Sports

Boys Squash Earns Four Straight Wins

Without dropping a game in its five winning matches, Andover Boys Squash defeated Groton 5-2, bringing the team’s record to 4-2.

Even with its victory, the team still looks to improve specific shots to become even stronger, according to Erik Wang ’21 and Will Yun ’20.

“We definitely need to work on the consistency of our length. Oftentimes, many players on the team hit the ball too hard, so we are working on slowing down the rallies,” wrote Wang in an email to The Phillipian.

Yun said, “I’d say that the team as a whole is looking to work on endurance with our shots. As matches progress, our shot selection will sometimes go down—we will hit lower, riskier percentage shots when we should just be hitting the ball, for example, deep a lot and going for the win when we have an opening.”

Even with three new members, the team has come together well and helped each other improve as players, according to Siddhant Sinha ’21.

Sinha said, “I think our team dynamic has been great. All of the new kids are eager to play and they have each adjusted to Andover well. The returners have also been quite mature and accepting of the new members on the team as well and acted as guides, so I am really proud of the way this team has grown.”

According to Andy Weissman ’23 and Yun, the team hopes its preparation this coming week will aid its goal in qualifying for the Interscholastic Championships in February.

“We expect some challenging matches this weekend, which is why our team is preparing and training extra hard this week. We understand that not everyone will be able to win their matches on Saturday, but we hope to play well as a team and pull off wins in some difficult games,” said Weissman.

Yun added, “I think these are two really important matches for everyone because they can decide whether we can be pushed up into Division I for Interschols, so we are all looking to play hard this week in preparation for the weekend, and we are just going to keep on training. We are excited, but we know it’ll be a long trip, especially since we are playing in a double header, which makes the whole experience even more challenging.”

Andover will play Hopkins and Hotchkiss in a double-header this Saturday.