No. 1 Women's Squash Trains Against India National Women's Squad

Photo of Crimson with India National Women's Training Squad courtesy of Chris Smith

The top-ranked Harvard women's squash team is traveling to India for an 11-day training and service trip. Members of the team will post regular blog entries on GoCrimson.com during their trip over the next few weeks.

Blog Post by Vidya Rajan ’13 on Jan. 5
Blog Post by Alexandra Zindman '11 on Jan. 8
Blog Post by Cece Cortes '12 on Jan. 9
Blog Post by Vidya Rajan '13 on Jan. 10
Map of Harvard Destinations During Trip to India
Photo Gallery of Harvard Women's Squash in India

Blog post by Katherine O'Donnell '10

Our second day in Chennai was just as exciting as the first as we played a match against many of the top juniors and women in India. Before the match, Mr. N. Ramachandran, the President of the World Squash Federation, visited with us and made a presentation to kick the match off. The match took place at the Indian Squash Academy in Chennai and started at 2pm. We played in the five courts they have in the facility, one four wall glass court and four glass backed. There was a lot of unexpected attention for this match as there were three newspaper reporters and one TV Camera.

On top of the added pressure of the reporters, it is quite hot in Chennai, but to make it more like Boston they turned on the air conditioning which certainly helped a little! The match was exciting and we were all very impressed with the women from India, many of whom compete in the WISPA (professional) circuit and are world ranked. After our tough match we ended the session with some court sprints and left the courts tired, hungry but happy with our performance.

This evening we had the opportunity to get to know the girls we played today as well as a bunch of the Indian junior men better at a really nice presentation and dinner at the hotel. Majr Maniam from World Squash and Cyrus Poncha the India National Teams' coach were our hosts. We had a great time getting to know the girls and will hopefully see some of them on the college circuit in a few years! We were given more medals and shirts to commemorate our visit. We also gave lots of plaques, ties, and shirts to our hosts.

Tomorrow we are waking up bright and early to fly to Delhi where we will drive to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and many more amazing places around Delhi.