PHILADELPHIA, PA – 15th-ranked University of Rochester men's squash fell to the 7th-ranked Drexel University Dragons, 9-0, on Sunday inside the Kline & Specter Squash Center in their first match of the 2025 portion of their campaign.
 
The Dragons would open things up with a win at the No. 5-spot, as Fritiof Jacobsson swept Thomas Valderrama, 11-5, 11-2, 11-4. Playing on five courts, Drexel would open the match with four-straight wins to set up the clincher, where Haris Qasim would eke out the clinching win by default over Yash Fadte.
 
Yuri Pollak Pelbart claimed another 3-0 win for the Dragons at the four-spot on the ladder, topping Tom Whiteley, 11-5, 11-5, 11-6, while Dumitru Goian went four games against Arnav Mandhana, but took the match, 3-1 (11-4, 9-11, 11-4, 11-3).
 
At the No. 9 spot, Tavneet Singh Mundra set up the clincher with a 3-0 win over Nic Gill, defeating the UR senior, 11-6, 11-1, 11-5.
 
With the match in hand, Drexel kept things rolling with 3-0 wins at both the six and eight-spots on the ladder, as Sean Murphy beat Vandrick Inman-Benavente, 11-3, 11-9, 11-9, while Charlie Taylor needed a couple of extra points in the first game but topped Jacob Koeppel, 14-12, 11-3, 11-4.
 
The Yellowjackets and Dragons would wrap up things up at the No. 2 and No. 3 spots on the ladder, where Dhirren Rajarathinam took a game from Youssef Bastawy but fell, 3-1 (8-11, 11-8, 8-11, 9-11); while Omar Zakaria pushed Guido Lindner to five: 12-10, 4-11, 7-11, 11-7, but eventually fell in the fifth game, 11-3, to drop the No. 2-spot, 3-2.
 
No. 15 UR drops to 2-6 with the loss, while the 7th-ranked Dragons move to 5-3 on the year.
 
The Yellowjackets next host Hobart College on Wednesday, Jan. 22 inside the Lyman Squash Center.