The thirty-ninth annual U.S. Intercollegiate Squash Doubles Championships were completed Sunday with riveting results. Philadelphia Cricket Club hosted the tournament, which was originally started in 1942.
Twenty-one teams came from Connecticut College, Cornell, Fordham, Franklin & Marshall, George Washington, Hobart, Penn, Rochester and Yale but it was the U.S. Naval Academy which again dominated the tournament. In a Navy v. Rochester semi, Navy’s Jonathan Lentz & James Kjorlien survived two 15-14 games to get past Rochester’s Ashley Davies & Ricardo Lopez in three. In the other semi, top seeds Senen Ubina & Michael Kacergis also took a 15-14 game over Cornell’s Charles Culhane & Andrew Muran in their three-game sweep.
Last year Ubina and his then-partner outlasted Lentz & Kjorlien in a five-game barn-burner. Today they again went to five and again Ubina and Kacergis survived to capture the Butchet-Ball Cup: 15-11, 15-13, 13-15, 14-15, 15-6.
It is an end of an era for the Ubinas. His older sister Maria Elena collected five intercollegiate titles while at Princeton (three women’s and two mixed) and now Senen bows out with three titles, making them the most successful intercollegiate doubles family in squash history. They pushed beyond the Deans (Alex and Jamie with five titles) and McGuinnesses (Trevor and Andrew, five) and the Franks (Garrett & Reade, four).