Marina Stefanoni and Spencer Lovejoy pulled off career upsets over world No. 16 Sabrina Sobhy and three-time national champion Todd Harrity in the U.S. Women’s and S.L. Green U.S. Men’s Championship quarterfinals Wednesday, April 26, at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center in Philadelphia.
The results marked Stefanoni and Lovejoy’s first wins over the higher-ranked former national champions, and both matches saw them come back from losing the first game to win in four games.
Lovejoy lost his two previous matches against Harrity in the 2022 U.S. Championships quarterfinals and 2022 U.S. Open first round, but won their third encounter 3-11, 12-10, 11-6, 11-3 in fifty-one minutes to reach his first national semifinals.
“I’ve struggled against Todd the last couple of times we’ve played, I’ve never even taken a game off of him,” Lovejoy said. “It was the first time I ever felt like I was in the match against him. When I won the second game I felt like I could win the match and I was hungry for the win today.”
Lovejoy will face his Specter Center training partner and defending champion Timmy Brownell in the semifinals after the world No. 46 saved two match balls against 2013 champion Chris Gordon to win in five games.
“Timmy’s my long-time training partner, we always have good matches so I’m looking forward to that one tomorrow,” Lovejoy said. “It’s always a fair, clean good game of squash with him so I’m looking forward to pushing again.”
Five seed Andrew Douglas advanced to his fourth career semifinals with his second career quarterfinal win over world No. 47 and four seed Faraz Khan in three games. Douglas will face top seeded Shahjahan Khan who defeated Penn’s Dillon Huang in straight games.
With finals looming at Harvard, Stefanoni won her first career match against Crimson alum Sabrina Sobhy 5-11, 12-10, 11-4, 11-5 in thirty-four minutes.
“It feels amazing to win,” Stefanoni said. “We’re almost in finals period at school so I’m honestly running on the last of my fuel. I just wanted to play a good match. I’ve never actually played her in a real match, we’ve only sparred before. She’s one of the cleanest movers and players on tour so it feels really good to win this. It took a bit of discipline to win a match against someone like her, which I’m trying to add more of in my game and not go for silly shots–I think I did that well today. She made some errors, which was unfortunate, but I was happy with my discipline.”
The elder Stefanoni sister will now face the elder Sobhy sister Amanda in the semifinal in their first career match up after the world No. 5 dispatched junior Emma Trauber in three games.
“I didn’t know which side of the draw I was on to be honest,” Stefanoni said. “I’ve never played Amanda so this will be an incredible opportunity and I’ll try to make the most of it.”
Marina’s younger sister and six seed, Lucie, exited the tournament at the hands of three seed and world No. 13 Olivia Blatchford Clyne who took the opening match of the day in four games. Blatchford Clyne will face two seed Olivia Fiechter in the semifinals after the world No. 7 defeated U.S. junior champion Caroline Fouts in three games.
Thursday’s semifinals begin at 5:30pm ET. Tickets and live streaming are available on ussquash.org/live. The quarterfinal broadcast will include guest commentary from players, coaches and special guests.
