Penn falls to tough Crimson, tops Big Green

BOSTON -- Craig Thorpe-Clark, the head coach of the Penn men's squash team, believes that matches against Ivy League opponents are "worth spilling blood for."

On Saturday at Harvard's Murr Center, senior Jacob Himmelrich took those words literally as he cut his knee diving for a ball in his match against Crimson junior Mihir Sheth.

The sacrifice was well worth it, though, as Himmelrich rallied from an 8-3 deficit in the decisive fifth game for a 10-9 win.

It made for a silver lining on a day when the Quakers lost overall 6-3.

"It was a typical gritty Jacob performance," Thorpe-Clark said. "He's just like a terrier out there."

While Himmelrich described his injury as "not that unusual," it was certainly eye-catching.

"By the end of the match, you get a little tired and instead of being about this far off the ground, you end up on the ground," he said.

Penn's mood was different earlier in the day, especially after junior Gilly Lane lost to Harvard's Siddharth Suchde at the top of the ladder, 9-4, 10-8, 9-2.

The crowd around the Murr Center's glass-walled show court heard Lane's frustrations a number of times, and after the match, he admitted that they came from "trying to play my way into the match but making too many errors."

Nonetheless, Thorpe-Clarkexpressed confidence in his top player -- not least because Suchde beat Trinity's No. 1 Gustav Detter, who beat Princeton star Yasser El Halaby, the three-time defending national champion.

"Gilly is a very fine player playing against international standard players -- every time he steps out there, the guy is just about better than him," Thorpe-Clark said.

"The last three matches -- Trinity, Princeton, this -- all three guys were ranked above him."

Indeed, Penn has just come out of a brutal stretch of matches against three of the four teams ranked above the Red and Blue.

Lane said, however, that playing the Bantams and the Tigers made him more ready for this weekend's trip to Harvard and Dartmouth.

Indeed, Lane easily beat Big Green No. 1 Andrew Boumford the next day, 9-6, 9-0, 9-2. It was part of an overall 7-2 Penn victory that included five Quakers winning matches three games to none.

Thorpe-Clark agreed that the hard work earlier in the week made the New England trip easier.

"These three big matches in a week are always tough, but it's one of those matches you've got to play -- basketball plays them home and away," he said of the Crimson, although the distribution of Ivy League basketball talent is far different than it is in squash. "This is what we practice all season for."

Indeed this year's loss to Harvard was an improvement over Penn's 8-1 home loss to the Crimson last year. Thorpe-Clark added that there were some off-the-court improvements in this year's match as well.

"We used to do these matches in a van, [now] we're sitting back in a 49-seat bus," he said.

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