5.81 rated Christian Graziano ’25 went up early against Tabor’s 6.61 rated Juan Jose Torres ’24, winning his first two sets, but ultimately lost 3-2. Andover would regain as a team, defeating Tabor 4-3. With its earlier 7-0 sweep against Groton on Friday, the team’s record now stands at 6-2.
Tabor’s Torres is currently rated as the number one player in the U.S. for highschool boys. Co-Captain Aidan Lin ’23 commended Graziano’s strong effort on the court.
“Today he played one of the best under-19 players in the world. The player that he played won the US [Junior] Open recently, so he really is one of the best juniors in the world, and Christian went to five [games] with him, winning the first two games, and that’s really impressive,” said Lin.
According to Sean-Winston Luo ’24, the match against Tabor was particularly challenging for the top three players on the team. While none of Andover’s top three players were able to win, the team was able to win the remainder of the matches, earning a victory.
“We beat Tabor 4-3, and it’s mainly just because their top three players are super super good. They have international recruits from Egypt and Columbia, so our top three lost. I lost, but our bottom four was able to win,” said Luo.
During practices leading up to the games, the team prioritized improving its fitness. According to Lin, a large reason the team was able to secure two wins was because of its stamina on the court.
Lin said, “A big thing we’ve been working on these past few weeks has been fitness. Before the break we realized we didn’t have enough fitness on the team, so we’re doing a lot of court sprints, footwork drills, strength training, and that really showed through today, especially in our harder matches.”
Luo expressed the team’s confidence heading into its upcoming match against Noble and Greenough, and he looks forward to team’s matchup against its rival Hotchkiss.
Luo said, “This week was just a super stacked week, we played Tabor today, and Friday we’re away at Nobles. I’m not really looking forward to that, it’s going to be a pretty easy match, but this weekend at home we play Hopkins and Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss is one of our biggest rivals, a lot of the players on our team have a little beef with them, so it should be a really good match, we’re hoping to draw a big crowd.”
Heading into the match against Hotchkiss, Alexander Yang ’26 hopes to improve upon his shot variety.
“I think being able to utilize a wider range of shot selections, because shot selection is often very important in squash, and most of the times it’s even more important than the quality of the shot, so I think definitely being smart about where you play the ball and how you play the ball, I think that’s something I have to work on,” said Yang.
Andover will face Nobles away on Friday and Hopkins and Hotchkiss in a double-header at home on Saturday.
