SCH sophomore James Mazzarelli dives for a ball during the number five match in the Blue Devils' season opener last Saturday. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

The lads of Springside Chestnut Hill Academy set an ambitious agenda for the start of the squash season, hosting two-time defending national champion Brunswick School for their 2016-17 opener last Saturday morning.

The visitors from Greenwich, Conn. emerged with a 6-3 victory but had to expend a good deal of effort for that outcome, as the majority of the nine individual matches went past the three-game minimum, and three of them extended to five games.

The Blue Devils graduated five seniors from last winter's line-up; Andrew and Eric Dolente, Billy Harris, Henry Kelly and Harrison Kapp. Kapp has joined his former SCH teammate Mason Blake ('14) on the team at the University of Virginia.

The depth of the SCH program has allowed the Blue Devils to fill those graduation gaps with strong players, and they've also benefitted from the return of former team member Chris Dalglish. After already earning the number two spot for the local squad as a sophomore, Dalglish spent a year at Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut, but is now back at Springside Chestnut Hill.

Last Saturday he headed a list of seniors who filled the top four spots for the Blue Devils against Brunswick. Playing against Tyler Carney, the Under-17 runner-up at the U.S. Closed Junior Championships last March, Dalglish encouraged the home crowd with an 11-4 victory in the opening game.

Carney, who is headed to Yale University, rebounded to put away the next two games, 11-3, 11-6, then charged out to a 9-2 lead in the fourth. Moving up in the court, Dalglish was able to grind out a few more points before Carney prevailed, 11-6.

The number two and three players for Springside Chestnut Hill, Zane Jeka and Luke Stauffer, will both move on to play for a George Washington University program that has been on the rise for the last few seasons.

Against Brunswick junior Max Finkelstein, Jeka succumbed in the first, 7-11, then pushed the second round past the regular limit before bowing 10-12. Finkelstein put the match in the Bruins' column with a convincing 11-3 victory in the third frame.

Stauffer and David Brenman (the fourth senior who saw action), both persevered for five-game decisions over Brunswick juniors Patrick Feeley and Will Holey. In the third spot, Stauffer won the first and third games, 11-6, 11-5 and Feeley took the second at fourth, 11-7, 11-4 before the SCH man closed out the match at 11-8 in the fifth.

After number four Brenman went up 2-1 over the first three segments (5-11, 11-9, 11-5), the Bruins' Holey stayed alive by outlasting his host in the fourth game, 13-11. The fifth round was over relatively quickly, with Brenman the 11-6 victor.

The third win for Springside Chestnut Hill last Saturday came in a bout between juniors at number nine, where the hosts' Joe Fabiani took the measure of Will Jones, 11-8, 11-5, 8-11, 11-8.

The rest of the lower half of the line-up belonged to Brunswick, which swept matches five through eight.

The younger brother of the graduated Kapp, junior Peter Kapp, was topped by the visiting freshman number eight, Dana Santry, 11-3, 11-6, 11-9.

SCH's Mazzarelli brothers, sophomore James and freshman Christian, were positioned fifth and seventh, respectively. James won his first game, 12-10, but Harvard-bound Brunswick senior Tate Huffman gathered momentum as he took the next three, 11-7, 11-9, 11-3. The younger Mazzarelli faced a fellow ninth-grader, Brian Leonard, who won 11-3, 11-6, 13-11.

Another Bruins freshman, Nick Spizzirri, began the number six bout with 11-4, 11-9 wins over Blue Devils sophomore Michael Berry. Berry, who arrived at SCH last year from his native South Africa, evened the match with 11-7, 13-11 verdicts in the next two games, then Spizzirri won the decider, 11-4.

The Springside Chestnut Hill line-up that took the court for Saturday's opener may not appear in exactly the same form later in the season. Senior Griffin Glendinning, sophomore Matt Bown, and freshman Charlie Larkin are also in the mix for the Blue Devils' varsity "A" team, and not all of SCH's early-season challenge matches have been completed.