Sophomore Marco Rodriguez is holding down the number one spot for the Penn Charter varsity this season. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

In a non-league squash-square-off between two area boys’ teams last Wednesday, visiting Germantown Friends claimed the number one and two matches, but the Penn Charter Quakers prevailed everywhere else in the line-up, notching their first victory of the season, 7-2.

The Quakers are a youthful bunch overall and the GFS Tigers are fairly young in the five-through-nine positions, so both teams have a number of players adjusting to the challenge of being varsity starters.

Charter (1-3) had begun its Inter-Ac League schedule with contests against Episcopal Academy and the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy “A” team. PC also sustained a 6-3 loss at the hands of Shipley, a team which defeated GFS, 7-2.

Shipley is the only Friends Schools League member besides GFS which fields a varsity squash team, so the winner of the annual bout between the Gators and the Tigers is the de facto FSL champion. After last week’s Penn Charter match, Germantown owned a 1-4 overall record which included a victory over the SCH varsity “B’ outfit and losses to powerful Haverford School and Conestoga High School (a 5-4 squeaker).

GFS picked up a victory at the top spot last Wednesday thanks to senior Calvin McCafferty, who overcame Quakers sophomore Marco Rodriguez, 11-4, 11-5, 11-3. McCafferty was recruited to play squash by Yale University, and was recently informed that he is officially a member of the Class of 2020. Junior Jack Lentz furnished the other win for the Tigers, taking the measure of PC sophomore Marker Angelakis, 11-6, 11-1, 11-7.

From there on down the ladder, Penn Charter was in control, starting with number three Tate Miller’s 11-3, 11-3, 11-7 decision over visitor Felipe Sanz in a bout between seniors. Another GFS 12th-grader, number four Silas Shah, fell victim to the Quakers’ eighth-grade prodigy, Tommy Fournaris, 11-4, 11-6, 11-8.

PC had the more experienced man in the fifth spot, where junior Reid Kleinman was an 11-5, 11-5, 11-2 winner over Tigers freshman James Nalle. Nalle has an older brother who played for GFS, and both male and female cousins who played for Springside Chestnut Hill.

Two freshmen faced one another in the number six match, only one of two bouts that extended past three games. Germantown’s Mike Harrity started out with an 11-9 win, but his host Rohan Bhambhani took game two by an identical score, and the PC ninth-grader also secured the next two rounds, 11-6, 11-3.

There was no age difference in the number seven and eight contests, either. The sevens were sophomores, and here Ben Swanson beat Eli Eisenstein of GFS 11-8, 11-6, 12-10. There was also a hard-fought third game turned in by the two ninth-graders playing number eight. Tom Bradbeer of the host team put both of the first two games in his column with 11-4 scores, but the Tigers’ Jacob Sternberg-Sher dug in for the third game and Bradbeer had to go to 12-10 to finish out the match.

The second four-game encounter of the afternoon was in the nine spot. Charter freshman Max Lubowitz opened with an 11-8 win, but junior Jake Schwartz of GFS drew even with an 11-6 verdict in game two. Lubowitz won out from there, 11-4, 11-8.