The boys' squash teams at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and Germantown Friends both crossed the Schuylkill last week to play the Gators of Shipley School, but the two squads returned from Bryn Mawr with very different results.

The SCH Blue Devils were missing some top players for their Monday match at Shipley. The Gators adjusted their line-up accordingly, and still won convincingly, 8-1.

Shipley did not fare as well against the GFS Tigers on Thursday afternoon. Arriving with only eight athletes, Germantown had one of them play twice, while officially forfeiting the number nine match.

The Tigers won the eighth flight, but this was technically an exhibition since there is a seven-flight format within the Friends Schools League. In the official tally, GFS was the victor, 6-1.

When the SCH Blue Devils journeyed to Shipley last Monday, their regular top two players were out of action due to medical issues. Sophomore Brady Grieve is normally the SCH number one, and senior Owen Franzen usually plays the second spot.

Shipley was having their Senior Day at this match, and at the bottom of their ladder, they'd moved up several 12th-grade JV players.

Interestingly, each team had a player named Dylan Kaplan. They distinguished between the two by using the middle initial of the SCH athlete, senior Dylan X. Kaplan.

He would save the Blue Devils from a Shipley sweep, winning the second flight over Gators junior Rishaan Nagar, 11-5, 11-7, 12-10. Shipley's Dylan Kaplan, also a senior, played in the number six spot, where he won, 11-5, 11-4, 11-7 over visiting sophomore Anav Edwards.

At number seven, Shipley senior Akash Kapoor was an 11-2, 11-8, 11-7 winner over Springside Chestnut Hill's Finn Chandler, a 10th-grader. At number eight, SCH freshman Regen Lytle succumbed to Gators senior Chris Qin, 11-4, 11-7, 11-5.

The number nine match, which featured two seniors, was the only contest not decided in three straight games. Visitor Connor Lauerman took the opening game, 11-6, then Shipley's Luke Jenkinson rebounded to win the next three rounds, 11-6, 11-9, 11-8.

Up at number five, Shipley freshman Carter Smith took the measure of visiting junior Alex Kim, 11-7, 11-8, 11-9.

In the fourth spot, Gators freshman Benjamin Riggio won, 11-7, 11-2, 11-2, against Blue Devils junior Aaron Jia. In the third flight, the grades were flipped. Here a Shipley junior, C.J. Rubino, overcame SCH freshman Matthew Talbot, 11-3, 11-3, 11-5.

Playing up at number one for this match, Patrick Gaghan of the visiting side was taking on a fellow senior, Shipley's Loukas Ballas. Ballas put away the first two games, 11-4, 11-5, and then went up 9-1 in the third game. Gaghan ground out a few more points before his rival finished it at 11-3.

Thursday's match between Shipley and Germantown Friends was the only varsity-level contest between Friends School League members; a team at Friends Central mostly plays a JV schedule. The Gators' number one from Monday, Ballas, went back down to number three as the squad deployed its regular number one and two, senior David Vahlsing, Jr. and sophomore Rowan Wetzel.

GFS, which had beaten Springside Chestnut Hill 9-0 head-to-head in early December, was missing its regular number five for last week's Shipley bout; sophomore Giles Bishop was under the weather. This turned out not to be a critical absence, since the Tigers won all but one of the seven individual matches counted under FSL rules.

One of these encounters was extended to the maximum of five games, and it happened in the fifth flight. Here, the Gators' Rubino captured the first two games, 11-6, 12-10, then GFS senior Jasper Furnas rolled to an 11-2 win in game three and proceeded to secure the next two rounds, 11-6, 12-10.

Another 12th-grader for the Tigers, number six Walter Savage, went past Shipley's Riggio, 11-4, 11-9, 11-3, but at number seven, visiting junior Alexander Duggan lost 11-8, 11-8, 11-7 to the hosts' Carter Smith.

Germantown's sophomore number four, Max Light, overcame Shipley's Nagar, 12-10, 11-6, 11-7, and when two seniors squared off in the third flight, Oliver Pride of the Tigers took three 11-4 games from Ballas.

The number one match was followed by the number two match on the same court, with GFS sending out seniors in each instance. First Charlie Raven opened with 11-9, 11-5 wins, but the Gators' Vahlsing prolonged the affair by snagging the third game, 11-7. Raven then finished it out at 11-6 in the fourth go-round.

Facing Wetzel of the home team, visitor Izzy Torchinsky-Field went through in straight games, 11-6, 11-4, 11-5.

In the two unofficial matches, Shipley's Kaplan fell to Germantown freshman number eight Ryan Chi, 11-3, 11-8, 11-3, and at number nine the Tigers' Duggan played his second match of the afternoon, winning 11-4, 11-4, 11-7 over Kapoor of the Gators.