Coming into the winter season, Fords Squash held high aspirations: defeat their rivals at Brunswick School and Saint Andrews School, win the Inter-Ac for the third straight year, and win High School Nationals at the end of February.
They defeated Brunswick and Saint Andrews in close matches, but fell short at the Inter-Ac championship, losing to Episcopal Academy.
“They surprised us with how strong their lineup is,” Sixth Form Co-Captain Render Ford said. “When we face them again in a few weeks, we’ll be ready.”
The team, dealing with illnesses and injuries, fell in a tight 5-4 match against Episcopal. However, they look forward to improving for Nationals, hosted at the Arlen Specter Center from February 23-25.
“All of our players really wanted it and were hungry enough to fight for it,” Fifth Former Devon Li said. “I’m honestly not thinking about the [loss], I just want the team to do their best so when we get to nationals, and if we lose, we know we did absolutely everything we could.”
Co-Captain and Sixth Former Drew Glaser echoed the sentiment.
“I still believe we can win a national championship, and we’ve shown we can beat the top two teams in the country,”
Drew Glaser ’24
“I still believe we can win a national championship, and we’ve shown we can beat the top two teams in the country,” Glaser said. “But the reality is, we need to get back to our ways at the beginning of the season. The past couple weeks have been extremely hard for us to get good hard training in due to lots of matches, lack of available court times, illnesses among the team, and even snow days.”
Glaser believes that a combination of hard training and support from his brothers was the key to their early success, and will be the key to success at Nationals.
“[To beat Brunswick and Saint Andrews] we trained extremely hard every day and were able to have consistent, tough practices,” Glaser said. “Having the crowd was extremely important to our win.”
Fords Squash is looking to take advantage of the weeks leading up to Nationals to bounce back.
“Now we are healthy and have a good block for hard training. We will be implementing 6 a.m. practices,” Glaser said. “The team, for obvious reasons, has never been more motivated to train harder than ever in preparation for Nationals.”
Ford believes the team has something to prove, but realizes that success will require effort and dedication.
“At practice, we need to hold each other accountable. This is something we talked a lot about in our recent loss to Episcopal,” Ford said. “I want to see this team be number one in the country. I can’t wait to see this team prove to everyone that we are stronger than our losses and better than our wins.”
Li believes that the team has the grit and determination to hoist the national championship for the second time.
“We want the win more than them,” Li said.
Glaser agreed.
“I can definitely tell you that our season is far from over,” Glaser said.