The varsity squash team played against Buckingham Browne and Nichols Upper School (BB&N) on Tuesday, Feb. 7 at the Tufts University Squash Center. The girls team lost their match 5-2, bringing their season record to 4-5. The boys team won 5-2, bringing their season record to 6-6.

BB&N is a top Massachusetts ranked private school for squash, according to Clublocker, a U.S. squash ranking system. Because of this, the Warriors were not hopeful for the majority of their top matches and were relying on their lower matches to win the event, according to girls head coach Steve Lantos.

“We knew that we were most likely going to lose the top half of our roster, but we have greater depth than their team. Their team struggles with a large drop in rating after their top players while ours has less of a drop,” Lantos said. “So I was very confident that we would win in the bottom half of the roster.”

Sophomore Vishnu Urs is ranked at the top of the boys’ ladder and took the brunt of the losses. Urs’s opponent is ranked two points higher on the Universal Squash Ranking global scale and Urs lost in the third game. However, he scored five points against his opponent.

Senior and girls co-captain Helen Krakoff was top of the ladder for the girls team and also lost in the third game. Krakoff said the games were close and she was happy with how she performed.

“The games were pretty close; a lot of the scores were 11-8 or 11-9. I think I played well and I was close to my opponent today; I definitely could have done some things better but I’m happy with how I did overall,” Krakoff said.

Sophomore Fredrik Schreiber-Wacnik won a major victory for the Warriors with a hard fought match that saw him win in the fifth game.

Schreiber-Wacnik said that he played an enjoyable and difficult match, exchanging victories throughout, and ended up taking the victory.

“We traded off games for a while and I had a good time doing that. Some of our games were extremely low scoring. But then in the fifth and deciding match I pulled off a win and took the victory,” Schreiber-Wacnik said.

According to Lantos, while all players gave their all, there were a few players that performed particularly well in their individual match.

“Fredrik, the comeback kid, won in five. He thrives on that competition: taking it down to the wire. In the fifth and deciding game he was down 9-4 in a game to 11, so statistically the odds were not looking good for him,” Lantos said. “But he just has grit and you can see he inched his way back up and ended up winning by two with a final score of 12-10; that was huge so I’m super proud of him.”

Lantos said that sophomore Noelia Ames and senior Alise Vaivare won their matches and performed very well on the girls side.

“Noelia and Ali got some really nice wins with Noelia winning hers in four and Ali in three. I was really proud of them and the whole team in general played great today, no matter if they won or lost,” Lantos said.

Lantos said the goal for this season is to grow the team’s strengths and get in the right mindset to do this.

“As a team we have winning seasons and we have growing seasons. I would say this is more of a growing season; we want to improve not only in our physical game but also in our approach to the game,” Lantos said. “We want to achieve love of the game, recognizing how much each individual player has improved from the start of the season and being part of the team. If we can improve those three things, I believe that we will grow not only as individuals, but as a team.”