSA Individual Championships

March 6, 2006

AMHERST, MA – Amherst College hosted the College Squash Association (CSA) Men’s and Women’s Individual Championships this weekend at Davenport Courts, where junior Caroline Shannon (Hanover, NH) reached the semifinals of the Holleran Division Consolation bracket, before falling to eventual champion Arianna Kourides of Williams College.

Junior Emily O’Brien (New Canaan, CT) and sophomore Libby Martin (St. Louis, MO) joined Shannon in the Holleran Division, for players ranked 33rd to 64th nationally. All three dropped their first round matches, as Shannon suffered a 3-0 loss to Bates’ Kelsey Engman, O’Brien was edged 3-2 by Kendell Anders of Denison University, and Martin fell 3-0 to eventual Holleran Division champion Caitlin Russell of the University of Pennsylvania, 3-0. Shannon rebounded to hand Jackie Desher of Bowdoin College a 3-0 first-round defeat in the consolation bracket, and then downed another Bobcat, as she came back from a 2-0 deficit to take a quarterfinal win over Bates’ Charlotte Gerrish. Shannon snatched a game from Kourides in the semifinal round but settled for a 3-1 defeat. O’Brien dropped her consolation first-round match to Gerrish, 3-0, while Martin surrendered to Middlebury’s Hannah Baker, the Holleran consolation runner-up.

For the men’s team, junior tri-captain Auloke Mathur (Mumbai, India) and rookie phenom Drew Blacker (Summit, NJ) both competed in the Molloy Division, for players ranked 33rd to 64th nationally. Blacker handily defeated his first-round opponent, Williams’ Tyler Kyle, to move on to the Round of 16, where got out to 1-0 start against Matthew Greenberg of Cornell University, but fell in four games. Mathur dropped his first-round matchup against eventual runner-up Jacob Himmelrich of the University of Pennsylvania, 3-0, before moving on to face Dartmouth’s Adam Slutsky in the consolation first round, where he suffered a 3-1 defeat.

The women’s squad finished at 9-13 and placed 18th at the Howe Cup Team Nationals, hosted by Harvard University, February 24-26. The Amherst men were 9-10 on the season, and finished 10th at the Potter Cup Team Nationals, hosted by Princeton University, February 17-19.

FULL DRAW