Ella Kowal ’25 celebrates a win.
On top of its previous four game winning streak, Girls Squash secured two more decisive victories, defeating both Brooks and Middlesex 7-0. In a show of the team’s depth and adaptability, Junior Varsity players stepped up to compete alongside Varsity, while Varsity members played four seeds higher than usual against Brooks on Saturday.
After watching Co-Captain Migyu Kim ’25 compete on Friday, Robin Lukens ’28 commended Kim for her controlling performance, where she won most of her games without losing a single point.
“I watched a lot of Migyus’ matches and she had a really decisive win against her girl. All the girls on the team won pretty easily since Brooks is a weaker school for their squash. Migyu’s win was really good. She bageled her [opponent]. She won multiple of her games 11- 0,” said Lukens.
On the other hand, Evelyn Kung ’26 highlighted the outstanding performances of all the Varsity and Junior Varsity players, particularly praising Rachel Levitsky ’28 for her impressive win despite playing on a glass court for the first time and overcoming her nerves.
“It was just super impressive because we pulled four of our[top] players… Basically we had our [sixth seed] playing [as the second seed] and that was a really memorable game. Rachel, she’s a freshman this year and it was her first time playing on glass, which is different from the other courts, and she was really nervous, but she did really well in her match. Also everyone did really well because we were all playing four places up,” said Kung.
When asked about the team’s strengths, Lukens emphasized the strong sense of community among the players, highlighting the important role team rituals play when the team is warming up.
“Our strength was, what’s true for pretty much every game, but there’s always a lot of community, when we’re warming up and we have a lot of team rituals that happen, which definitely helps us to support each other and stuff like that,” said Lukens.
As the season winds down, Kung praised Coach Shaun Duffy who has helped improve the team’s movement and its endurance on the court by incorporating squash-specific drills and conditioning exercises into practice.
“A big thing that our coach has tried to make us work on is movement and fitness for all of us. He’s really tried to incorporate a lot of jump roping and cord sprints into our practices and ghosting, which is a squash thing,” said Kung.
Building on Kung’s mention of the team’s practices, Levitsky noted that the team is ramping up its training for New Englands and Nationals by increasing the amount of cardio workouts during practice, while also practicing key drills to prepare for the intensity at Nationals.
“We only have one actual match, and then we also have New England’s and Nationals coming up soon. My coach [Coach Duffy] said he wants to get more running in our practices. Also, we’re just gonna continue to drill because Nationals is a super intense competition,” said Levitsky.
Girls Squash looks to keep preparing for Nationals next weekend.
