St. Paul's breaks Gilman's grip on MIAA Squash championship

by James Peters

The wait is over for St. Paul’s. 

The Crusaders captured their first MIAA squash championship Thursday, dethroning Gilman, 4-3, in Brooklandville. St. Paul’s won four of the five matches en route to ending Gilman’s five-year championship reign.

The Greyhounds entered Thursday with a mind-boggling 15 of 17 titles since the MIAA sanctioned the sport in the 2007-08 season.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said St. Paul’s coach Eric Roberts, whose team won the regular-season meeting between the squads, 5-2, and finished at 9-0 on the season. “This is our seventh straight championship against Gilman, and this was the first time beating them in the regular season coming into this. They even had one of their top players back, so that made it even tougher.

“I’m so proud of our guys, the way they performed tonight. This was an awesome match.”

Helping to end that lengthy championship drought were Ashton Seeman, Tyler Hyle, Howdy, Colhoun, and Carter Holland, who won their individual matches by a combined 12-4 score to avenge back-to-back shutouts to the Greyhounds at the past two championship matches.

“I’ve been here since fifth grade, (and) I’ve seen us lose to that team for six straight years,” said Seeman, who upended Rohan Jari in a hotly contested 3-2 match, capturing the fifth game, 11-4, to rally from a two-game deficit. “I’ve been to every single one. It hurts just as much. I mean, senior year, going out like this, finally getting what we wanted done, it means the world. It’s an amazing feeling.”

Despite having won the regular-season match-up, Roberts did his best to shift the pressure squarely on Gilman’s shoulders to ease any nerves his squad might be feeling heading into the final.

“I kind of flipped it,” said Roberts, who should have been considered the favorite to win. “They’re still the reigning champs, so they’re still the ones who have pressure on them. That had to be the message.”

For Gilman, the thinking was that the second meeting would be a close one, making the title anybody’s to win.

“One of us was going to win 4-3,” said Gilman coach Doug DeSmit, whose squad fell to 9-4 that includes a 6-1 league season. “It was a toss-up. There were only two matches that were 3-0. It was in the balance for a long time. Our freshmen, hopefully, saw good things to learn tonight. We’ve got a lot to learn, and this is the beginning of our learning.”

Matthew Chi, Daniel Sun, and Jack Paternotte, Gilman’s top three seeds, secured victories in their matches by a combined 9-2 score to narrow the final gap.

“I thought we could definitely win, but I thought it would probably be 4-3, so it’s not surprising we lost, but it does sting a little,” said Chi, who bested Keenan McPhail, 3-1, in the battle of No. 1s. “I’ve got to pick myself up because there are Nationals next week. There are bigger matches to play.”