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.