Author: Jimmy Sullivan

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in January 2019.

Senior Justin Esposito says the key to the Fordham Squash season is resilience.

“We had to deal with some unexpected changes to the lineup, especially during the first half of the season, but several players have definitely stepped up to the challenge and played their best squash.”

This weekend, the Rams showcased that resilience, and the team is rounding into form at exactly the right time.

After last weekend’s cancellation due to weather, the Rams were back in action with a taxing triple-header on Saturday and a doubleheader on Sunday. Sahel Anwar’s squad took four of five matches on the weekend and improved to 16-5 in the team’s second-to-last tournament prior to the College Squash Association National Championships.

Believe it or not, the weekend started inauspiciously for the Rams as they dropped their first match on Saturday with a final score of 8-1 to Bucknell University. The lone winner for the Rams was freshman Dylan Panichello, who took his match in five sets over Bucknell’s Maxwell Oliphant. Every other Ram lost his match in straight sets.

Following the match, the team made the long trip from the Bronx to Hamilton, New York for two matches with Colgate University and Hamilton College. That’s when things took a considerable turn for the better for the Rams.

Fordham dropped just four individual matches Saturday afternoon en route to two victories. First, the Rams vanquished Colgate 8-1 in a dominant performance. Not all of the individual matches were cakewalks, though; the best match was sophomore Tommy White’s victory in a five-set thriller over Colgate’s Dillon Howard. Fordham had a chance to sweep the Raiders, but Colgate’s Daniel Lucas pulled out the final individual matchup over Fordham freshman George Holiat.

By the end of Saturday, the Rams had won two of their three matches. When Sunday rolled around, Fordham’s fortune continued.

The Rams took two more matches against Siena College and Bard University; these matches were played in Annendale-on-Hudson, New York, which was a more manageable drive of slightly under 100 miles up the Taconic. Fordham was tied after the first four individual matches with Bard, but the last five Ram players to take the courts took matters into their own hands and won all of their individual matches in straight sets. The win against Hamilton College was impressive, but it was also crucial for another reason.

“The win against Hamilton College was a big confidence boost, as they are ranked above us and beating them will affect how our team is seeded at Nationals,” Esposito said. “I think the team is feeling very optimistic right now and energized for our last three weeks of training and matches before Nationals.

Despite these two matches being played at 10 a.m. and noon, respectively, Fordham seemed unaffected, and the team was even more dominant in the afternoon when they swept through Siena 7-0.

With the four wins, Fordham is now 16-5 with two matches left on the season. The leaders for them have been Esposito and sophomore Justin Deckoff, who are both 16-5 this season. Both men have won nine of their last ten matches, and so has Fordham.

Sahel Anwar’s squad has two matches left in the regular season. Fordham will take on NYU at home on Feb. 9 and finish the season on the road against Wesleyan the next day.

The College Squash Championship is coming. Fordham looks ready.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in January 2019.

The Fordham golf team had a lot of talent to replace after last spring.

The team’s star-studded troika of seniors — James Mongey, Joseph Trim and Matt Schiller — all graduated in May, and they left big shoes to fill. In fact, the three men finished their Fordham careers with the first, second and third-lowest scoring averages in the history of Fordham’s golf program and no, that is not a misprint.

And without Mongey, Schiller and Trim, it was a rough first semester for the Rams in 2018-19.

Fordham never finished in the top half of a tournament last fall, and the Rams came in last in back-to-back tournaments in September and October. Senior Josh Madarang finished with an average round of 73.4, the best on the team. He has tried to step into the leadership role left by last year’s seniors, and will continue to do so in the spring.

“I have tried to encourage my teammates to play better no matter how good or bad they are playing,” Madarang says. “I think I have also done a good job of keeping things laid-back and fun at practices and tournaments.”

The other senior on the team, Thomas Hayes, is looking to rebound from an up-and-down fall season, one that saw him fire a low round of 70 at the MacDonald Cup and a high round of 86 at the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Championship four weeks later. The other two Rams to keep their average rounds under 80 were fellow sophomores Anthony Wells and Mithran Denbow; both also had best rounds of 73. Additionally, Wells, Denbow, Hayes and Madarang were the four golfers to compete in all of Fordham’s fall tournaments.

As we have seen, consistency was an issue for Fordham in the fall, and the team is trying to change that in the spring.

“I think the team realized we have to eliminate big numbers from our scorecards by missing the ball in better spots,” Madarang says. “Managing our misses will help consistency.”

Besides the aforementioned athletes, there are other interesting pieces at head coach Paul Dillon’s disposal this spring. Freshman and Bronx native Aidan Denning competed in 11 of Fordham’s 13 rounds and finished the season with an average score just under 81. After not competing last season, sophomore Dean Cerimido competed in six rounds but struggled and never shot below an 81. Also returning is freshman Billy Harrison, who competed at the Lehigh Invitational and shot an 84 and an 85.

In the fall, the Fordham golf team felt the losses of the three best statistical golfers in its history. These departures reverberated throughout the fall season, and the team never quite recovered from them.

Now, the Rams will try to match, if not improve, last year’s seventh-place finish in the A-10 Tournament. Just like it did in the fall, Paul Dillon’s team has a lot of work to do.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in January 2019.

We live in a world that often focuses on the future instead of the present.

When Britney Spears broke through as a pop star in the late ‘90s, some said she was the next Madonna. Now, a young pop star might be labeled the next Britney Spears or Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga; the list goes on and on. The point is that when we see something new and exciting, our initial tendency is to try to think of what that person or thing reminds us of. Politically speaking, the developing Russian collusion story has been often compared to Watergate. The point is that it’s far more interesting to find the “next” version of something than the first version of something new. The desired effect is that we’ve seen that thing before and now we’re seeing it again.

This leads us into the latest round of NFL coaching transactions.

Let’s start with a guy who isn’t going anywhere. Los Angeles Rams Head Coach Sean McVay, who turns 33 tomorrow, has quickly established himself as one of the best in the league. He has led the Rams to back-to-back NFC West titles in his first two seasons at the helm, and his offensive wizardry has done wonders for his quarterback, Jared Goff. Goff has turned into one of the better quarterbacks in the league after struggling in his rookie season under the leadership of the perennially-average Jeff Fisher; Goff has thrown for nearly 8.500 yards over the past two seasons, which is the fifth-most passing yards in the league during that time.

And it’s not just McVay’s work with his offense that has raised eyebrows. You can find at least one video on the internet that shows the Rams coach listing off characteristics — completely from memory, no less — of each starter on an opposing defense. He also appears to be very good at managing a locker room; the Rams added several big names in the offseason, and some have big personalities (Ndamukong Suh, Marcus Peters, Aqib Talib, etc.). That doesn’t appear to have gotten in the way of L.A.’s success this year.

Therefore, it would make sense for teams to be looking for someone like that to man the sidelines. The problem is that said teams will stop at nothing to try to find that person.

The best human example of this just got hired by the Arizona Cardinals.

Former Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury ostensibly fits the profile of someone who can be that guy. He is 39 and has an innovative offensive mind to go along with youthful energy and a good personality. There’s just one problem: in his six seasons at Texas Tech, Kingsbury went 35-40. If a major awards show had an award for failing upward, Kingsbury would win it. However, the Cardinals’ quarterback, Josh Rosen, is coming off of a rough rookie season, and the franchise undoubtedly sees similarities between him and Goff as a rookie. So, instead of hiring the best candidate for the job, they’re trying to do the exact same thing the Rams did. In fact, they even admitted it, as the team’s website dedicated an entire paragraph of their announcement of Kingsbury’s hiring to his friendship with McVay, who the article referred to as an “offensive genius.”

This also happened on a smaller scale with a couple of the other openings. The Jets, in true Jets-ian fashion, eschewed several better candidates to hire Adam Gase, a respected offensive mind who just got fired by the Dolphins and was hated by many of his former Miami players. The Packers hired ex-McVay assistant Matt LaFleur, who is an entirely legitimate candidate and should succeed in Green Bay. Finally, the Cincinnati Bengals have not officially made a hire, but they appear to be zeroing in on 35-year-old quarterbacks coach Zac Taylor. Conveniently, Taylor is currently the QBs coach for the Los Angeles Rams.

Here’s the issue: all of these teams are trying to find the “next Sean McVay.” The unfortunate fact is that the next Sean McVay just doesn’t exist.

McVay grew up around NFL locker rooms. His grandfather John was a head coach for the Giants in the 1970s and later served as an executive for the San Francisco 49ers from 1980-1996; during that time, he oversaw five Super Bowl championships. McVay is an NFL head coaching unicorn; trying to find an equivalent to him is a futile and stupid exercise because there isn’t one.

And beyond that, if you’re going to find the next version of a head coach, why limit yourself to trying to find the next McVay? Someone like Chiefs coach Andy Reid has a prolific and legendary coaching tree that most recently has yielded the coach of the defending champions (Doug Pederson) and Matt Nagy, who won 12 games in his first season with the Chicago Bears. If you’re a team with an opening and you see everyone going for the next McVay, why not go for the next Reid? Reid’s offensive coordinator, Eric Bieniemy, deserved a head coaching gig. He didn’t get one, but he’s infinitely more deserving than someone like Kingsbury, who had to leave his new job as the offensive coordinator at USC to take the Cardinals job.

NFL teams have spent the past three weeks scouring the landscape for the next Sean McVay. In the process, they hired people who bring some of McVay’s positive traits without anything near his complete package.

But if the NFL’s most recent coaching carousel has shown us anything, it’s this: it’s not what you know; it’s who you know.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in December 2018.

The Fordham track and field team participated in two meets this weekend at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex on Staten Island. The first of the two meets was the NYC Gotham Cup, which was held on Friday night. This event showcased the best that Fordham’s team and individual runners had to offer.

The best individual finish of the night came from sophomore Nicholas Raefski, who ran 3,000 meters in 8:50.85 and finished fourth. The Rams netted another top-ten finish when fellow sophomore Christopher Strzelinski came in ninth in the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:33.92. However, these would be the only top-ten finishes Fordham’s individual runners would earn; in the field events, no Fordham athlete finished higher than 21st on either the men’s or the women’s side. The Rams did salvage some success in the 4×800 relays, as both the men’s and women’s teams finished third. The men completed the relay with a time of 8:12.36, while the women finished in nine minutes and just over 47 seconds.

But when the Rams came back for more on Saturday, things did not get easier.

The men finished sixth out of eight teams, while the women came in second-to-last out of ten. It was not all bad news for Fordham though, as several of its athletes had excellent performances on the day. Perhaps the star of the afternoon was senior Angelina Grebe, whose season-low time of 10:11.38 was good enough for fourth in the 3,000-meter run. In fact, five of the seven top-ten individual performances in the track events on Saturday came on the women’s side. Freshman Bridget Alex finished ninth in the 3,000-meter run with a time of 10:37.46. There were also two top-ten Fordham finishes in the 400-meter dash, as sophomore Sarinnagh Budris and freshman Dominique Valentine finished ninth and 10th, respectively, with times just under a minute. In the 200-meter dash, sophomore Kathryn Kelly earned the lone top-ten performance for the Rams with a 25.21 time.

Over on the men’s side, freshman Michael Capone placed ninth with a 7.21-second 60-meter dash while freshman Manuel Alfonso Guzman finished sixth in the same race with a time of 7.13 seconds. Once again, one of the most impressive performers was junior Ryan Kutch, who put up a time of 4:16.77 in the mile run, which placed him 14th overall and qualified him for IC4A.

“It felt good,” Kutch said of his performance. However, he also said, “it was disappointing I couldn’t get a personal best.”

The Rams’ next event is this weekend at Boston University. The team will compete in the annual Terrier Classic.

“These early races help identify certain strengths and weaknesses for people, so it’s a good test for seeing those types of things,” Kutch said. “Most guys ran great at the meet and are in great shape, which is awesome, but for some we have to just equate that great shape to racing better and smarter.”

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in December 2018.

Jim McElderry won 127 games and led Fordham Men’s Soccer to three NCAA Tournaments as the Rams’ head coach.

On Saturday, he left that legacy behind to start a new one at Rutgers.

The Fordham coach formally stepped down from his position to take the same one with the Scarlet Knights, Fordham Athletics revealed on Saturday. McElderry’s tenure is perhaps best-known for Fordham’s run to the Elite 8 in 2017, a run that saw the Rams take down powerhouse programs in Virginia and Duke before ultimately being eliminated by North Carolina. Now, he will be departing for a Big Ten school that won just four games last season and was eliminated from its conference tournament in the quarterfinals. The move is likely a step-up in prestige, even if not necessarily in performance.

“We want to thank Jim for 16 years of service to the Fordham Soccer program and to the countless student-athletes he has watched over,” Fordham Athletic Director Dave Roach said in a statement to Fordham Athletics. “We are grateful for everything he has done for Fordham Athletics and wish him and his family the best in his new endeavor.”

McElderry’s teams were consistently some of the best at Fordham University, and for that, he was a four-time recipient of Fordham’s Iron Major award, which is given annually to the best coach at the school. This past season, McElderry coached both the Atlantic 10 offensive and defensive players of the year, in senior Janos Loebe and junior Joergen Oland, respectively. In his 16-year tenure, 32 Rams were selected to all-conference teams and seven earned esteemed awards.

“I would like to thank Fr. McShane, Jeff Gray, Dave Roach, Charlie Elwood, Frank McLaughlin and the entire Fordham University athletic department,” McElderry told Fordham Athletics. “It has been an incredible 16 years here at Fordham, and I have been fortunate to experience life at Rose Hill with incredible people. I especially want to thank the alumni, all of my staff coaches, academic support, sports medicine, strength room, facilities, equipment and especially all of the players.”

McElderry’s move to Piscataway marks the second high-profile departure of a Fordham coach in the last six months. Bridget Orchard announced her resignation as Fordham Softball coach on June 1 after leading the Rams to their eighth NCAA Tournament appearance in nine years. Almost four weeks later, Fordham announced the hiring of Iona head coach and former Fordham assistant Melissa Inouye as Orchard’s replacement. It is unclear what the timeline will be for Roach to find a replacement for McElderry.

The now-former Fordham coach’s 127 wins rank second in Fordham history, behind only his predecessor, Frank Schnur. Interestingly enough, the next coach of Fordham Men’s Soccer will be just the fifth in the 66-year history of the program.

Despite his sudden exit, McElderry is still sentimental about his time in the Bronx.

“I will miss Fordham University and will cherish the memories I have from all of my teams. I will always be a Fordham University fan,” McElderry told Fordham Athletics.

He may be a fan, but he is no longer Fordham’s coach. Now, Dave Roach and company must scramble to find a replacement for one of the most successful coaches in the history of Fordham sports.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in November 2018.

The Fordham squash team came into this season looking to build off last year’s 20-4 campaign. So far, the team is off to a similar start.

Last year, the Rams kicked off their season with four wins in as many matches at the Vassar Round Robin, and, this year, they have done the same.

Fordham started the Round Robin on Saturday morning with a convincing 7-2 win over the host university; the Rams won each of the first seven individual matches against the Brewers in straight sets and conceded the final two. The team followed a similar pattern against Vassar, winning the first eight matches before conceding the ninth after the outcome of the match was decided. The Rams started the weekend with two wins in as many matches and looked to keep things going heading into Sunday.

They were able to do just that.

Sunday’s first match was the most competitive one in Fordham’s weekend, and that really is not saying much. The first individual contest between freshman and Philadelphia native Patrick Rodden and Hunter Chun went the distance, but Rodden prevailed with a 12-10 victory in the fifth and decisive set to dictate the tone of the match for Fordham. Despite a win in the next individual match by Boston’s Parker Tonissi over sophomore Griffin Fitzgerald, Fordham took the next five individual matches in straight sets and dominated over BU, 6-1. Fordham then prevailed in a shutout 7-0 victory over Bryant in which no Rams players gave up a single set.

Overall, it was a dominant weekend for the Rams. It was especially important because of what the team needed to replace after last season. Fordham and head coach Sahel Anwar were forced to replace fifth-year senior Joseph Hughes, as well as seniors John Lennon and Peter Yuen. Those three combined to win 103 career matches and replacing them would be, and still is, no easy task. The team has five freshmen this year, and four of them—Dylan Panichello, Henry Poehlein, Winthrop Reed and Patrick Rodden—played over the weekend. The end result among the newcomers: 13 individual matches played, zero defeats.

Fordham’s rival, NYU, defeated the Rams in the final of the Chaffee Cup at the College Squash Association Team Championship last season. The Rams are looking to do better than that this year, and this weekend’s victories got them off on the right foot.

While it is just one weekend, Fordham has started its season the way it wanted to. The Rams will be at the Navy Round Robin next weekend, and after winning three out of five matches in that tournament in 2017. They will be happy with a similar result this year but, for now, Fordham is excited to be in the win column to start the season.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in November 2018.

Jackson Heil, FCRH ’21, came to the university to get involved with broadcasting and, more specifically, the school’s radio station, WFUV. He has accomplished that mission in 14 months.

“When I came to check out Fordham, I really enjoyed the campus and I loved the radio station, which was the biggest attraction for me, along with meeting the great Bob Ahrens,” he said.

Ahrens is the longtime former sports director and current executive producer of the station’s sports department.

The sophomore from Long Island is well ahead of things at WFUV. In just his second year, he is one of the station’s most active broadcasters. He has called softball, baseball and women’s and men’s soccer games for the station; he will also add football and women’s basketball to his portfolio in the next couple of weeks.

He is not just an on-air talent for WFUV, either; he has served as both an on-site and in-studio producer for multiple games and other broadcasts, including New York’s longest-running sports call-in show, “One on One,” on Saturday afternoons. But, in addition to all this, the man is still, somehow, doing much more.

Heil has always been a die-hard New York Rangers fan and his interest in the team led him to write for several websites in high school.
He eventually got in contact with the New York Rangers Public Relations department. After a tour of the team’s offices in the summer of 2017, he told the team’s staff that he would love to apply for an internship with the organization if one became available.

Right before the season started, Heil walked into way more than he expected.

“They said they didn’t have anything open at the time, but then a few months later, they reached out right before the season started and told me they had an opening on their game night staff,” he said. “I was stoked, and I’ve been there ever since.”

He said the biggest challenge in this job was to putting his life-long fandom aside as he believes the opportunity to learn what it means to be a professional was invaluable.

One of his favorite parts of the experience has been his interaction with some of the NHL’s best broadcasters.

“Being able to see the ins-and-outs of how professional broadcasts work and interacting with guys who I look up to, such as (Rangers broadcaster) Sam Rosen, Doc Emrick and (Vegas Golden Knights TV voice and Fordham graduate) Dan D’Uva, has been really enlightening.”

Heil is also extremely involved in the Fordham chapter of the Society of Baseball Research—SABR, for short — and it does exactly what it sounds like it does.

His interest in advanced baseball analytics started in his senior year of high school (according to him, out of “sheer boredom”), and once he found out Fordham had a SABR club he could not resist.

“I decided to just go explore Fangraphs to see what some of this stuff is all about,” he said. “I began reading up on the likes of wRC+, WAR, FIP, etc. and it was like a light bulb turned on in my head.”

After getting “hooked” on SABR and going to college, he’s participated in Diamond Dollars, a competition in which different schools try to solve a statistical, baseball-orientated case.

But for as much fun as he’s had with baseball statistics and the Rangers, he still came to Fordham for one reason and one reason only.

“I came to this school because of the history of WFUV and the incredible broadcasters the station has produced, such as Vin Scully, Mike Breen, Michael Kay and countless others,” he said. “I hope my time here can aid me in getting to that level some day.”

The sophomore with a dream has been operating well ahead of most of his peers and we will see where his time at WFUV takes him.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in November 2018.

In 2018, it seemed like the Fordham football team got derailed by a different problem each week.

Freshman Tim DeMorat emerged as Fordham’s quarterback of the future this season. It was a bright spot on an otherwise difficult season. (Courtesy of Fordham Athletics)

First, it was the offensive line. Then, injuries at the running back position. Occasionally, penalties doomed the Rams, too. Every now and then, a clock operator got in the way. But most of Fordham’s issues this season were self-inflicted, and Joe Conlin’s first season at the helm of the Rams did not quite go as planned.

Fordham lost its first five games of the season, then followed its first win by losing the four games after it. Needless to say, this was not the season Fordham wanted.

And yet, Fordham has hope.

The Rams ended their season with a 17-14 victory over Bucknell on Saturday afternoon to improve to 2-9 and avoid double-digits in the loss column, an outcome Fordham has avoided since Tom Masella’s fateful 1-10 campaign in 2011. After that season, Fordham hired Joe Moorhead as its next head coach. You know the rest.

Anyhow, Joe Conlin got his second win of the season and his coaching career, and while Saturday’s game was meaningless in the Patriot League standings, it sent the Rams into 2019 with a victory. Bucknell was also 1-9 heading into the game, and the win kept Fordham out of the Patriot League cellar for another year. Fordham has won just six games in the last two seasons, but unlike last year, the Rams knew heading into 2018 that this season would be an uphill battle.

There are few, if any, times in the school’s history when Fordham could say that it lost three professional players after a season. The Arizona Cardinals drafted running back Chase Edmonds in the fourth round of the draft. Edmonds, the Patriot League’s all-time leading rusher and fifth-leading rusher in the history of the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, missed four games last season but still earned second-team honors in the Patriot League at the end of the season. Quarterback Kevin Anderson also missed time last season with injuries, but he was signed by the Orlando Apollos of the newly-formed Alliance of American Football, where he will play under the tutelage of head coach Steve Spurrier, who previously won a national title as the head coach at Florida. Offensive lineman Anthony Coyle went undrafted but signed as an undrafted free agent with the Green Bay Packers. Coyle was a first-team all-Patriot League player last season and a four-year starter for Fordham. The Rams felt the pain of all three of these losses at various points in the season.

The first order of business was hiring a head coach after last year’s head man, Andrew Breiner, left to become the wide receivers’ coach at Mississippi State under the aforementioned Moorhead. The Rams tabbed Yale offensive coordinator Joe Conlin but were unable to do so until most of that year’s recruiting had been completed. The Rams had already set up an ambitious out-of-conference slate, and last year’s losses were very present in those games.

Fordham started the year against Charlotte, an FBS opponent. The Rams were clearly outmatched, but nonetheless, they were able to jump out to a 7-6 lead with 11:58 to play in the first quarter. It was the last time Fordham led until Oct. 6.

As you could probably surmise, Fordham lost its first five games of the season by nearly 23 points per contest. Most concerning was the play of the offensive line, which allowed 21 sacks in the first four games of the season. Even worse for Fordham’s offense was that it finished the third game of the season against Stony Brook with -19 yards on the ground. No, that is not a misprint. Quarterback Luke Medlock also struggled behind the struggling line, and his inability to get outside the pocket ultimately spelled his doom as Fordham’s starting QB. The Rams made a change after game three and turned to freshman Tim DeMorat. Prior to his time at Fordham, DeMorat was best known as the nephew of comedian Daniel Tosh, the host of Comedy Central’s “Tosh.0.”

Fordham showed some signs of life in the fifth game of the year against Georgetown but ultimately dropped that one by a score of 23-11. Keep in mind that Fordham was picked to finish third in the Patriot League before the season, but injuries to running backs D’Angelo Palladino and Zach Davis as well as changes on the offensive line and immense struggles without Coyle left the running game in a state of dilapidated ruins.

And then, the Rams went to Pennsylvania and pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the Patriot League season.

Fordham destroyed a listless Lehigh squad 43-14 to get their first win of the season and the first victory of Conlin’s career. DeMorat threw for 299 yards and two scores, and the Rams ran for nearly 200 yards behind freshman Naim Mayfield and junior Florida transfer Tyriek Hopkins. If only for one afternoon, the Rams flipped the script, and, for the first time all season, took the game to the opponent instead of the other way around.

The next two weeks would feature close disappointments, with two combined losses to Bryant and Lafayette by a combined nine points. The next game was not nearly as close, as a 41-0 loss to eventual league champion Colgate marred the Rams’ senior day. Fordham could, and maybe should, have gotten a victory at Holy Cross, but the freshman DeMorat’s inexperience became costly in the final seconds. With the Rams down 17-13 with just over 30 seconds left, DeMorat took nearly 20 seconds off the clock before snapping the ball. He apparently did not realize the clock was running and was unable to get the ball snapped quickly. To the team’s credit, the Rams put that loss behind them quickly and were able to scratch out a hard-fought 17-14 victory over Bucknell on Saturday. Fordham goes into the offseason on a win, and certainly with hope towards a better showing next season.

However, the team will be losing quite a bit in the offseason. Conlin and company will have to replace the Rams’ top three receivers (Isaiah Searight, Austin Longi, Corey Caddle), all of whom are graduating. Also departing are defensive starters Antonio Jackson, Noah Fitzgerald, Larry Menyah, Dylan Mabin and Bryce Petty. Wide Receiver Jonathan Lumley and center Dominic Lombard will also graduate.

Fordham finished 2-9 this season, and the year can hardly be qualified as a success. This outcome is what we thought would happen heading into this season, but it was still a disappointing year for a team that had a chance to win several more games than it did.

That being said, Fordham’s season ended with a bang, even if it came against a team in a similar position as the Rams. But there’s no time to celebrate; only time to work on getting better for next year.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in December 2018.

The Fordham squash team held its first home matches of the season this weekend, and the home cooking served the Rams well, as they took four out of five matches to move their season record to 11-4.

Believe it or not, the weekend started on a difficult note for the Rams, as they lost every individual match in a blowout loss to No. 12 Virginia University on Friday night. The Cavaliers were the second ranked opponent for the Rams this season, with the other being Navy. Friday night’s match—one in which no Fordham player took so much as a set—would be the Rams’ last defeat of the weekend.

Fordham started to get things rolling in the right direction with a 6-3 victory over Washington University (St. Louis). Fordham caught a break in the first individual match, as freshman Patrick Rodden received a victory when Washington’s Russell Scharf retired before a fifth and decisive set. The Rams ripped off five of the next six individual victories to clinch an overall victory in the match. The win was highlighted by sophomore Justin Deckoff and freshman Dylan Panichello, both of whom won their contests in straight sets.

The afternoon portion of the proceedings featured a matchup with Swarthmore College. The Rams were looking for a sweep on Saturday, and their performance did not disappoint.

Fordham took the match 7-1 over the Garnet, with Swarthmore’s only point coming towards the end of the match when Fordham did not put one of its players up against Eddie Wu. Fordham headed into Sunday’s matches with a 2-1 record and two more opportunities to get victories.

Sahel Anwar’s team took full advantage.

The Rams’ Sunday morning match against Lehigh was never competitive, and Fordham won seven out of eight individual matches. Six of these wins came in just three sets. The question for the Rams was whether or not they could maintain this performance in their afternoon matchup with Bryant, and the team answered this question in a resounding fashion with a shutout performance in which the team did not surrender a set.

The 4-1 weekend pushes the Rams’ record to 11-4 with just three matches left in the calendar year. There is plenty of credit to be assigned for Fordham’s success, but it boils down to consistency from several key players. Freshman Patrick Rodden has manned the leadoff spot for all but two individual matches, and he has gone 10-3 in that spot. Deckoff and senior Justin Esposito are both 11-4. Panchiello has won 10 of his 14 matches to start the year, and another freshman, St. Louis’ Winthrop Reed, is 10-5. Players both young and old have stepped up in the early going for Fordham.

Next up for the Rams is a three-game slate on Saturday against Duke University, Siena College and Colgate University. These three matches will be the last three of the year for Fordham, as after Saturday, the team does not play until Jan. 19.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in November 2018.

The Fordham men’s squash team had an up-and-down weekend in Annapolis, going 2-3 against Navy, Boston University, Haverford College and Western Ontario University.

The weekend started inconspicuously on Friday night, as the Navy Midshipmen wiped the floor with the Rams in a 9-0 blowout. Fordham was unable to grab so much as a set from the host school and the team needed to regroup in advance of two matches on Saturday.

Things turned around early in the day on Saturday as Fordham took its first match of the weekend by a score of 8-1 over Boston University. The only loss of that match came at the expense of sophomore Griffin Fitzgerald, who lost a hard-luck five-setter to Boston’s Stefano Viacava. The Rams took every other individual contest in the minimum of three sets, and things were looking up for Fordham.

The day quickly turned sour, however, in the afternoon.

Fordham followed up its performance against BU with an 8-1 loss to nationally-ranked Haverford. The Squirrels took the first six singles matches of the contest and freshman Henry Poehlein got the only win for the Rams with a four-set triumph over Alex Liu. The rough afternoon continued for Fordham in the next match against Western Ontario, as the team was not able to take any individual matches. The Rams finished Saturday at just 1-3 in the Round Robin and needing a win on Sunday to salvage something positive from the tournament.

The Rams were able to get just that with a Sunday victory over the Navy “B” team on Sunday afternoon. As the Naval Academy customarily does in this tournament, the Midshipmen entered two teams; the “A” team handled its business and won all four weekend matches while the “B” team struggled. When all was said and done, the Rams went 2-3 in Annapolis and went to 6-3 on the season.

After this weekend’s up-and-down performance, Fordham has nearly three weeks off before matches against Virginia University, Swarthmore University, Lehigh University and Washington University (St. Louis) to head into December. The team is 7-3 through their first 10 games, and despite a split this weekend, the team should be happy with where it stands at the 10-game mark of the year.

After all, the Rams will not have too much to complain about. What issues they do have can be ironed out in the next couple of weeks.