As has been the case the whole season, the Penn squash players refused to give up in their matches last weekend at the College Squash Association National Individual Championships at Saint Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.
Penn freshman Paula Pearson, seeded 16th, won her first match against Harvard's Lydia Williams, but then fell to top-ranked Amina Helal of Trinity.
In the second consolation bracket, Pearson jumped out to an early 2-0 lead over ninth-ranked Lilian Rosenthal, Brown's top player at the championships. Rosenthal came back to even the match, but Pearson persevered, winning the deciding game, 9-2.
"It was a big win for her," Penn women's coach Jim Martel said.
Pearson won her next match but fell in the consolation finals.
On the men's side, freshman Ben Ende fell behind by two games in his first-round "B" draw consolation match to Bates' Jamie White. Ende, too, came back, and won in five games. He added another five-game win before also losing in the consolation finals.
"He wasn't playing well, but he hung in there and turned things around," Penn men's coach Craig Thorpe-Clark said.
In the final event of the season, the two coaches were very pleased with their players' successes.
Thorpe-Clarke said that his players gained "experience playing in a very strong tournament" with "no easy matches."
"Obviously if you don't win a tournament you're disappointed. But you take something out of it," Thorpe-Clarke said.
"Generally, I think we did well," Martel said.
Five other Quakers competed in the tournament: junior Linda McNair, sophomore Rhea Bhandare and freshman Radhika Ahluwalia for the women, and junior Richard Repetto and freshman Gilly Lane for the men.
McNair and Bhandare each lost in the first round, and then won their first consolation match. McNair then beat Bhandare in four games. However, she was defeated by Ahluwalia in four games, who in turn lost in the consolation finals.
Lane won his first two consolation matches after losing in the first round, eventually falling in the consolation quarterfinals. Repetto won his first round match, his second victory this season over Princeton's Vincent Yu, but went on to lose to No. 2 Julian Illingworth of Yale in the next round. He then lost his first consolation match.
