
Co-captain Cece Cortes leads the No. 1 Crimson into tomorrow's Howe Cup championship against No. 2 Yale (photo courtesy Dale Walker).
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Another dominant victory has put the top-ranked Harvard women's squash team in a position they set their sights on at beginning of the season. The Crimson defeated No. 5 Trinity, 9-0, Saturday afternoon in a College Squash Association (CSA) national semifinal to advance to the Howe Cup championship match.
Harvard won its second consecutive match by a 9-0 score, after sweeping No. 8 Dartmouth in the national quarterfinal Friday.
The top seven players in the starting lineup for Harvard won with 3-0 clean sheets and the Crimson also received victories at No. 8 and No. 9 by 3-2 scores. Megan Murray played the most exciting contest of the afternoon, as the sophomore came back from a 2-1 deficit to beat Chanel Erasmus of Trinity, 3-2. Murray used a tiebreaker to win the fourth game, 13-11, and took the deciding fifth game, 11-9, in the No. 9 spot.
Amanda Sobhy and Sarah Mumanachit continued undefeated individual season for Harvard with wins at No. 1 and No. 7, respectively. Sohby swept Catalina Pelaez, 3-0 (11-8, 11-3, 11-4) and Mumanachit handled Andrea Echeverria, 3-0 (11-5, 11-6, 11-8).
Both Harvard co-captains also helped lead the Crimson to victory. Nirasha Guruge breezed past Ashley Tidman, 3-0 (11-6, 11-7, 11-8) at No. 3 and Cece Cortes dominated Jen Pelletier, 3-0 (11-3, 11-9, 13-11) in the No. 6 position.
Guruge, Cortes and the Crimson, which hopes to hoist the Howe Cup for the second time in three years, will take on No. 2 Yale in the final tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. at the Murr Center. The Bulldogs beat No. 3 Princeton, 7-2, in the semifinals. The Crimson leads the all-time series against Yale, 33-15, including a 5-4 win (recap) in New Haven, Conn., Feb. 12 to secure the Ivy League championship.