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After finishing the 2016-17 season 15-0 in the No. 1 slot during team matches and winning all kinds of postseason awards, Sedky came back to post an equally incredible season, for which she was named Ivy League Player of the Year for the second straight time.
Penn women’s squash dropped their first match at the Howe Cup to Princeton Friday, putting them in the consolation bracket where they defeated Columbia before ultimately losing to Stanford.
In this week's edition of Is Stat So?, Penn men's basketball wins two and loses one, all on huge individual offensive outputs, while women's basketball featured a huge individual effort of its own.
The outlier there, the 6-5, is Penn women’s squash's record this year — a stark departure from the years of dominance seen in those prior three records. After consistently leading the pack in the Ivy League, what accounts for the struggles that this team has faced?
That’s why, after losing to perennial powerhouse Trinity, Penn men’s and women’s squash are confident going into Wednesday’s match against Princeton that they can both bring home crucial Ivy League wins.
As Penn women’s squash (5-3, 1-1 Ivy) enters its main extended stretch of conference play this season of the season against Princeton (9-0, 2-0), the Red and Blue’s lineup will be bolstered by the recent return of senior No. 2 Melissa Alves, who went undefeated last season and is back for more.
Since joining the team as a walk-on, the freshman has accumulated a seven-game winning streak. She has now risen all the way up to No. 6 on the squash ladder.
As the classic song goes, “anything you can do I can do better.” For Penn women's squash’s Reeham Sedky, this very well could be the case. The two-time defending CSA finalist has taken her game up yet another level, now training with Penn's men’s team.
On the men’s side, the Quakers (8-2, 2-0 Ivy) left Connecticut without an individual win, falling 9-0 to the undefeated No. 1 Bantams (7-0, 2-0 NESCAC). For the women’s squad, the results were not much more glamorous, as the final tally came in 7-2 for No. 2 Trinity.
Of course, braving the sub-zero temperatures and seemingly endless bus rides was not purely for fun. This “vacation” was actually a NCAA-sanctioned international tour, which is allowed once every four years. And, with this being the lucky year, coach Jack Wyant took his squad north for the training retreat.
In this week's edition of Is Stat So?, we look at several individual and team records that were broken this weekend, as well as a few key numbers that allowed men's squash and women's basketball to emerge victorious.
Just a week after freshman Andrew Douglas’ comeback win to beat No. 6 Rochester, Penn needed another ninth game win to beat Yale 5-4. Meanwhile, Penn’s women fell to the Elis by the same score. Against Brown on Sunday, both teams eliminated any chance for a dramatic ending by sweeping the Bears 9-0.
With various teams engaging in some instant classic battles, the Quakers have given fans a wild range of emotions throughout the calendar year, with the lone constant being thorough entertainment across the board.
"I had so much adrenaline, so it didn't really affect me until after the match," Sedky explained seven hours later, with her nose still bleeding. "It did sting in the beginning, but it was fine."
This past weekend, the men's team won both of its matches, defeating No. 17 Virginia, 9-0, on Saturday and No. 14 Navy, 7-2, on Sunday. The women’s team, on the other hand, split its weekend with a pair of tough matches. After starting the weekend off with a win over No. 13 Virginia, 8-1, the Quakers then fell to No. 5 Stanford, 6-3.