Martlets Fall to Kent

The boys traveled to Kent for what turned out to be a very competitive match. As usual, we started with the even numbers. Having traveled and playing at the same time as varsity, the lineups were announced together and we played the match as #1-16, with #9-16 counting for the JV match. #6 Steven Xie ‘26 and #8(exhibition) Grant Owen ‘24 both fought hard for every point in 3 game losses. Mark Yang ‘26 battled hard at number 2. After taking the first game 11-9, he dropped the next two before pushing the fourth game to 10-10 before falling 12-10. To conclude the first round of matches, Phil Zhang ‘24 played very good, and very smart squash and had an impressive 3-0 victory. After going into the second round of matches down 1-2, the boys came out strong. Connor Scollans ‘26 played some good squash at #7 to take the first two games, but lost a little focus and dropped the third game. He rebounded strongly with an 11-8 game 4 win to seal his match and make the overall score 2-2. Next off the court was Charlie Raymond ‘24 playing at #5. After a tough match on Wednesday, Charlie came out very focused and intense during this match. He played his best squash of the season for a routine 3 game victory. Meanwhile, Robert Yalda ‘24 had a tough match at #3. He fought hard and made some nice adjustments in the final two games, but it was not enough to best a tough opponent. Finally, Ben Swift ‘25 played at #1. While this was technically a varsity match (both players were #9 on varsity), this allowed them to play a match that counted. These two were very even and played some very entertaining squash. After dropping a tight first game 7-11, Ben came out very strong and took the second game 11-3. The third game was extremely close, with both players making some incredible drop shots, and making some excellent running gets. The Kent player was able to squeak out this game 11-9, and used the home crowd energy to take a 10-3 lead in the fourth game. While Ben did an amazing job to fight back to 8-10, he didn’t have quite enough to make the comeback. This was an amazing match, and all the viewers would have learned a lot from the quality of the match. While this ended up being a tough loss, the boys all felt good about the way they played. We will be back on the road on Wednesday when we travel to Pomfret, again with varsity.