Ellie Israelov ’25 won her match against Milton on Saturday.
Score: Andover 6: Milton 1
Record: 1-0
Andover Girls Squash (1-0) kickstarted its season on Saturday with a win over Milton, the team that finished at the top of the Independent School League last season with a 14-2 record.
With Head Coach Shaun Duffy taking over the program for the first time, Andover had to adapt to new leadership. Co-Captain Migyu Kim ’25 described working alongside Duffy to prepare the team for its season.
Kim said, “It’s our first season with our new coach, and he’s definitely been really good in helping us do basic drills and working on things, so that everyone can feel confident about their foundation and prepare for the season.”
Selene Xu ’27 detailed the practices leading up to the matches, which included technical skill work and scrimmages. On Thursday, teammates faced off against one another to determine their placement on the team.
“In practice, it was more of getting our shot to the back, where we did rotating rails and stuff, which helps with making your shots better. Also, the competitive matches for the ladder also helped on Thursday, because that got us into the mindset of actually competing rather than just training and doing skills stuff,” said Xu.
The season opener was fueled by the energy and excitement coming from the crowd and players. In the team’s only loss of the day, Kim, Andover’s number one seed fell short by just two points in her fifth match. Evelyn Kung ’26 recalled Kim’s dynamic match.
Kung said, “Our Captain, Migyu, had a really great match. It went to five games, and it was pretty long. She was the last one playing so all the boys squash team, all the parents were watching her.”
According to Kim, Duffy is implementing new strategies off the court, like video analysis and journaling, to help the team reflect on its matches. Kim noted how these additions will help Andover find success.
“Our new coach is going to use the video footage so that we can watch our matches and do some match analysis of things we can work on and things we did well. We’ve also been trying to use journaling to reflect a bit more on our own games. It’s in the very beginning stages because we are in the beginning of the season but making sure we are using all of our resources to help us learn more about our games and things to improve,” said Kim.
Girls Squash will reflect upon the Milton matches to prepare for its upcoming tournament, noted Kung.
Kung said, “While the win helped with team spirit, it also showed us where we need to practice and what some of our weak spots are. We’ll definitely use what we learned from our success this weekend so we can do more at Groton next weekend.”
Andover Girls Squash will compete away at the Groton Invitational on Saturday.
