Rob reports on the semis

After playing the first four rounds at the Open Squash Fi-Di club near Wall Street, the action moved today to the portable court in Grand Central Station, where the Tournament of Champions is being held this week, and in light of the extremely high quality of play that characterized all four of today’s college matches, there is no doubt that some of the current college contingent will be back at the very same site, this time as PSA players, in the very near future.

The Women

Top-seeded defending champion Zeina Zein earned the chance to become the first repeat College Women’s Individual champion since current PSA top-10 Gina Kennedy achieved the feat in 2019 and 2020 when she out-played (albeit barely) her Princeton teammate Alexandra Jaffe by a score of 12-10, 11-8, 9-11, 11-7 in the semifinal round.

Zein surged into today’s match with a trio of straight-set victories, but Jaffe had chances to win each of the first three games after serving at game-ball in the first game and at 8-9 in the second. Both Tiger stars worked all four corners of the court in entertaining, crowd-pleasing fashion, with Zein having just enough of an edge in pace and precision to make the difference.

She will face Harvard’s No. 1 player Caroline Fouts, who backed up her 11-9 fifth-game quarterfinal victory over her Crimson teammate (and 2024 Individuals champion) Saran Nghiem with a competitive but convincing four-game win this afternoon over Yale’s Heng Wai Wong.

The Men

In today’s men’s semifinal matches, the Cinderella run of Harvard’s Omar Azzam — who had followed a straight-set round-of-16 win over No. 1 seed Tad Carney of Yale by edging Trinity’s Low Wa-Sern, 11-9 in the fifth — finally came to an end at the hands of Wa-Sern’s Trinity College teammate Muhammad Ashab Irfan, who won by an 11-7, 8 and 9 tally.

Trailing 8-3 in the third, Azzam courageously tied the score at 8-all, but two tinned working-boasts (a backhand at 8-all and a forehand at 9-all) gave Irfan a match-ball, which he converted with a forehand drop-shot winner.

Irfan, who defeated 2025 College Men’s Individuals champion Salman Khalil in the quarterfinals, will now play Khalil’s Penn teammate (and Individuals runner-up last year) Omar Hafez in the finals in the wake of the latter’s four-game victory over Trinity’s Joachim Chuah.