The Amherst men’s squash team hosted the Little III Championship meet at the Davenport squash courts this weekend. The No. 25 men’s squad split with rivals Wesleyan and Williams, bringing their overall record to a middling 5-6 on the season.
In Amherst’s close 5-4 victory over Wesleyan, the purple and white secured wins on the lower five courts while the Amherst competitors on courts one through four fell to their Cardinal opponents.
Lucas Sheiner ’19, Mateen Mills ’20 and Mitch Ford ’20 logged sweeps on courts six, eight and nine, respectively, while Darian Ehsani ’17 and Christopher Zimmerman ’20 both fought to four-set victories on courts five and seven.
On the exhibition court, sophomore Ian Petty defeated his opponent handily, earning a sweep 11-1, 11-0, 11-8.
On the first four courts, which have been constantly fluctuating this season for the purple and white, Harith Khawaja ’19, David Merkel ’19 and Cameron Bahadori ’18 each fell in four sets on courts one, three and four respectively.
The tightest match of the entire contest proved to be on the second court, where senior captain Michael Groot fought through five sets.
After losing the first set, Groot managed to win the next two frames, taking a two sets-to-one lead. However, he proved unable to put away his Cardinal opponent, Daid Sneed, losing both the fourth and fifth sets by scores of 11-9 and 11-6 respectively.
In their second matches of the day, the purple and white of Amherst fell to a dominant, No. 17 Williams team 0-9.
The Ephs secured sweeps against all Amherst opponents except Groot and Merkel, who fell in four sets on courts two and three, respectively.
The closest Amherst-Williams matchup came on the exhibition court, where Petty battled to five sets before losing the match against Williams’ Jack McLean, 11-7, 5-11, 5-11, 11-6, 11-8.
With this split, Amherst holds onto its No. 25 national ranking and will host the NESCAC Championships this Friday to Sunday, Feb. 3-5, where they will get a second shot at Williams as well as No. 2-ranked Trinity and No. 16 Bates, among the rest of a talented NESCAC.
