W. Squash | Bulldogs bark, but Penn bites

Yale's home fans were making a lot of noise at the women's squash match against Penn on Saturday, but the Quakers stole their thunder.

Tuning out the spectators, the No. 2 Quakers prevailed, 5-4, giving No. 5 Yale a loss in the Bulldogs' first match of 2008-09.

"The crowd was pretty excited in their support for Yale, and I thought the women did a good job handling it," coach Jack Wyant said.

On Sunday at No. 10 Brown, with the atmosphere much tamer, the Quakers dominated 9-0.

Against Yale, the Quakers found themselves down 4-3 and thus needed to win out. But senior No. 7 player Tara Chawla secured a key win over Tara Wadhwa in the fourth match, setting up the nation's No. 1 player Kristen Lange vs. Yale's Logan Greer to decide the match.

"I told [Kristen] to play steady at the start and take a conservative approach, because the last thing you want in a deciding match is to give the home crowd any reason to believe they're going to win," Wyant said.

Fortunately for the Quakers, Lange's seed held, as she won 3-0 win, clinching the match.

"Everyone watched [Penn No. 4 Rhetta Nadas] and [Yale No. 4 player] Christina Matthias play and then converged on to Kristen's court. That made for a good atmosphere. Most of the people there were in support of the Yale kids, so for Kristen to win 9-0 in the third game was nice for us."

The match was reminiscent of the two squads' prior meeting at the Ivy Scrimmage earlier this year, which the Quakers (5-0, 3-0 Ivy) also won, 5-4. However, this time, all eyes were watching the official match.

"We were able to really focus when the going got tough, buckle down, block everything else out and just play," Lange said.

"I just went out there wanting to win and knowing that I needed to win. There wasn't really any extra pressure, especially since all the matches hadn't been decided yet."

In the end, it was an entire team effort that put the Red and Blue in a position to prevail over the Bulldogs (0-1, 0-1).

With a solid team "you don't notice the pressure as much," Chawla said.

"I'm pleased with how they played and how they conducted themselves," Wyant added.

There was no rambunctioius crowd on hand ot distract Penn against hapless Brown (0-3, 0-3). As a result, Penn won every single match 3-0.

Despite the weekend success, Wyant knows that the upcoming break is a critical part of his team's season.

"We did not play our best on Saturday, but we're obviously a talented enough team [that] can still win matches," he said. "We don't have a match for over a month, that's quite a long time."

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