M. Squash falls to Jeffs

Ed Vincent was named the Penn Athlete of the Week last week by the Penn Athletic Department, and he proved once again Monday night that he deserved it by providing the Penn men's squash team with its only individual victory in an 8-1 loss to Amherst in a match held at Yale. Vincent took the match 3-2, sealing the victory with a 15-8 win in the final game. "It's certainly a disadvantage playing at a neutral site," Vincent said. The decision to play Amherst in New Haven, Conn., was made Sunday after the Lord Jeffs failed to make it to the scheduled Saturday match at the Ringe Courts because of snow. "I was proud of the guys for wanting to play the match no matter where they had to play it," Quakers coach Ned Edwards said. "It's hard to give up homecourt advantage like that. The team would have gone all the way to Amherst to play them." Although technically a neutral site, it was more like an away match for Penn, which had to travel nearly four hours to play the Lord Jeffs, who made it to Yale in just an hour and a half. The match was not as lopsided as the score would indicate. Penn lost five matches by a score of 3-2. In four of those, the Quakers had led 2-0 or 2-1 before losing in 5 games. This was the last match for Penn's six seniors who had expected to play it at home. "It was disappointing to lose my last match," Quakers senior co-captain Craig Rappaport said. "I'd love to get a shot at [them] again." Rappaport, who lost 3-1 in two close final games, played in the No. 1 position for the second straight match as his Andrew Braff moved down to No. 3 due to injury. Despite working on mental and physical preparedness for a good part of the season, the Quakers failed to put away Amherst in the close five-game matches. "It seemed mental," Rappaport said. "Guys weren't confident in their physical strength." "We weren't quite strong enough to pull out the fifth games," Edwards added. Vincent was confident after his victory that the team could perform better. "In all of those five-game matches, they weren't better players than us," he said. "When it gets to the fifth game, we need to be more mentally tough."