HARTFORD, Conn.—Junior Ella Witcher had been in this situation before. As a freshman at the 2000 Howe Cup Consolation match against Trinity, Witcher had been up two games to none in the No. 4 spot with the overall match tied at four games apiece only to give up three straight games to seal the loss.

On Saturday, Witcher had another opportunity to take one from the Bantams in the only remaining match but fell short at No. 7, 3-1, as Trinity defeated Harvard, 5-4, at the Kellner Squash Center in Hartford, Conn.

Shortly afterwards, the Harvard men’s squash team fell to Trinity by an 8-1 score. The losses will drop the No. 1 Crimson women behind the No. 2 Bantams in the next Women’s Intercollegiate Squash Association (WISA) rankings, and further solidify the Trinity men’s hold on the top position in the National Intercollegiate Squash Association (NISRA) poll.

“As far as I’m concerned, we competed,” Harvard Coach Satinder Bajwa said. “The name of the game is to come here and compete.”

Saturday’s events included the dedication of Trinity’s new squash courts in between the women’s and men’s matches. The Bantams celebrated the occasion by narrowly upending the defending Howe Cup champions in the first match, and then drubbing the No. 2 Crimson men after the ceremony.

Harvard Women

With the Crimson down 4-3 and needing wins in both of the remaining two games in progress in order to take the match, co-captain Colby Hall roared back after losing the first set to beat Mollie Anderson, 3-1 to give Harvard a chance. But Witcher fell to Trinity freshman Meridy Vollmer, who rode a 7-0 run to a victory in the pivotal third game and won in four (9-5, 7-9, 9-5, 9-4).

“I know that right now everyone’s really sad,” Hall said. “But Coach got on the floor with us afterwards and said he looked in each of your eyes and saw this sort of fight. No one ever gave up.”

The Crimson’s depth had, up until that point, compensated for losses at the top of its lineup. Sophomore No. 1 Louisa Hall, Colby’s sister, scored only five total points in a 3-0 defeat to the nation’s top-ranked player, sophomore Amina Helal. Co-captain Margaret Elias won her first game against Trinity’s precocious freshman Lynn Leong, but Leong breezed through the next two to win the No. 2 match.

But the Crimson was bolstered by a convincing win by senior Carlin Wing over Trinity’s Samantha Lewins at No. 4, who gave up only seven combined points in winning three straight.

Harvard freshman Lindsey Wilkins provided a less-expected boost at No. 3. The eighth-ranked Wilkins upset fifth-ranked Pam Saunders in three games. Wilkins came through despite her inexperience in Trinity’s colored glass courts, where players typically require an adjustment period to see the white ball clearly against the dark surface. She was briefly rattled during the third game after a lunge to the floor left her with an apparent ankle injury, but she regained her composure and pulled out the third-frame victory, 10-8.

“The name of the game is competition, and Lindsey Wilkins epitomizes that,” Bajwa said. “This was a hell of a match to play under such conditions as a freshman.”

Fellow freshman Hillary Thorndike also won at the No. 8 slot.

The close loss suggests that the Howe Cup final, the women’s squash national championship, will be a very tightly contested affair between these two schools at Princeton in early March.