W. Squash now seeks individual success

They won an Ivy League championship together. They won a national championship together. Now, the top five members of the Penn women's squash team will eschew team glory for the pursuit of the individual kind -- even if it's at the expense of a fellow Quaker. Today, 64 women's squash players from across the nation will begin the hunt for the individual national championship at the the Intercollegiate Championships at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. The tournament, which concludes Sunday, will feature competition from Penn senior Katie Patrick, who has played all season at the No. 1 position for the Quakers. Patrick -- who reached the semifinals of the Intercollegiate Championships last year when the event was held at Penn's Ringe Courts -- is the tournament's sixth seed and will face Dartmouth's Lindsey Bishop today at 9 a.m. Because of Patrick's ranking, her experience and her past success in the Intercollegiate Championships, some feel that she might come home with a title. "I think Katie [Patrick] has a chance of maybe winning it," said Penn junior Megan Fuller, who did not make the trip to the tournament. "If she plays well and stays focused, she has a very good chance of winning." The Quakers' other representatives are freshman Runa Reta -- who will compete as the championships' eighth seed -- and juniors Rina Borromeo, Helen Bamber and Lauren Patrizio, who will occupy the 13th, 14th and 26th rankings, respectively. "They might all be better than their rankings portray," Fuller said, referring to the Quakers who have enjoyed two weeks of rest since clinching the national title. "I think they're better players in terms of their rankings. I think Katie, for instance, should definitely be higher than sixth." In first-round action today, Reta will face off against Brown's Katherine Esselen at 10:30 a.m., while Borromeo will clash with Katharine Stickney of Trinity at 9:30 a.m. Bamber will face off against Harvard's Virginia Brown at 10 a.m., and Patrizio, who has battled knee problems all season, will face Abigail Drachman-Jones of Dartmouth at 11 a.m. The Intercollegiate Championships is not a team tournament but a tournament of individual competition, so the Quakers who made the trek to Massachusetts know that every woman is in it for herself -- even if two Quakers meet in battle at some point in the tournament. "They're competitors," Fuller said of such a scenario. "You kind of have to forget who you're playing and just play squash." The Quakers are no strangers to championship tournaments. It was two short weeks ago that the Quakers travelled to Yale to take part in the Howe Cup national championship tournament and returned to Philadelphia as owners of a perfect season record and a first-ever national crown.

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