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Princeton University Athletics
Princeton University
CSA Singles Tournament
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Sanchez-Chaudhry III Will Determine 2009 Men's Squash National Champion
March 01, 2009 | Men's Squash
Princeton senior Mauricio Sanchez has faced Trinity No. 1 and reigning national champion Baset Chaudhry each of the last two weekends. It took a little more work that he might have liked, but Sanchez earned a third match with Chaudhry, and it will give him a chance to win his first national title in his final collegiate match.
On a day when six Princeton squash players -- four men and two women -- competed for a berth in one of Sunday's two championship finals, it was the only Tiger who has championship final experience who won both of his matches. Sanchez opened the day with a quarterfinal victory over teammate David Letourneau, a sophomore who played in the No. 4 position for most of the season. A rematch of last year's quarterfinal, Sanchez cruised to a 9-2, 9-0, 9-3 victory.
That set Sanchez up for a semifinal against Harvard's Colin West, who defeated Rochester's Jim Bristow in three games in their quarterfinal. [In the original brackets, West was in the top end of the draw, but his position was switched with fourth-seeded Gustav Detter later on.] Sanchez had a history of success against West, including a 3-0 victory over him in the 2009 regular season, but it was the Harvard junior who came out firing. West won the opener 9-3 and led 8-0 in the second before Sanchez started to raise his play.
"Colin was playing beautiful squash," Princeton head coach Bob Callahan said. "Midway through the second game, Mau began to hit higher off the front wall to keep the ball deeper. He hadn't been in that situation against Colin, but he kept applying the pressure and finally took control."
Sanchez would lose the second game 9-6, but the momentum built in that comeback pushed him to wins of 9-1 and 9-2 in the next two games. He built a 3-0 lead in the fifth, but West raised his game one more time and took the next four points. Sanchez needed one more answer, and he came up with it. One year after seeing his season end in the national semifinal, the reigning Ivy League Player of the Year won the final six points to end the match with a 9-4 win.
He will now face Chaudhry, who began his Saturday march to the final against an unlikely quarterfinal opponent in Princeton freshman Kelly Shannon. After being plagued by back injury all season, Shannon made it back in time to rally for a 3-2 victory in the national team final against Trinity. He recorded a first-round upset against Trinity's No. 4 player, Parth Sharma, and he put forth a more than respectable effort against Chaudhry before falling 9-5, 9-3, 9-6.
In the other quarterfinal, Princeton senior Kimlee Wong saw his dream of a first final end at the hands of Trinity freshman Vikram Malhotra, who showed his promise with a 9-6, 9-4, 9-5 victory over Wong. Malhotra managed only four points against Chaudhry in the final, which would seem to indicate that the Bantam junior will be the far fresher player in Sunday's 1:30 final.
"I don't expect Mau to be tired heading into the final," Callahan said. "While the semifinal match did go five games, I don't think it even lasted an hour. Most of the games weren't close, and with the power Colin plays with, points don't tend to be that long."
If both players are fresh and healthy, Sunday's national final could be the best in years. In their two previous matches over the last two weeks, both players have pulled out five-game thrillers. In the regular season, Sanchez took a 2-0 lead, withstood a two-game comeback and ultimately won the fifth; in the national team final, it was Chaudhry who fought back after Sanchez rallied from a 2-1 hole and actually held a 5-0 lead in the fifth. The Trinity junior won the last nine points to win the decisive match in Trinity's 5-4 thriller.
On the women's side of the draw, both Emery Maine and Neha Kumar lost to higher-ranked players in their quarterfinal matches of the Gail Ramsay Cup, given to the top individual player in women's squash and named after Princeton head coach Gail Ramsay, the only collegiate player to ever win all four individual titles. Maine, the eighth seed, lost to top-seeded and undefeated Trinity freshman Nour Bahgat 9-0, 9-7, 9-3. Maine, a Tiger junior, put forth a strong showing in the second game, but she joined a long list of players who have yet to solve the young Bantam's game. Bahgat advanced to the final with a semifinal win over Yale's Logan Greer, and she will now take on former finalist and Penn No. 1 Kristen Lange.
Lange reached her second straight final with a 3-0 win over Williams' Toby Eyre, who had to battle hard to eliminate Kumar in the quarterfinal. After splitting the first two games, Eyra held on for two tight wins in a 9-7, 2-9, 9-6, 10-8 victory over the Princeton junior.