CSA Individuals Day 1 Recap: 'A' Flight Pair Falls, Women's Trio Stays Alive For All-America Honors

Friday, March 2

Washington, D.C.

All Day

Princeton University

CSA Individual Championships

Photo by: Beverly Schaefer

CSA Individuals Day 1 Recap: 'A' Flight Pair Falls, Women's Trio Stays Alive For All-America Honors

March 02, 2018 | Men's Squash, Women's Squash

While it was a disappointing day for Princeton's top players, there are still a trio of Tigers competing for Second-Team All-America honors heading into the second day of the 2018 CSA individual championships.

Princeton's two 'A' draw players, senior Olivia Fiechter and freshman Youssef Ibrahim, both suffered first-day upsets Friday. Fiechter, a four-time All-America honoree, fell in a four-game match to Harvard's Amelia Henley. Fiechter drew even with an 11-8 win in the second game, but an 11-8 victory for Henley in the third gave her the momentum, and she was able to close the match in the fourth game.

Ibrahim, the 2018 Ivy League Rookie of the Year, opened his draw with a 3-1 win over Rochester's Tomotaka Endo, which sent him into a quarterfinal match against Harvard's Timmy Brownell. It was Brownell who got the quick jump with 11-7 and 11-6 wins, but Ibrahim pushed the third game to 10-10. Unfortunately, the strong close went to Harvard, as Brownell finished with a 12-10 win.

Three women's players remain alive in the hunt for All-America honors, and they all happen to fall in the same Holleran Cup draw. Five Princeton women were selected into the Holleran West draw, and three reached the semifinals. Top-seeded Raneem El-Torky took care of business on the top half of the draw, posting a pair of 3-0 wins in her CSA individual debut. She will take on Nicole Friedman of Williams, the lone outsider in an otherwise all-Princeton field. The bottom half of the draw was the unpredictable side, and it left Princeton senior co-captain Kira Keating taking on junior teammate Kate Feeley for a spot in the final.

Keating opened with a 3-1 win in the first round, and then she took on freshman teammate Grace Doyle in the quarterfinal. Following a 1-1 split in the first two games, Keating pulled out a 13-11 win in the third to grab momentum, and she finished it 11-7 in the fourth. Feeley may have been the surprise of the opening day; injuries kept her out of the starting lineup for the majority of the season, but she stunned Stanford #3 Tara Shannon 3-1 in the quarterfinal to get a shot at Keating in the semifinal, set for Saturday at 1 p.m.

You can find all the draws here.