Miami Valley School Squash

"ROLLS" ON!

  Saturday, January 16th the MVS High School Team loaded up in the van at 8:00 am and drove 4-1/2 hours to the Shady Side Academy in suburban Pittsburgh, PA for its second "Tri-Match" in the last 2 weeks. The MVS Team, which trains and plays home matches at the Dayton Squash Center, had matches scheduled with a JV team from Mercersburg Academy traveling from southwest PA & the girls Varsity team from the host school, Shady Side Academy.

In the first contest against Mercersburg's JV team, MVS started with Marissa Peppel winning the exhibition match at # 9 (her first individual match win!) and the tone was set for MVS winning ways. Jackson Wagner, playing the # 7 position, won a tough match 3-2 and MVS was off to a good start and took control of the match. Every other match was won by MVS 3-0, with Corri Johnson winning a strong match 3-0 at # 1 and Team Co-Captain Sarah Caughey playing well and winning 3-0 at the # 2 position. MVS wins the team match 7-0 and has its first team victory!

The Girls Varsity Team from Shady Side proved to be slightly tougher competition. MVS lost both exhibition matches, they were close contests, but once again, Jackson Wagner started the team off with a win at # 7 (3-1). Team Co-Captain Jake Brown won 3-0 at # 6 and Ryan Beatty survived a tough contest to win 3-2 at the # 5 position. Galen Squiers won easily (3-0) at # 4 and Stefan Cleveland was tested a bit at # 3 but prevailed 3-1 in this match. Corri Johnson played # 2 and won 3-0 but Sarah Caughey, now playing # 1 had the toughest match of the day. Her Shady Side opponent has played as high as # 5 on the BOYS Varsity Team and although Sarah played great, especially in game 3, her opponent was too tough and prevailed 3-0. No one on our new team could have beaten a player of this experienced level (a senior, heading off to Columbia) but Sarah, by her play, proved we're not out of our league and getting close to playing at a higher level.

Saturday January 9th the MVS High School Squash team left at 8:00am to travlel 4 hours to Cleveland suburbs to play a "Tri-Match" at the all boys University School against their Varsity Team who had traveled in November down to Dayton to play the MVS team in its first ever squash match. The U.S. team had trounced us at home in November (7-0) and although the score was the same on the 9th, the U.S. coach Jon Bridge commented that he saw "marked improvement" in our players and recognized that we "were on our way!"

Before playing U.S., the MVS team played the varsity team from the all boys Gow School in Buffalo. Although Gow ultimately won the match, 4-3, the MVS team played great and had a chance to actually win. Team Co-Captain Jake Brown won the first ever individual match in MVS squash history, playing a tough match at # 7. Corri Johnson, moments later, scored the second individual win playing well at # 5.

Although we were beaten in the top 3 slots, with MVS Galen Squiers playing valiantly at #1 & Stefan Cleveland fighting hard at # 3, Co-Captain Sarah Caughey pulled off a strong win at # 4. Suneal Vishnupad lost a tough 5 game match playing at # 6 and if this had gone his way, MVS would have pulled off a huge upset over an established program in only our SECOND competitive match! Well done by all our players!