Senior co-captain Rebecca Rice and sophomore Stef Marx competed this weekend at the College Squash Association (CSA) Individual Championships at Navy.
Marx finished with a 2-2 record, bowing out in a five-gamer in the quarterfinals of the consolation bracket to an eventual bracket finalist. Rice dropped both her matches in three games. Coach Doug Eng estimated that the pair will likely receive final season rankings in the vicinity of No. 130 to No. 150.
The CSA Individual Championship seeds the nation's top 64 college squash players in two divisions, each playing a double elimination-style tournament. Rice and Marx were in the Holleran Cup, the second-tier bracket that includes players Nos. 33 to 64, although individual players are not ranked. The top 32 individuals play for the Ramsay Cup.
Marx, the Jumbos' No. 3 player for most of the season, lost her first match on Friday, falling in three games, 9-1, 9-1, 9-2, to Annie Ritter, a middle-lineup sophomore from Cornell.
In Saturday's consolation round, she overcame Julie Kiernan of host Navy in four games, 5-9, 9-7, 9-4, 9-7, to stay alive in the tournament. After dropping the first game, Marx took the next three to dispatch Kiernan, the No. 1 of Navy's emerging women's squash program and the first Navy woman to play in the CSA tournament.
"I just had a lot of fire in me, and that was one of the best matches I've ever played," Marx said. "I knew I had to win to stay in the tournament, and I really stepped it up and it paid off."
"Stefanie played very, very well," Eng said. "She was stepping up to the T, she was active, she was playing smart and she just kept moving. It was her first time [at CSA Individuals], so she wasn't nervous. She played like she had nothing to lose."
A five-game win in the round of 16 over Mt. Holyoke senior Lizzie Wright sent Marx to the consolation quarterfinal. But there she met George Washington junior Rachael Rayfield, an eventual consolation-bracket finalist who had just knocked Rice out of the tournament. Marx rallied from a 2-0 deficit to tie the match but fell in five to Rayfield, whose path to the consolation final went through both Marx and her teammate Rice.
"She wasn't a very conventional player, and so it was a little tough to figure her out," Marx said. "But she was a solid player and I matched up well with her. I probably should have pulled it out.
"I was really excited to go, and I thought I played really well, actually. Going in, I thought I'd probably be out after two, but I played four and was really close in the last match. I saw really good squash players and realized that I can hold my own with some of them."
Rice was making her third trip to CSA Individuals and her final appearance in a stellar career for Tufts. In the first round, Rice fell in three games, 9-6, 9-1, 9-5, to Mt. Holyoke sophomore Laurian Lue Yen, who started the season at No. 4 before playing the final 12 matches of the season at No. 5 for the Lyons.
"It's hard because you're a senior and you want something good from your last tournament," Eng said of Rice. "This isn't the way you want to go out, but you can't expect that one tournament is going to be your best one. You have to look back over your career, and she's had a great one."
