Sports briefly: Women's squash, wrestling, men's swimming, women's swimming

Women's Squash
Last weekend, the women’s squash team participated in pre-season scrimmages. Coach Engman described the team’s performance as a great start to the season but also acknowledged that the scrimmages do not provide the best preview to the team’s performance. Engman believes that the team’s performance reflects the progress that it made during their inaugural year last season and believes they will be competitive in the Ivy League this year.

This Friday, the women’s squash team will face the University of Toronto in their home opener. “We will go out trying our best and confident in our fitness and our skills,” Engman said.

Engman expects the team to end the season ranked between 9 and 16 in the nation. “To end nine we will have to play extremely well against Brown and Bates. We will also have competitive matches against Middlebury and Williams, and any of those matches could go either way,” Engman said. “I expect that we can win against Amherst and George Washington University, but you never know.”

Wrestling
Coming off an impressive showing in last weekend’s Michigan State Open, the Lions head to Ithaca for the Body Bar System Invitational looking to continue performing at a high level. Nine Columbia wrestlers placed last Saturday in East Lansing, an indication the Light Blue has a good chance of improving upon its eighth-place finish two years ago in its last appearance at the Body Bar System Invitational. The Lions will once again compete in a twelve-team field that features many of the nation’s best wrestling programs, including a talented Cornell team that won the tournament last year. “We are very excited about the level of competition this weekend,” head coach Carl Fronhofer said. “The field is strong from top to bottom. Our guys will have the opportunity to see multiple nationally-ranked wrestlers in every weight class.” The tournament is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. this Saturday.

Men's Swimming
After dual meets against Penn and Yale last weekend, the men’s swimming and diving team (1-1) will face Army at Uris Pool on Saturday. “Army is always a good team. They always present a good challenge for us,” head coach Jim Bolster said. “Guys in the army are used to working hard, so we’ll expect that kind of effort from them.” The Lions have not won the 200-yard medley this season. However, Bolster looks to go with the same team he has so far in 2011, as no one has posted faster splits than freshman Omar Arafa, sophomore Matthew Swallow, senior Bruno Esquen, and junior John Wright. Head-to-head, the Light Blue has posted similar times as Army in most of the events. The freshmen class has made a large impact on the program so far, with freshman free sprinter Stanley Wong, back sprinters Arafa and Jeremie DeZwirek, divers Micah Rembrandt and Theo Boder, and fly swimmer David Jakl, who have all either won races or contributed points at meets. “When you look at the meet as a whole, we should be able to win, but Army, they like to race,” Bolster said. “I think our pool is a fast pool and every time they’ve come down here in the past couple years, they’ve raced really well.”

Women's Swimming
The women’s swim team will spend the weekend participating in the four-day Boston University Invitational against nine other teams: Boston College, BU, UMass, New Hampshire College, Holy Cross, Drexel, Stony Brook, Northeastern and Central Connecticut State, and recent opponents Yale, who the Lions dispatched last Friday with a narrow victory. The Lions will be the team to watch at the invitational, having recently earned a top-ten Mid-Major national ranking from collegeswimming.com. After that, they face Harvard and Penn in a return to Ivy League competition Dec. 9th at home.