The Harvard men's squash team won its ninth straight Ivy League title on Wednesday, Feb. 17, by beating Yale, 9-0 at the Barnaby Courts in a battle of the last two teams with undefeated league records. The following Sunday the women's squash team were handed a heartwrenching upset by Princeton as the Tigers beat the Crimson in a 5-4 victory at the Murr Center. With the win, the Tigers kept the Howe Cup in New Jersey for the second straight year.

Men Squash Yale

The men's squash team has now won 33 of the 43 Ivy League championships in history and owes at least a share of 16 of the last 17 titles.

Harvard, ranked number two in the country, improves its record to 10-1 overall. And, for the ninth consecutive year, the Crimson finishes with a perfect 6-0 Ivy League mark. Yale, the number three team in the nation, falls to 15-2 overall and finishes 5-1 in Ivy play.

The Crimson dropped just four games en route to the convincing victory. Harvard players won 3-0 at numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9. Matches at numbers 5 and 6 went four games and number 8 went five games.

Yale is the last school other than Harvard to win the Ivy League men's squash title, beating the Crimson in the 1989-90 league final to take the crown.

Tigers Upset Women

Second-ranked Princeton clinched their victory of the top-ranked women's Crimson squad with a win by senior Megan Murphy at number nine. The win came exactly one week after Harvard edged Princeton, 5-4, in a dual match at Princeton to claim sole possession of first place in the Ivy League. Harvard will look to wrap up the Ivy title Wednesday, Feb. 24, at the Barnaby Courts at the Murr Center with its final league match against Yale at 7 p.m. However, the loss to the Tigers was the Crimson's first loss of the season. They are now 11-1 overall.

With the match score in favor of Princeton by a 4-3 count, Murphy came through for the Tigers. Murphy played number 10 for Princeton in last week's loss to Harvard, meaning her match did not even count in the team score. But Princeton Head Coach Gail Ramsay felt as though she was strong enough to play number 9 in the Howe Cup contest, and Murphy made her match count the most.

After dropping the first game, 9-4, to sophomore Virginia Brown, Murphy battled back to take the next two, 10-8 and 9-3. With both players fully aware of the stakes of their match, Brown dug down to gut out a 9-4 win in game four and the match was even at two games apiece. However, following a back-and-forth swing of momentum in game five, Murphy got hot at the end and recorded a 9-6 victory to give Princeton the Howe Cup.