Mike Harrity, a Tigers junior, is pictured during the number five match last Wednesday. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

On the squash courts of the Germantown Cricket Club last Wednesday, both the boys of host Germantown Friends and their guests from the Harriton/Lower Merion High School combo team (HLM) were seeking the first victory of the 2017-18 season. With one of the GFS Tigers' top talents, sophomore Tommy Fournaris, still out of action with an injury, it was the Ram Aces of HLM who secured that "W," topping the Tigers, 8-1.

For a time, it looked as though GFS might get swept in the team score, but freshman Zack Idinopulos was able to stage a comeback in a five-game bout at the number eight spot. His rival, HLM junior Grant Stevens, took the first two games, 11-9, 11-7. In an extended third game, Idinopulos staved off defeat and won 13-11, and after that he put the contest in the Tigers' column by prevailing by a score of 12-10 in each of the next two games.

Two of the defeats suffered by the home team came in four-game bouts. At number three, it was 1-1 after visiting junior Zach Forman won the opening game, 11-8, and GFS senior Eli Eisenstein bounced back to take the second, 11-9. Forman emerged victorious by earning 12-10 decisions in the third and fourth rounds.

In the sixth spot, where two ninth-graders squared off, HLM's Alex Unruh stormed to an 11-0 victory in the first frame, and then Gray Kearns of Germantown Friends regrouped an captured the second segment, 11-9. Unruh rediscovered his early momentum for favorable outcomes in games three and four, 11-9, 11-3.

Freshman Kenji Moriuchi has moved into the number four spot for Germantown Friends. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

An eighth-grader playing number nine for the Tigers, Max Daniel, fell to freshman guest Avi Shende, 11-6, 11-4, 11-7, and another HLM freshman, Blaze Broderson, took three 11-9 games from GFS freshman number seven Caleb Friedman-Spring.

In a number five bout featuring two juniors, visitor Eli Segal put up scores of 11-7, 11-6, 11-8 against Mike Harrity. HLM also collected a "W" in the fourth spot, where sophomore Nolan Gelinas got the better of Germantown Friends freshman Kenji Moriuchi, 11-1, 11-2, 11-1.

On the gallery court, where Eisenstein and Forman had been the first to play, the number two match was won by Ram Aces sophomore Thomas Rosini over Germantown's Sean Park, 11-1, 11-1, 11-6. HLM's Jed Burde, who has held a top-10 national ranking this winter, won the number one match on Wednesday over a fellow junior, James Nalle of GFS. The scores were 11-4, 11-4, 11-1.

Harriton/Lower Merion took away a season record of 1-6, while GFS, which had two matches cancelled due to the cold, snowy and icy early January weather, slipped to 0-4.