Dec. 4, 2010

Complete Results

CLINTON, N.Y. - The 13th-ranked Navy squash team opened its trip to New York by suffering a disappointing 8-1 loss to 16th-ranked St. Lawrence, but bounced to to take a 9-0 victory over host Hamilton College Saturday afternoon. The loss to St. Lawrence marked just the second blemish on the Mids' record this season as Navy now stands 13-2 on the year.

"My hat's off to St. Lawrence," said Navy head coach Craig Dawson. "They have been nipping at our heels over the last two years and they finally got us. We had some close matches today, but they won all of them and deserved to win the match.

"I liked the way we bounced back in the afternoon against Hamilton, although we did have some tough individual matchups."

Eight of the nine matches went into overdrive, including five matches that were decided in five games. One of those five matches was at the No. 1 position where Navy senior Allan Lutz (McLean, Va.) won the Mids' lone match against St. Lawrence. Lutz fell behind right out of the gates, but regrouped and took a 2-1 advantage behind 11-8 and 11-9 wins. His foe, sophomore Amay Merchant, fought back to knot the match at 2-2 with his game-four 11-6 win. Lutz, however, used his experience and outstanding fitness to secure the match win by way of an 11-7 win in the fifth.

Lutz closed out the day with a three-game sweep over Hamilton freshman Martin Bawden who bowed out to the Navy senior, 11-7, 11-6, 11-3. The two wins on Saturday pushed Lutz's season record to 13-1, while he stands 83-26 over his four-year career.

Freshman Hunter Beck (Lafayette Hill, Pa.), Navy's No. 2 player on the ladder, had his hands full the entire day. Beck jumped out to a 2-0 lead over St. Lawrence senior Alex Dodge, but let the win slip away as Dodge rallied to take a five-game win, 10-12, 7-11, 11-5, 11-9, 11-5. Meanwhile, Hamilton's Harry Keesan pushed Beck to five games in the afternoon's final match. This time Beck turned the tables, falling behind 2-0 and fighting back to win the final three games 11-4, 11-9, 11-7 to earn the win.

At the No. 3 slot Billy Abrams (Wilmington, Del.) lost in threee games to St. Lawrence's Vir Seth, but came back to defeat Hamilton senior James Hogan. Abrams won the opener against Hogan, 11-1, but Hogan came back to even the match with an 11-7 win in the second. Abrams, however, cruised to the match win by winning games three and four, 11-5 and 11-6.

John Richey (West Hartford, Conn.), John Tracey (Owings Mills, Md.) and David Koenig (Cincinnati, Ohio) all dropped five-game decisions to St. Lawrence, but came back to earn 3-0 victories over their Hamilton opponents. St. Lawrence freshman Nathan Ticho jumped out to a 2-0 lead over Koenig, but the Navy sophomore battled his way back into the match with back-to-back 11-7 wins. Koenig, however, would be edged out in the deciding game, 11-9.

Meanwhile, senior Aidan Crofton (Laverock, Pa.) jumped out to a 1-0 lead over St. Lawrence's Russell Woeltz before losing the next three, including a tough 12-10 loss in game three. Crofton, who has lost just two matches at Navy, came back to defeat Will Kerr of Hamilton, 11-3, 11-6, 11-2.

The Midshipmen will play their final two matches of the semester next week when they travel to Philly to face Penn on Thursday at 6:00 pm and Drexel on Friday at 5:30 pm. Navy will be off for nearly a month to focus on final exams and enjoy the holiday break before returning to the courts the weekend of Jan. 8 when the Mids travel to the West Coast to battle Stanford and USC.


### Go Navy ###