Playing on a varsity sport in college means dedication. It means sacrificing time to practice and play. For the men's squash team, one of the sacrifices is giving up a relaxing intersession to compete in the Cowles individual squash tournament in New York.

The tournament, which hosts college and non-college competitors, is named after the first Harvard squash coach and celebrated its 50th anniversary this year doing justice to the program Cowles began.

Harvard boasted some amazing individual victories, but most incredibly captured the four semifinal positions.

The two semi-final matches featured senior co-caption Tal Ben-Shachar, who is number one on the team, versus sophomore teammate Rishaad Bilimoria, who competes at number four for the Crimson. In the other semi-final matchup, sophomore Daniel Ezra, the second-seeded player on the team, defeated sophomore team member Joel Kirsch, who is seeded third on the team.

Both Ezra's and Ben-Shachar's play held true to team standings, and each defeated his teammate 3-0. Therefore, they met in the finals where Ben-Shachar, who is a Crimson editor, secured a 3-0 victory.

Despite this domination of the field by the Crimson, the most notable win was, according to Ben-Shachar, "five game thriller" in which Bilimoria overpowered Kevin Jernigan, one of the top players in the U.S. Jernigan, a native of California and Harvard graduate, succumbed to Bilimoria's relentless assault in a 17-14 fifth game tie-breaker.

Yet not everything went according to plan. During a match, Ezra tore a tendon in his playing hand wrist and is not sure when he will be able to play again or if he will be ready to play in this weekend's crucial matchup against Princeton.

Despite this setback, the Crimson still dominated the field. "We're very satisfied with our performance especially coming right out of exams," Ben-Shachar said.

The team proceeds with its preparation for its biggest match of the season against Princeton this weekend. By continuing to mount victories, it hopes to clinch a national title come Sunday.

Two nights ago on January 31st, the Crimson vanquished Williams 8-1 in a dual match.

Although the score was lopsided, Ben-Shachar claimed that the victory was not as easy as it looked. Williams was undefeated going into this contest against Harvard and many of the matches were close. But Harvard once again prevailed, sustaining an untarnished season record.

And so with just two more days until the much anticipated match against Princeton, Harvard is relying on its hard training to help it ensure a victory. They've been gearing their training schedule so that they can peak for Sunday's Championship matchup.

But before they can tackle this anticipated rivalry, the Crimson face Penn on Saturday.

Although Penn is not as strong as Princeton, Harvard's mentality all season long has been to take one match at a time and to take each opponent seriously. Ben-Shachar reinforces this outlook.

"We're not merely using the Penn match as preparation and we aren't underestimating them," Ben-Shachar said. Yet he knows--along with the rest of the team--where the Crimson's focus lies. He believes that the team can use the Penn game, which is only one day before its decisive competition against Princeton, to its favor.