Boys’ Squash Finishes 21st in the Nation

Although the roads were snow covered, Big Red squash still journeyed down to Pennsylvania on Thursday for the 2014 US High School Nationals. This annual event features the best of the best in squash, and Exeter arrived back at campus with a strong fifth place spot in their section and twenty-first in the entire nation.“Nationals went great—we won three out of our four matches and placed fifth in our division,” co-captain Philip Shin said. “The team played really well this weekend; many of us were playing the best squash we ever had.”Senior Hojung Kim agreed, proposing a reason behind the team’s success. “We learned that the depth of our team is our biggest strength. Our number three through number five [players] went undefeated through the whole tournament, only dropping four games over the course of their 12 matches,” he said.Big Red faced four schools, Hackley, William Penn Charter, Riverdale Country Day and St. George’s. In their first match, Exeter destroyed Hackley, 6-1, and then was narrowly defeated, 4-3, by William Penn. Following that, the team had two spirited victories that led them to clinch the fifth spot.“Considering how little experience we have compared to the rest of the players of the schools we played—sometimes a difference of more than five years—we played really well and showed great potential to become even better as the season approaches an end,” Shin said.everal noted that the performance and prowess of the players made steady progress throughout the three-day tournament, which allowed Exeter to finish on a high note.“I was really happy with how the game-play improved,” Kim said. “Our end position was due to an early narrow loss to William Penn Charter School in the second round of the tournament. I know that the play of our sixth and seventh players by the fourth round of the tournament was more than enough to defeat the Penn opponents that we faced earlier.”While Big Red’s success is hard to top, Shin noted the key problem Exeter could remedy to be more victorious in the future.“We could all improve by bringing more confidence to the court—especially with the game of squash, believing that you can win will win you the match,” he said.Shin noted the importance of working towards this goal.“The team is looking prime for Interschols this year. If we keep improving and giving everything on the court like we have done so far, we could very likely do better than we had done last year, even if our players are much less experienced,” he said.Big Red faces Middlesex and Deerfield this week, and the team will surely be working hard to defeat Andover in their E/A match that culminates the season.“The improvement of our overall play was the most important part of our experience,” Kim said. “Andover won the tournament, and we crushed them 6-1 just a week ago, which might just be luck of the draw. It is kind of unfair and kind of upsetting, but we are looking to absolutely destroy Andover 7-0 when we face them in a week.”