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This past weekend marked the first official matches for Penn's squash teams since March 2020, which was before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Ivy League athletics. The Red and Blue hosted Chatham, Drexel, Dickinson, and Franklin & Marshall at the Penn Squash Center for a two-day tournament.
As fall sports come to a close and winter sports are just kicking off, Penn fans are in for an action-packed weekend. Here is an overview of this weekend's upcoming events.
For the first time in program history, the Penn men’s squash team will enter the season ranked No. 1 in the nation, returning multiple All-Americans and key contributors from its No. 2 seeded team in the 2019-20 season.
Eleinen, who hails from Egypt, is preparing to enter his senior season for Penn squash and is expected to have another huge year after a sophomore season in which he was deemed first team CSA All-America and unanimously named first team All-Ivy.
The conclusion to the historic tale of Team USA's squash run in the 2019 Pan American Games came down to the last man on the team — twice. It was Andrew Douglas of Penn men’s squash, the only college player on the roster, who would step up to the semi-final round and face Alfredo Avila — former No. 35 in the world, hailing from the first-seeded favorites of Mexico.
With the experience of traveling throughout India and internationally for competition, Bhargava adjusted to his new environment with the same hard work in sports and studies that had earned him an invite to Penn.
Just one out of several challenges the teams must face is the thousands of miles separating the players who are at home or have returned to Philadelphia.
Opening up with a strong 8-1 win over No. 6 Yale, the Red and Blue won a hard-fought victory against No. 2 Trinity, 6-3, to set themselves up for the final.
Penn's winter sports teams aren't resting just yet. Though the women's squash season is winding down, indoor track and field and gymnastics still have a few weeks to go.
Splitting time between home and on the road, the men's and women's teams played against Columbia in the Penn Squash Center on Friday, then traveled to Ithaca, N.Y. on Sunday to take on Cornell.