By Paula Kim
The Ryerson women’s squash team opened its season with a strong performance in the first tournament of the year.
I know what you’re thinking: “Ryerson has a squash team?”
Something you also probably didn’t know is we’re better than people think.
Squash is an individual sport but played as a team sport in Ontario University Athletics. On the women’s side, there are six teams and each team ranks its top six players. The same seeds from opposing teams challenge each other to a series of five games, with the winners picking up a point for their team.
We used to be the punching bag of the OUA — the six wins that every other team could count on. But last year was a break-through season for us. We climbed out of last place and four players — Stacy Lee, Malia Herold, Jocelyn Charistosf and myself — qualified for individual championships.
At our own tournament at the RAC on the weekend we proved we weren’t about to retreat to the basement of the OUA.
After narrowly losing to McMaster, we thumped a traditionally-strong McGill team 6-0. In the six matches, we dropped just four games.
Rookie Erin Goto went down to the wire in her match to pull out an exciting 10-8 win in the fifth game of her series. A gutsy 3-1 win by Lee, our number one veteran, solidified the sweep.
We knew we were in tough when we faced perennial-power-house Western. It showed no mercy and dismissed us easily 6-0. Queen’s didn’t show up with a lot to brag about so we felt confident against them.
Rookie Jen Recknagel played a solid match against one of her year’s league all-stars but fell short in four games. I wish I could tell you more about how we did against Queen’s but I was locked in an intense five-game battle with my opponent. After being down 1-2, I came back to win it in five. All I can say is, damn that felt good.
After playing Queen’s we took on the defending OUA champs from U of T.
Out of all the teams, I despise playing them and simply loathe losing to them. But they have the deepest team in the league. They had their way with us but don’t worry, I cursed the hell out of them when they left. We ended up placing fourth out of six teams in the tournament.
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