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(05/03/18 5:25pm)
Just days after the new ITA Division III rankings came out, new national No. 1 Middlebury men’s tennis ended the regular season on Sunday, April 29 with a dominant 7–2 win over Nescac championship hosts No. 8 Amherst. The men are anxious to prove themselves at Nescacs and NCAAs, but this won’t come easily, as the other teams in the top five in the country are all looking for another shot at the Panthers.
Middlebury hosted Amherst on Sunday in their sixth and final home match out of 21 total matches. Sent inside by the rain, the Panthers showed their fondness for the Nelson Recreation Center indoor courts as they bested the fourth-best team in the Nescac in convincing fashion.
Amherst tennis is no stranger to tennis glory, however. The Mammoths won both Nescac and national titles in 2011 and 2014, and their only losses this year have come against the current top five teams in DIII tennis. Their closest test came against Williams the day before that team snuck by the Panthers 5–4 on April 7.
On Sunday, Middlebury showed no mercy to the Mammoths, closing out conference and regular season play. Starting the match, the Panthers doubles squads returned to the excellence to which they have been accustomed this season. Timo van der Geest ’18 and Peter Martin ‘19 picked up their 13th win of the season as they stomped Oliver Kendall and Jesse Levitin by a score of 8–2 at No. 3 doubles. At No. 2, William de Quant ’18 and Noah Farrell ’19 notched their eighth straight win, also by a score of 8–2. Lubomir Cuba ’19 and Kyle Schlanger ’18 tallied their seventh straight win to move to 16–3 this spring. Panthers doubles teams moved to an impressive 50–13 this spring as they once again gave the team a 3–0 lead heading into singles.
Schlanger was first off the court on Sunday with a routine straight-sets win over Amherst’s Jayson Fung as the senior made it six in a row moving into his last postseason. Facing adversity early was standout Cuba, who ended up losing a battle in the third set to Amherst freshman phenom Sean Wei, a recent five-star prospect who was ranked 26th in his recruiting class nationally. With a comfortable 4–1 lead, the Panthers still found themselves in several battles down the stretch.
Senior William de Quant found himself in one of these tight matches after being forced into a decisive third set after splitting the first two lopsided sets. Assistant coach Andrew Thomson said of de Quant’s match, “He played a [player] who … played No. 1 for Amherst last year … [s]o a very talented player. Will got off to a very hot start and won the first set decisively, and the second set didn’t go his way, but to his credit he really bounced back strong and remained confident.” De Quant commented on how he was able to turn the tide in the third set, saying, “The difference between the second set and the third set was actually quite subtle. Whoever was on the front foot and controlling from the baseline was the one winning the most points, and I forced myself in the beginning of the third set to step into the court and dictate. Once I did this, I found it easier to spread my opponent out and keep the outcome of the points on my racket and not his.” De Quant was able to overpower his opponent in the third set by a score of 6–1 to clinch the match for the Panthers.
The drama still was not over for Middlebury as Farrell found himself in a tight second set requiring a tie-break. For Thomson, Farrell’s demeanor was plenty indication that he would figure it out and secure the win.
“It was awesome watching him play,” Thomson said of Farrell. “Noah did a great job playing his game and being patient and enjoying being out there. He always plays better when he’s having fun on the court.” Farrell’s win grew the Panthers’ lead to 6–1.
The first-years at the bottom of the ladder were left, then. Andre Xiao ’21, who has posted an impressive 12–6 record thus far, has fallen into somewhat of a funk lately, and lost his fourth straight match on Sunday, falling in straight sets. Nate Eazor ’21 had a different match, however, as he shut down his opponent 6–3, 6–4 to complete the 7–2 win for Middlebury.
The next test for the Panthers could come as early as Friday, May 4, when the No. 3 and No. 6 seeds face off in the opening round of the Nescac tournament at Amherst. As of Sunday, the team did not know its seeding for the tournament.
“From a seeding perspective, Bowdoin, Williams and Middlebury are all tied for first, but due to … tie-breaking rules, we could well end up being third seed,” de Quant said. Though they sit atop the national rankings, the Panthers could be nagged by a previous loss to Williams, which created a triangle between the Ephs, the Panthers, and the Bowdoin Polar Bears, who suffered their only loss at the hands of Middlebury several weeks ago. With the No. 3 seed, Midd would have to play an opening-round match against the No. 6 seed, potentially Wesleyan or Bates. With the No. 1 or 2 seed, they would get an automatic bye into the semifinals.
Their No. 1 national ranking guarantees the Panthers nothing in the Nescac tournament, where they may get a chance to settle the score with Williams.
“Of course, we would love to get a swing at Williams again, as we are a different team than we were when we came up just short to them a few weeks ago,” de Quant said. “Despite now being No. 1, we feel we are only starting to heat up, and we have not yet reached our peak level.” Revenge against Williams, or a conference-tournament win punctuated by another win against national No. 3 Bowdoin, could be just what the Panthers need to remove all doubt surrounding their new ranking.
“I think [our new ranking] was well deserved on our part. However, there are a lot of very good teams out there, and it’s definitely a year where there’s a lot of strong teams at the top and you could certainly make a case for them being really strongly ranked,” Thomson said. Because of the strength of the Nescac as a whole, Thomson added, this weekend could be a good test for the Panthers to prove themselves yet again.
“We’ve done a good job beating some really good teams recently, but they’re going to be hungry and coming after us, especially after the latest rankings, so I think we have a little bit of a target on our back,” Thomson said. The Panthers are sure to see some familiar faces this weekend at Nescacs. “Every year we set a goal to win the Nescac championship. The Nescac is the deepest conference in the country. To be the best we have to beat the best,” de Quant said.
The Panthers did not know their fate for the weekend after receiving the No. 1 ranking or even after beating Amherst. This, however, does not change their goal. They are sure not to look past the familiar opponents in the Nescac for this weekend.
De Quant said it best: “We go into the weekend ready for any opponent, focused on controlling what we can control.”
The Panthers are deep, talented, healthy and ready for another go at the best conference in the country this weekend at Amherst.
(04/04/18 9:00am)
“You can’t go against God. It’s tough to do,” said Dick Vitale, the beloved ESPN college basketball analyst, when he picked Loyola over Michigan in last Saturday’s Final Four matchup. Vitale was wrong. But only a little.
While Loyola couldn’t hang on to a second half lead against Michigan, Villanova shot the roof off of the Alamodome against KU and the Wolverines on their way to a second national title in three years.
Indeed, the Cinderella didn’t cut down the nets on Monday night, but several participants in our Go Pants! bracket challenge kept the underdog narrative alive.
Some might say the national championship game failed to offer a thrilling finish to a great tournament. But things were close in our bracket challenge. To determine the top spot in the standings, the ESPN computerized ranking had to revert to the tie breaker — points scored in the final. The beneficiary of that was Max Stamler ’19, who finished in a tie for first place with field hockey national champion and ace goal tender Abby Furdak ’21.
“I just chose randomly,” Stamler said of how he picked Villanova to win. Yes, Stamler was yet another participant who filled out a successful bracket with an “ah, what the hell” mentality.
“I don’t watch much college basketball other than Oregon,” Stamler said of his college basketball fandom. And anyone who follows the ski team roster page as closely as the sports section knows Oregon is Stamler’s home state. “I was disappointed they weren’t in it, especially because of how well they did last year when they made it to the Final Four.”
On his emotions throughout a championship game in which he had pride and a gift card on the line, Stamler said that he didn’t really know he was in line to win until minutes before the final started.
“Somebody told me I was in first before the game,” Stamler reported to us. “I thought that was really cool, especially because I took only five minutes to fill out my bracket.”
An underrated, but all-important, aspect of the final was the tie breaking final score procedure. Had Michigan made a few more shots, Abby Furdak would have come out on top. But it wasn’t meant to be for Furdak.
“There should have been another way it was decided,” Furdak joked when we called to congratulate her after Villanova had cut down the nets. “I don’t watch at all during regular season, but I love March Madness,” said Furdak, the co-first place finisher.
“I made picks based off of past March Madnesses,” Furdak said. “A reason I picked Villanova was because the day I made my picks I happened to walk in and see an interview with the Villanova coach [Jay Wright] and one of their star players [Jalen Brunson].
“I also remember their winning shot two years ago against North Carolina,” Furdak said. “That was awesome.”
When asked if Jay Wright’s excellently put together suits were a factor in her decision, Furdak was the only interviewee who wasn’t completely thrown off by the question.
“I actually didn’t know at all when I made my picks about his suits,” Furdak said, adding without a hitch, “definitely a plus.”
As highlighted before, Furdak might have walked away with the top Amazon gift card had Michigan been able to hit a few of the layups that clanked off the rim or were rejected into the first row. Nevertheless, Stamler’s less-than-kosher prediction of a 69–69 final score got him the top prize.
Albeit only for a few hours, from Michigan’s comeback to Nova’s dismantling of Bill Self’s hapless bunch, Aaron Low ’18 was in first place. Low’s time at the top of the standings was improbable — he almost didn’t enter a bracket because he knew nothing about college basketball.
“Maybe I was just doing my friend a favor,” Low said when asked what led him to enter a bracket into the Go Pants! bracket challenge despite his initial hesitation. And maybe, Low was nagged into submission by one of the sports editors. The world may never know.
Like so many others who finished at the top of our pool, Low filled out his bracket with minimal context.
“I didn’t know much,” Low said about his strategy. “I guess I mainly went with seedings and mostly went with higher seeds unless instructed otherwise.”
Even more so than Renton, Low hadn’t seen more than a cumulative game of basketball in his life. While Villanova’s win pushed Low and many others off of the first page of the rankings, he enjoyed the excitement no less than the next guy.
“Oh, I loved it!” was the way Low described what he thought of the tournament. “I think I’ve watched maybe one game before. I ended up watching a couple. And I watched Michigan beat Houston in the final second. And I listened to Michigan comeback against Loyola on the car ride back with a friend from Chicago to Middlebury last Saturday.”
Toward the other end of the spectrum of college basketball awareness were people like head editor of the newspaper you’re reading right now, Ethan Brady ’18. Brady knew all along who would be cutting down the nets on Monday night.
“I’ve always liked Nova,” Brady said. “They won two years ago in one of the best championships I’ve ever seen. Maybe one of the best college basketball championship finishes ever. I just had a gut feeling they’d win again.”
Brady also picked Michigan to go to the title game as well.
“I picked Michigan to go far because it felt like their year and they were on a hot streak,” Brady said. “I picked UVA in the Final Four, but so did a lot of people. I didn’t see that one coming.”
Following the pattern that we’ve talked about ad nauseam these last few weeks, add Brady to the list of those who didn’t follow the action that closely this year but whose bracket still rose to the top. In terms of the exact amount of college basketball Brady had seen prior to the tournament, he answered firmly: “Zero.”
“I mean, I’m familiar with basketball,” Brady said. “I know which programs are good and I was cautious with the upsets I picked. I only picked upsets when I felt comfortable with the program. I also tried to figure out where teams were poorly seeded and made my picks accordingly.”
One aspect of Brady’s bracket that post-tournament bracketologists will note is that he picked a disproportionate number of teams from Texas to advance.
“I have a soft spot for Texas teams,” Brady said. And that soft spot paid off at times.
“That’s why I picked [correctly, we might add] Texas Tech to go to the Elite Eight,” Brady explained.
However, when asked why he didn’t pick Texas A&M over North Carolina, Brady demurred.
“That was my one failure in this bracket,” he said. “I don’t know why I doubted them. I was thinking too rationally. Or not rationally enough.”
Benjy Renton ’21 was the unlikely leader in the clubhouse at numerous times during the tournament’s first weekend. Renton entered the championship game tied for eighth and with a shot at finishing in the top five. Unlike Low, who was going to enter a bracket because of persistent badgering, Renton was a few minutes away from not even entering a bracket at all.
“I was genuinely surprised at how well my bracket faired,” said Renton, who’s not letting the modicum of minor fame his bracket’s success has brought him get to his head. “I thought autofill was a poor strategy. But it turns out it worked to an extent.”
Renton and Low embody one of the things we hoped to accomplish with the student body wide bracket challenge. He went from almost not filling out a bracket, to excitedly watching as Jay Wright’s bunch cut down the nets on Monday.
“I guess it’s kind of cool,” Renton said. “I remember one of the most emotional games was the one where Kansas beat Duke. I was watching it in a hotel room in South Carolina and it was quite a miracle when they won.”
Renton and the folks who picked Villanova to win it all watched and listened to Monday night’s thumping of Michigan with excitement and glee.
In the first rendition of the bracket challenge article, we addressed how there appeared to be a correlation between being clueless about college basketball and being at the top of the Go Pants! standings. However, it seemed there was equal opportunity bad luck as well. Ben Yamron ’21 is one example. Despite finishing dead last in the bracket challenge, Yamron was a good sport and talked to us about his reflections on the tournament.
Yamron actually managed to correctly predict that a 16 seed would pull off an upset over a one. Unfortunately for Yamron, he picked No. 16 Radford over national champion Villanova and No. 16 Penn over Final Four participant KU.
Asked about his thoughts on why he picked two 16-seeds to beat 1-seeds, Yamron said “I just wanted to see something amazing happen.” He then paused before saying, “Didn’t pan out.”
To be fair to Yamron, he “didn’t know that a 16 has never beaten a one seed.” Like so many others who don’t religiously follow college basketball, Yamron said he considered using the autofill button to assist with his picks.
Apparently, some of Yamron’s fellow swimmers took advantage of the autofill option, especially in earlier, closely seeded games.
“I don’t follow too much college,” Yamron said. “I played all through my childhood so I thought I knew all the ins and outs and it wouldn’t be that hard to predict. I guess I got a little cocky.
“Just randomly, I think I could’ve done better. Odds are if you picked randomly you would have done better than me.”
Some may look at the fact that their brackets, like Yamron’s, were total busts. In the case of the first-year at the bottom of our bracket challenge, only two — just two! — teams he picked to go to the Sweet 16 were still alive. None of the teams he picked for the Elite Eight were still kicking. But down here where the sports section is relegated to the back corner of the newspaper room of Hepburn basement, we think that Yamron’s feat is almost as impressive as picking 14 of the 16 Sweet 16 participants correctly.
“I mean,” Yamron began when we speculated about how impressive it is to finish in the bottom percentile of the 17 million people who filled out a bracket, “it’s not easy to do what I did. I guess you could say there’s a talent to it depending on how you spin it.”
Well, that’s all folks. Thanks for playing in the first annual Go Pants! bracket challenge. We hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we did.
(03/08/18 12:35am)
The squash season wrapped up last Saturday, March 3, when Jack Kagan ’20 walked off the court at the national individual championships in the nation’s capital. Off of their third-place finish in the C draw at team nationals a week before last, Feb. 23 to 25, in Connecticut, the men’s No. 1 Will Cembalest ’20 and No. 3 Kagan made the trip to Washington, D.C., where they both competed in the same 16-player “East” pool in the Molloy draw.
After finishing 15th at the team championships last month, nagging injuries on the heels on a long season and tough schedule kept members of the women’s team from attending the individual championship tournament. This marks the first time since the 2013–14 season that the women’s team has not sent a representative to the individual championships, although in both instances the Panthers’ top players were more than qualified to make the trip if they had chosen to do so.
Cembalest wrapped up his season last Friday afternoon when he lost to Grayson Bubrosky, a junior who finished the season in the No. 4 spot for the Virginia Cavaliers. In the round of 16 Friday morning, Bubrosky lost in a closer-than-it-looked straight-sets match against the eventual pool runner up in Carson Spahr, the Dartmouth No. 2. Against Bubrosky, Cembalest dropped the opening set 11–5 before rebounding to make things closer in the second and third sets, which Bubrosky took 11–8 and 11–7.
Earlier in the day, Cembalest got a crack at Hobart’s No. 1 Josh Oakley. It was a chance for Cembalest to get another taste of the top competition in the country, as Oakley won 11 of his 20 matches in the top slot for the Statesmen’s top spot on the ladder this season. While he lost in three sets to Oakley as well, 11–6, 11–5, 11–6, Cembalest was glad to have the opportunity to experience the event.
“Last weekend was very fun,” Cembalest said. “Jack [Kagan] and I had good exposure to the top players in the country in a fun, competitive atmosphere. Jack, [coach] Mark [Lewis] and I all had a fun time hanging out, watching some of the best players in the country compete, and had some nice bonding time.”
Like Cembalest, Kagan also dropped his first match of the championships earlier last Friday. However, Kagan had the opportunity to continue playing on Saturday thanks to a mix of his endurance and in-match adjustments that allowed him to outlast Raghav Kumar, the Tufts No. 1, in a four set consolation match on Friday afternoon.
After narrowly winning his first set against Kumar 11–9, Kagan let some of the momentum slip away in the second set, which went the way of the Jumbos’ sophomore, 11–7. But the match-making set was the third set, a marathon game that went 26 points. Ultimately, things went Kagan’s way in the third set, 14–12.
Up in sets, 2–1, it would have been understandable for Kagan to take his foot off of the gas in the fourth set — especially given that he had lost a five-set match just a couple of hours earlier to Navy’s Michael Kacergis, who spent the entire season at the top of the Midshipmen’s ladder. But there would be no exhaling for Kagan, who clearly meant business when he got back onto the court with Kumar for the fourth set, which was not even close. Kagan won 11–0.
“The fourth game with Kumar was just a culmination of confidence from winning a really tight third game that was pretty critical,” Kagan said. “I felt myself get a serious second wind in the third and noticed that I could keep going and raising my level.
“After winning the third I just wanted to keep the pressure on in the fourth and keep taking the ball in short when I had the opportunity,” Kagan said of his approach. “I had to be the one to put the attacking shot in and make him react, rather than the other way around. In that game, everything was working.”
By winning Friday afternoon, Kagan got a chance to partake in Saturday morning’s consolation semifinals, where he met up with Aryaman Adik, a Trinity first-year who went on to win the consolation bracket of Cembalest’s and Kagan’s pool. Adik was a challenging matchup for Kagan, but the Middlebury sophomore managed to play him very closely, especially after the first game.
“The first game I really wasn’t awake or very present, and his pace of play is so fast that it really caught me off guard,” Kagan said of his 11–4 setback in his first set against Adik. Undeterred, Kagan made some adjustments and managed to push Adik, who just the week before was celebrating with his Trinity teammates the Banthams’ completion of an undefeated, 20–0, national championship season.
“After the first set,” Kagan explained, “I really had to get my shots deeper in the court to take away his opportunities for attack which he used often.”
Kagan pushed Adik in the second set to a 15–13 final, and then went one point further in the final set, which Adik took 16–14.
“I think me being able to stay in the points for so long definitely frustrated him,” Kagan said. “It was a fun weekend and a good way to finish off the season especially since I feel like I kept up a high level of play.”
With the season now in the books for the Middlebury squash teams, Cembalest and Kagan, along with their underclassmen teammates, now look forward to getting on the courts in match play when the season gets into full swing next December.
Cembalest looks fondly back on what he and his teammates were able to do the weekend before last at team nationals. And while team nationals are a highlight for any collegiate squash player, the results Cembalest got in Connecticut were especially sweet because there was an aspect of revenge.
“Team nationals were an awesome way to end the season,” said Cembalest. “Beating the Williams No. 1 and the Bates No. 1, who both beat me earlier in the season” was a highlight that Cembalest will look to build on in his offseason preparation for next year.
Last weekend’s individual nationals also allowed Cembalest to come away with an idea of what it will take to go from start to finish next season at the top of the Panthers’ ladder playing his best squash.
“My biggest takeaway,” Cembalest said of the weekend in Washington, “was that my body was hurting a lot and that after the long season it was hard to push myself to perform at the level I was playing at earlier in the season.”
Kagan was fitter for the action last weekend, but said that what both he and Cembalest took away from another opportunity to be exposed to the best collegiate squash has to offer will pay dividends going into next season.
“The weekend was definitely a different vibe for individuals since there were only two of us,” said Kagan. “It was great to get off campus and play in a completely different style of tournament and see what we could do.
“We have some things that we succeeded with and some things we need to remember to keep working on for next year. Especially since there were only two of us, it was a very self-motivated tournament. You had to find motivation to warm up, to prepare, to perform, from within, not from the team. That’s hard, but can be exciting at a high level.”
Along with the pair of sophomores who made the trip to the individual championships, the Panthers will return almost their entire starting nine for next season. The prospect of the team breaking into the B draw at nationals looks very realistic.
The Panthers’ No. 1 is already looking forward to the challenge.
“I am very proud of the work I’ve done this season,” said Cembalest, adding, “but honestly, I want to be much stronger for next season. I am going to put a lot of off-season work in this summer and that will have a strong impact on my game for next season.”
(02/28/18 11:54pm)
Last week, Feb. 23 to 25, the men’s squash team was in Connecticut taking part in the College Squash Association’s (CSA) team national championships, where they competed in the C division for the Summers Cup — a trophy that the team has brought back to Middlebury six of the last nine years. The Panthers place third in the eight-team field, finishing the season ranked 19th in the country, two spots above their ranking entering the tournament.
The Panthers’ young roster found itself ranked 21st heading into the weekend, behind the likes of conference rivals Williams and Bates. And that fact was not lost on the Panthers, who beat Williams 8–1 just a few weeks ago at Nescacs in the third-place match.
The way the final regular-season rankings fell dictated the draws teams got at nationals. With the C division featuring teams ranked Nos. 17 through 24 in the CSA poll, the 21st-ranked Panthers were the five seed in their draw. Despite not being shown their due respect by the CSA poll, the Panthers’ seeding meant they got to matchup with No. 20 Williams immediately when the tournament began last Friday.
In the first of their three meetings this season, Williams edged Middlebury 6–3 in Williamstown on Jan. 6. Middlebury avenged its first loss in Nescacs, dismantling the Ephs win by a score of 8–1. The rubber match between Middlebury and their rival 100 miles to the south down Route 7 would more closely resemble the close match earlier this season than the drubbing the Ephs received courtesy of the Panthers at Nescacs. Middlebury’s 6–3 victory over Williams to begin nationals was in no way easy for the Panthers.
Out of the five matches that went to five sets, the Panthers got four team points. The only match the Panthers conceded that went the distance was in the No. 8 slot, occupied by the usually trusty Thomas Wolpow ’20. Even then, Wolpow’s match could have gone either way. The sophomore bookended two not-so-close games with 11–9 wins in the first and fourth sets to set up a rubber match with Williams’ Andrew Litvin.
To say Wolpow’s fifth set with Litvin was a marathon, drag-it-out battle would be a gross understatement. Litvin managed to edge out Wolpow in the deciding fifth set by a final score of 24–22. (24–22!) The result wound up as not only the longest of last weekend’s national tournament, but the longest of the entire squash season.
Jack Kagan ’20, in the third slot, also provided plenty of good highlights in Middlebury’s first match of the tournament. Kagan’s 11–9, 11–7, 11–8 straight-sets victory over Williams’ Will Means set the tone for the weekend — his own weekend particularly, as Kagan did not drop a match throughout the three-day competition. As with the rest of the team, Kagan fought off midseason adversity when the Panthers seemed to hit a wall to rebound and play some of his best squash at season’s end.
“I definitely feel like I’ve been at the top of my game lately,” Kagan said. “I think I have to owe it to my fitness which just seems much better than in the middle of the season. I have a defined and patient gameplan which I’m much more able to stick to now and I think I just have been playing so much and so many tough matches and practices that my overall fitness must have improved.”
At the top of the ladder, Will Cembalest held things down for the Panthers, as he got to play Williams’ Carl Shuck who narrowly beat him at Nescacs. Shuck had Cembalest on the ropes again last weekend — for the second straight meeting against Williams’ top player, Cembalest found himself in a 2–1 hole after the third set. Yet, this time Cembalest bounced back, winning the fourth set 11–8 and then the decisive fifth set 11–9.
The Panthers’ trio of first-years in five through seven slots was especially strong against Williams. No. 5 Wiatt Hinton ’21 and No. 7 Alex Merrill ’21 both had to come from behind to win their five-game sets.
After falling in the first set to Williams’ David Pincus, Hinton scrapped to an 11–9 victory in the second game. This he followed with an 11–6 loss in the third set and other nail-biter, 12–10, in the fourth set before finally finishing Pincus off in the fifth set 11–6.
“We had trained hard coming into nationals and that training combined with the experience I gained from the whole season made me a better player this weekend,” Hinton said upon returning to school from nationals last Sunday. Hinton echoed Kagan’s comments about how the team feels they were at the top of their collective games as the season ended: “I do feel that I am in peak form right now.”
Henry Pearson ’18, in his last collegiate squash tournament, also provided positives for the Panthers and got some revenge on Williams from an individual standpoint. Pearson defeated Williams’ Wyatt Khosrowshahi in a five-set match in the No. 4 slot. Khosrowshahi has played as high as the No. 2 this season for Williams — he fell in straight sets in that position to Jacob Ellen ’20 at Nescacs — and also dealt Pearson a straight-sets loss in the No. 4 spot back on Jan. 6 in Williamstown.
This time around, Pearson wasted no time getting into his match with Khosrowshahi. He took the opening game 11–5 and then nearly put Khosrowshahi in a 2–0 hole when they traded points in a 12–10 Khosrowshahi victory in the second set. Despite the close loss in the second game, Pearson did not lose any momentum as made clear by his 11–4 drubbing of Khosrowshahi in the third set. After that, Pearson and Khosrowshahi traded 11–5 results, which gave the match victory to Pearson.
The Panthers followed their 6–3 win against Williams with a 6–3 loss to Dickinson in the Summers Cup draw semifinals. Dickinson went on to win the championship by defeating Franklin and Marshall in the Summers Cup final 5–4.
As part of their unbeaten weekends, Kagan and Hinton both won their matches in four sets against Dickinson. Kagan dropped his first game against the Red Devils’ No. 3, Hal Holappa, by a close score of 12–10. The second set between Kagan and Holappa would not prove as close (Kagan took it 11–7), but the last two were both nail biters. In the end, Kagan triumphed 11–9 and 12–10.
After winning his first two games 11–5 and 11–7, Hinton could have won his match against Dickinson No. 5 Cory Litman in straight sets, but Litman managed a 13–11 victory in the third game. Hinton put any concern about the outcome of his match in the decisive fourth set, when he beat Litman 11–6.
In the sixth spot, Epley became the third and final Panther to get his team a point in the match against Dickinson. Like his fellow first-year, Hinton, Epley won his match in four games. Unlike Hinton, the final score shows that Epley had to fight Dickinson’s No. 6, Alex Wattles, to save a win. Epley and Wattles traded victories in the first two games, with Epley taking the first 11–8 and Wattles taking the second 11–5. After that, however, things proved much closer. Both the third and fourth games were pushed pashed 11 points, but Epley took both by a score of 12–10.
Middlebury did not have a lot of time to think about the loss to Dickinson, as the Panthers were back on the court within 24 hours to play Bates for the right to be the No. 19 team in the season’s final rankings and third in the C bracket.
The Panthers beat Bates, who went into nationals ranked No. 18, back on Jan. 12 in Lewiston, Maine, 5-4. Due to the way things shook out at Nescacs, the Jan. 12 matchup would be the only time the teams played prior to last Sunday. Nevertheless, the CSA poll still had the Panthers three spots behind the Bobcats in the rankings.
In the top spot for the Panthers, Cembalest faced a familiar foe in Bates’ No. 1, Mahmoud Yousry. Earlier this season, Yousry beat Cembalest in a very tightly contested four-set affair. As the box score of their latest meeting indicates, Cembalest and Yousry picked up right where they left off, playing close games.
Cembalest managed to pull out a 14–12 victory in the first set and then carried that momentum over into the second game, when topped Yoursy again, this time by an 11–7 tally. Yoursy got the best of Cembalest in the third game, denying the Panthers’ No. 1 a straight set victory by beating him 11–4. Cembalest, who will play in the individual championships in the nation’s capital this weekend, March 2-4, was not deterred. In fact, he managed to one-up Yousry in the deciding fourth set by beating Bates’ top player 11-3.
On the final leg of his undefeated final weekend of his first-year season, Hinton beat Bates’ McLeod Abbott, who has played as high as the third slot on Bobcats’ ladder this season. Hinton won the first set 11–6 and then pulled out a 14–12 victory in a long second set. At that point, the match was all but over, as Hinton’s meticulous grinding away at Abbott let to an 1114–124 third set victory.
“I saw that my opponent was getting tired and frustrated, so I stuck to a basic game plan and waited for him to make mistakes and I gradually gained an edge over him,” Hinton said of his strategy against Bates’ captain.
Epley, one spot down the ladder for the Panthers, completed an undefeated weekend on Sunday against Bates with a five-set victory in the No. 6 slot. After dropping the first set 11–6 to Anirudh Nambiar, Epley laid it on in the second set to get an 11–3 victory. The momentum Epley generated in the second set did not carry over into the third game, as Nambiar managed to gain a 2–1 set advantage with a narrow 11–9 win. After that, however, the match belonged to Epley, who wrapped up a 13-win rookie season for himself with 11–6 and 11–7 victories.
This season the Panthers had three first-years sandwiched in the middle of their ladder, No. 5 Hinton, No. 6 Epley, and No. 7 Merrill. Although they faced the typical ups and downs of rookie seasons, the lessons they learned from the 2017–18 campaign will be incredibly valuable from a growth standpoint heading into their second season.
“My biggest takeaway from this season has been the difference between junior and collegiate squash,” said Hinton. “There is a huge difference in both the intensity and fitness. I have gained so much experience from my first season and made strong developments both mentally and technically.”
Now that he knows what to expect, Hinton is looking to refine what he does between now and the start of the season next November.
“Next season I hope to add on to those improvements and am looking forward to another great year,” said Hinton.
Up the ladder from the trio of first-years in the No. 5–7 slots, Middlebury’s No. 3, Kagan, wrapped up his efforts at nationals by successfully executing his game plan against Omar Attia. Attia is a first-year so Kagan or his fellow sophomores at the top of the Panthers’ ladder will almost certainly be seeing him again in matches in the next couple of years.
Kagan had Attia on the ropes after taking the first two games 11–6 and 11–5. At that point, it seemed Kagan had Attia buried, but the Bobcats’ No. 3 managed to pull out back-to-back 11–9 wins, sending the match to a fifth set.
When asked what was going through his mind when he left the court after the fourth set, and what had changed in the third and fourth games, Kagan gave Attia credit for settling into the match and adjusting.
“After the fourth game with Omar, I knew something had changed and it wasn’t that I was playing worse,” said Kagan after the match.
“[Attia] was playing much better, and I didn’t adapt or change my game at all,” he added. “In games three and four he just stopped making errors which was huge. It was the main reason I had been beating him so soundly. When he made that change, it really leveled the playing field.”
Although he dominated the first two sets against Attia, Kagan said he still wasn’t comfortable at that point in the match.
“Because I wasn’t comfortable with my attacks,” Kagan continued, “basically, I had to hit even straighter than I already was and force his crosscourt — rather than mine — and then I had to volley everything and start attacking when he did give me openings. I had to make him work when he gave me the opportunity because he figured out my original passive game plan.”
Kagan ultimately buckled down in the fifth set, which proved quite anticlimactic as he won convincingly, 11–3.
In the Panthers’ 8–1 victory over Bates, sealing their No. 19 end-of-the-season ranking and third-place in the Summers Cup, Pearson, Sam Giddins ’18 and Cam Dewey ’18 saw their final collegiate action for the Panthers. Team captain Ryan Swope ’18 played in his final match the day before against Dickinson. Pearson beat Bates’ Coley Cannon in the No. 4 slot in four sets, most of which were close, by scores of 14–12, 11–5, 8–11 and 11–9. Giddins played in the ninth slot and lost in a very closely contested four–set match by scores of 6–11, 13–11, 12–10 and 11–6. Dewey won the unscored exhibition game in straight sets.
Cembalest and Kagan will be among those who head to the individual championships in Washington D.C. with members of the women’s team. Ellen would have joined them but had to pull out after an injury riddled season.
“Unfortunately, I pulled out of individuals next weekend just because I want to give myself time to rest after a tough season physically,” said the No. 2. “As a whole, this season was very frustrating to me. I felt like I was never able to be at my best because of things out of my control, but I am proud that I was able to play almost every single match to help my team out. This summer, I am going to work harder than ever physically to get into great shape and that will hopefully help me out for next season.”
Kagan described how much he looks forward to the opportunity.
“Individuals are a really unique opportunity to play against the best players in the country, and I’m excited and honored to be able to play amongst them,” Kagan said. On top of that, Kagan expressed how he and some of his fellow Panthers can benefit from the extra practice and the intensity of the matches.
“I’m excited this week to get some time in with Will and with coach to work on some of these attacks that have been pretty hot and cold for me lately,” Kagan said. “I also hope to do some of my own work on fitness in the short time that we have and maybe do some court sprints to make sure my lungs are up to the task for this weekend.”
The individual championships will start tomorrow, March 2, and run through Sunday, March 4, in Washington D.C.
(02/15/18 1:50am)
Following a third-place finish at Nescacs earlier this month, punctuated by the Panthers’ dismantling of Williams 8–1 in the third place match to avenge a narrow road loss on Jan. 6, the 21st-ranked men’s squash team rode into last weekend’s trip to No. 16 Navy, No. 11 George Washington and No. 12 Drexel aiming to defeat a more highly ranked team which could have propelled the Panthers into the CSA top 16 and the B bracket draw at nationals.
Despite Middlebury’s 8–1 victory over Williams just two days prior, the rankings the CSA released on Feb. 6 slotted the No. 21 Panthers one spot below No. 20 Williams.
“It was discouraging to not jump Williams in the rankings after beating them as badly as we did,” team captain Ryan Swope ’18 said, “but that actually ended up being motivation for us moving into this weekend.”
The road trip began last Friday, Feb. 9, with Middlebury taking on No. 16 Navy in Annapolis. In what was the program’s first trip to Navy’s home courts in Bancroft Hall, the Panthers figured that the matchup against the Midshipmen would be their best chance of the weekend to knock off a top 16 opponent and pull closer to their goal of breaking through to the B bracket.
“Navy was expected to be the most winnable match but we just didn’t come ready to play – Navy also happens to be, unsurprisingly, one of the toughest teams mentally and physically,” said Swope, which posed problems for a sluggish Panther team.
The Panthers’ record over the last few seasons in matches against Navy suggested they had the potential to push the Midshipmen last Friday. However, the Panthers came out flat and lost 9–0, with no one pushing his Navy opponent past four sets—Sam Giddens ’18 managed to sweep Navy’s Danny Finnegan in straight sets in the exhibition match.
John Epley ’21, who has played well in his rookie campaign, narrowly missed the chance to send his match with Navy’s Dylan Sweeney into a fifth set. After dropping the first set to Sweeny 11–4, Epley made things closer in the second set which he lost 11–7 before he managed to turn the tide in the third set with a convincing 11–5 victory. With some momentum on Epley’s side, the first-year pushed Sweeney in the fourth and deciding set before falling 14–12.
At the bottom of the ladder, Swope and Thomas Wolpow ’20 also narrowly missed on playing a fifth match against their Navy opponents. In the No. 8 slot for the Panthers, Wolpow rebounded from a 0–2 set deficit to defeat Navy’s No. 8 11–9 in the third set before falling 11–9 in the deciding fourth set. In the nine spot for Middlebury, Swope made things closer in his second and third games than the final score indicates. Swope won his second set over Navy’s Greg Hyer 11–8 and dropped a marathon third game 16–14 before Swope bowed out in the fourth set by losing 11–2.
Understandably deflated by the lopsided loss to a Navy team they needed to challenge in order to have a shot at achieving their goal of finishing the season in the top 16, the Panthers had a hard time rebounding when they headed to the nation’s capital last Saturday, Feb. 10, to take on a very talented No. 11 George Washington squad.
The Panthers’ Nos. 2 and 3, Jacob Ellen ’20 and Jack Kagan ’20, along with Swope at No. 9, all managed to get off to a good start against GW by winning their first sets. Ellen’s 11–5 victory in his opening game was the most convincing of the three, but Kagan and Swope also scored emphatic 11–7 victories.
Unfortunately, Ellen and Kagan were overmatched by their top-of-the-ladder opponents from George Washington, who evidently stepped up their urgency after falling behind. Ellen lost to Jamie Oakley, who has played well for the Colonials at the top of their ladder, 11–5, 11–6, 11–7 in the second, third, and fourth games. Kagan lost in succession to George Washington’s senior from Dublin, Oisin Logan, who is 13–4 on the year despite playing all of his matches at the top half of GW’s ladder, 11–3, 11–6, 11–0 in their final three games. At the bottom of the ladder, Swope played GW’s Omar Mussehl more closely. Swope lost the second and fourth sets 11–6 and played Mussehl tightly in a 12–10 loss in the third game.
The closest match for the Panthers on the day, however, came courtesy of Wolpow in the eight spot. Wolpow was in a position to beat GW’s No. 8 in three of the four sets he played. He lost the opening game 12–10 before rebounding in a close 11–9 second set. After letting the third set get away from him, Wolpow battled back in what turned out to be a marathon fourth set and just narrowly lost 14–12.
After back-to-back 9–0 defeats, the Panthers headed to Philadelphia to close the regular season last Sunday, Feb. 11, when they took on No. 12 Drexel. While they could simply have packed it in, the Panthers came out fighting and played Drexel closely, despite the 7–2 losing result.
Against the Dragons, the wins for the Panthers came from Ellen and Kagan at the top of the ladder. Ellen perhaps got lucky given his opponent in the No. 2 spot, Lucas Rousselet, had to retire after beating Ellen 11–3 in the opening game. However, when Rousselet had to drop out, Ellen held a 5–2 lead in the second game.
Kagan got a victory for the Panthers in the third slot over Atticus Kelly, a senior who is winding down a good career for Drexel, in four sets: 11–6, 9–11, 15–13, 11–7. Despite winning the opening set and playing a close second game, Kagan must have been in a slightly uncomfortable position. He won his opening set only to lose the ensuing three games against both Navy and GW. On top of those results, Kagan was facing a formidable opponent in Kelly.
“Those results definitely did cross my mind against Kelly because in both of them I was playing really strong opponents and I came out strong in the first game but wasn’t able to keep it up,” said Kagan. “I didn’t feel like I did anything particularly special in the first game so losing the second definitely scared me.”
The fact that the third set turned into a marathon could not have made things any easier for Kagan. Nevertheless, the sophomore held on and grinded out a 15–13 momentum-swinging victory that ultimately propelled him to win the match for the Panthers in the No. 3 slot.
“I would definitely say winning the third was a huge relief,” said Kagan. “I knew I had the upper hand and I was telling myself whether it be in four games or five that I was winning the match no matter what. For whatever reason I just wasn’t getting tired, which was really different from the GW and Navy matches.”
The result was a good way to end what was a long weekend for Kagan, and it was a good way to build some momentum heading into nationals.
“This weekend was definitely draining but I think it was a positive experience overall,” said Kagan. “We increased our level of play continuously.
“I think especially after the Drexel result, people are ready to rest but also ready to work and are super excited for nationals next weekend,” Kagan said in describing how the team is looking forward to the opportunity at the championships in Hartford Feb. 23-25.
Although Ellen and Kagan represented the only victories for the Panthers in the regular season finale against No. 12 Drexel, Middlebury made things close from top to bottom on the ladder.
At the bottom of the ladder, Wolpow and Swope again put in good efforts for the Panthers as both took their opponents to a fifth set. Wolpow actually held a 2–1 set lead after winning his second and third games 11–7 and 11–6. Swope managed to send his match to a fifth game by winning a nail biter in the fourth game 13–11, momentarily staving off a loss and evening his tilt with Drexel’s Royston Raymond.
Middlebury’s No. 4, Henry Pearson ’18, also had a good showing. Pearson lost to Dylan Kachur in four sets but all three games that he lost came down to the final points. Pearson pushed the first set past 11, before falling 12–10. Following a loss in the second game, 11–9, Pearson took it to Kachur in the third game, winning 11–5. Much like the first two sets, the fourth of Pearson’s games could have gone either way, but Kachur escaped with an 11–9 win to take the match. Pearson’s and Swope’s fellow senior, Giddens, also provided the Panthers with another positive with his straight sets victory in the exhibition match.
After last weekend’s results that saw the Panthers’ hopes of achieving their top-16 goal evaporate, the team has begun to adjust and prepare for another C bracket championship nationals. If they manage to finish 17th again – which would entail a Middlebury victory in the C draw at next week’s national team championships – it would mark the seventh time in the last decade that the Panthers bring the Summers Cup back to Middlebury.
“Since our team will be put into the C draw for the national tournament, the goal is to now win the C draw and finish 17th,” said the captain, Swope. “The takeaway from this past couple of weeks is that we ought to believe we can do that. The teams we played this weekend – Navy, Drexel, and GW – are all better than the competition we will face in the C draw at nationals, which will include Williams and Bates – teams we have now beaten.”
When asked about why it seems this year’s rendition of the Panthers has had a tougher time getting over the hump as compared to past seasons when the team had an even or lesser talent level, Swope agreed with the idea that relative lack of experience at the collegiate level has played a factor. For evidence of the relative inexperience at the college level, look no further than last weekend’s starting lineup where seven of the nine starters were first-years or sophomores.
“I think it has been easy to understate the talent on this team just because we haven’t gotten some of the wins we wanted to, but I would absolutely agree the talent is as strong this year as it ever has been, if not better,” Swope explained. “What we lack is college match experience. Seven out of the nine in our starting lineup are underclassmen, and our seniors that are playing in the top nine only have [approximately] two years of starting experience compared to the four years of experience seniors on other teams sometimes have. I believe that has been a factor in some of the close 5–4 and 6–3 losses we’ve been dealt.
“However, this team’s ceiling is incredibly high with a very talented and quickly growing underclassmen base. I’ve been nothing but impressed with the way this team has handled adversity in the form of injuries as well as inexperience. Their growth has been really visible, and I believe they are ready to finish 17th just like we did last year!”
The Panthers will take a break from match play for the rest of this week as they await the CSA’s final rankings for their seeding in the C draw and continue preparations for next weekend’s trip to nationals.
(02/09/18 12:21am)
Men’s Basketball
The men’s basketball team is on an 11-game win streak and looks to finish the season with 21 wins with conference battles against Hamilton and Amherst on the road tomorrow, Feb. 9, and Saturday, Feb. 10. With a win over Hamilton tomorrow night, the Panthers would wrap up the regular season Nescac title and home court advantage for the conference tournament. By winning their last two games, the No. 5 team in the D3Hoops.com poll will have equaled their 21-win total from last season in which they went all the way to the Elite Eight.
Women’s Basketball
The 16–6 women’s basketball squad will play host to Hamilton and defending national champion, top-ranked, and undefeated Amherst at Pepin Gym tomorrow, Feb. 9, and Saturday, Feb. 10, to wrap up their most successful season since their 2001-02 campaign when they rode a 22–4 record into the championship game at the 2002 Nescac tournament.
Assuming the Panthers split their final two games, they will clinch the four seed in the Nescac tournament which will mean a home game in the quarterfinals on Saturday, Feb. 17. (Amherst has not lost since the Final Four at NCAAs in March 2016). Middlebury has already defeated their prospective quarterfinals opponent, Wesleyan, earlier this season at home 77–60. The Panthers will tip off tomorrow night against Hamilton at 7 p.m. and on Saturday for the season finale at 3 p.m. against Amherst.
Men’s Hockey
This weekend the men’s hockey team is set to take on Williams in a home-and-home with the Ephs. They will be in Williamstown for a 7 p.m. puck-drop tomorrow night, Feb. 9, and then will be back in Kenyon for the home side of the back-to-back on Saturday when the puck will drop against the Ephs at 7 p.m.
While the Panthers have struggled of late, they have given some promising signs with ties against Conn. College 2–2 at home on Jan. 26 and against Tufts 1–1 at home on Jan. 27. With four games left to play in the season, the Panthers still have a chance to qualify for Nescacs, as they are only one-and-a-half games behind Tufts for eighth place.
Women’s Hockey
With four games left in the season, the Panthers play tomorrow, Feb. 9, and Saturday, Feb. 10, against Colby. Currently, the Panthers (14–4–2, 10–1–1) lead Conn. College (14–3–3, 9–1–2) by a half game in the Nescac standings.
After their 10-game unbeaten streak was snapped when they fell 2–1 at No. 1 Plattsburg hSt. on Jan. 30, the Panthers shut-out Wesleyan, outscoring the Cardinals 7–0 in two games at Kenyon this past Friday and Saturday, Feb. 2 and 3. Sidney Portner ’20 and Jessica Young ’18 led the way for the Panthers in the two-game series with two goals apiece.
A highlight for the Panthers was their 2–2 tie on Tuesday on the road against No. 2 Norwich. After two early goals by Jenna Marotta ’19 and Young, Norwich capitalized on a power play opportunity in the second period and then registered a late goal before time expired in regulation. Puck drop tomorrow night in Waterville, Maine, is set for 7 p.m.
Track & Field
The track teams collectively finished first at the Middlebury Invitational on Jan. 26 and 27 in the penultimate home indoor meet at Virtue Field House for the winter season. The Panthers were led on the men’s side by Matthew Durst '21 in the 500 meter race (1:09.98), Kevin Serrao ’18 in the 1,000 (2:30.74), the 4x400 relay team of Durst, Arden Coleman ’20, Tyler Farrell ’18 and Cameron Mackintosh ’20 (3:28.08), the 4x200 relay squad of Nicholas Hendrix ’20 , Jimmy Martinez ’19 , Jackson Bock ’19 and Michael Pallozzi ’18 (1:31.47), Jonathan Perlman ’19 in the one-mile race (4:19.62), Harrison Knowlton ’19 in the 5,000 (15:18.73), Minhaj Rahman ’19 in the 35-pound weight throw (52'7.5"), John Natalone ’19 in the pole vault (14'5.25") and Jonathan Fisher ’20 in the heptathlon (4,197 pts – school record). On the women’s side the Panthers winning efforts were led by Alex Cook ’20 in the long jump (16'11.25"), Lucy Lang ’19 in the 500 meter race (1:21.65), Kate McCluskey ’18 in the 400 (57.89s) and Lang, McClusky, Kai Milici ’21 and Meg Wilson ’20 in the 4x400 relay (4:05.69). Last weekend the Panthers took part in the unscored Tufts challenge and they will head to the David Hemery and Gordon Kelly Invitational meets tomorrow, Feb. 9, and Saturday, Feb. 10, where they will tune up the for Division III New England Championships that will take place next week, Feb. 16-17.
Skiing
The ski teams have enjoyed several eventful weeks as the weather has turned more favorable for their craft. Highlights have included the men’s Nordic squad’s 10K Classic win at the Vermont Carnival last Saturday, Feb. 3. In the final races, Peter Wolter ’21 finished third (27:04), which came on the heels of his being named Men’s Nordic Skier of the Week by the EISA, Adam Luban ’18 finished six seconds behind Wolter (27:10) and Sam Wood ’19 also headlined the Panthers’ efforts (27:22). The women’s side finished third in the 5K Classic, led in the final races by Katie Feldman (15:20), Alexandra Lawson (15:25) and Cate Brams ’18 (15:26). On the Alpine side of the UVM event, the usual slalom contributors led the way for the Panthers. On the women’s side that was Lucia Bailey ’21 (combined 1:53.57) and Caroline Bartlett ’19 (combined 1:54.24), and on the men’s that was Erik Arvidsson ’21 (combined 1:47.61) and Riley Plant ’18 (combined 1:50.70). The previous day, the only finisher for the women’s side in the GS was Katie Utter ’20 (combined 2:16.67), while the men’s side saw Arvidsson (combined 2:05.45) and Angie Duke ’19 (combined 2:10.08) finish. The Alpine squad was also in action in the previous week’s St. Michael’s Carnival, which was headlined by Riley Plant’s career best GS sixth-place finish (1:48.01).
Tomorrow and Saturday, Feb. 9–10, the Nordic and Alpine teams will head east to New Hampshire to take part in the Dartmouth Carnival.
Men’s Squash
Men’s squash has played some of its best squash of the season over the last few weeks – timely as it coincided with the toughest stretch of the team’s schedule.
Following a third-place finish at Nescac’s Feb. 3–4 in Clinton, New York, where the Panthers avenged a 6–3 Jan. 6 loss to Williams by beating the Ephs 8–1 in the third-place game, the Panthers stand at 21st in the College Squash Association’s rankings heading into this weekend’s matchups on the road against Nos. 16 Navy, 11 George Washington and 12 Drexel. This weekend will decide the team’s seeding fate for nationals later this month.
Women’s Squash
Women’s squash has continued playing well as J-term wound down and with the second semester set to begin. Following a 9–0 loss to a top-10 Cornell Big Red team in the home finale Sunday Jan. 21, the Panthers have won three of five and defeated the likes of Nos. 18 Bates and 16 Amherst to finish third at the Nescac tournament Feb. 3–4.
The Panthers head into this weekend ranked No. 15 and solidly in place to play in the B bracket for the Kurtz Cup at nationals next weekend, Feb. 16–18, in Boston. The Panthers are set to play tomorrow, Feb. 9, against Georgetown at Navy’s courts in Annapolis, Maryland, in what promises to be a compelling matchup given that Middlebury coach Mark Lewis held the head job at Georgetown prior to coming to Middlebury. Bigger challenges for the Panthers will be their matchups this Saturday, Feb. 10, at No. 14 George Washington, and then on Sunday, Feb. 11, on the courts of No. 9 Drexel.
Swimming & Diving
After an eventful January, the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams are off this weekend in advance of Nescacs later this month. The women’s side will be in action next weekend, Feb. 16–18, where the championships are set to take place in Williamstown, while the men’s side gets two weeks off before heading to Brunswick, Maine, where the championships are set to take place from Feb. 23–25.
(01/24/18 9:28pm)
Last weekend, the No. 19 Middlebury men’s squash team had an opportunity. Facing No. 16 Franklin and Marshall on Saturday and then No. 15 Cornell on Sunday at their home courts, the Panthers had a shot to boost their resume and chances of cracking the College Squash Association’s top-16 teams by the time nationals roll around next month. Unfortunately, the Panthers came up short, losing 5–4 to Franklin and Marshall and 6–3 to Cornell.
At the beginning of the season the Panthers made it their goal to earn a spot in the top 16, which would qualify them to compete in the second bracket for the Hoehn Cup at nationals next month. With losses to two teams occupying the very spots the Panthers had set their sights on, Middlebury will face an uphill battle to achieving their goal.
“Our goal of finishing in the top-16 is now difficult, but not impossible,” said team captain Ryan Swope ’18 after this weekend’s matches.
Another seasoned veteran, Will Kurth ’18 echoed the sentiments of Swope that the top 16 could still be within reach.
“Our goal is still the top-16,” said Kurth when asked if the Panthers had to redirect their aspirations. “We can compete at the level of those teams [in the top-16] and are more than eager for the opportunity to do so. We have been battling injuries and adjusting our line up accordingly.”
Injuries continue to be a problem for the Panthers. Jacob Ellen ’20 is still not at 100 percent and Nick Bermingham ’20 missed his seventh and eighth straight matches last weekend due to a nagging injury.
“In terms of injuries, Jacob [Ellen] has been playing through his soreness in his knee and is doing well,” said Swope. “Alex Merrill ’21 just returned from a long ankle injury, and Nick Bermingham will hopefully return this week having successfully rehabbed his injury for weeks now.”
Heading into play on Saturday, the top of the Panthers’ ladder had played as strong as it has for any Middlebury squad in recent memory. Typically the middle and bottom third of the ladder are strong suits for the Panthers, but this season their quintet of sophomores, Will Cembalest ’20, Ellen, Jack Kagan ’20 and Bermingham, along with Henry Pearson ’18, have played well and allowed the Panthers to compete at the top.
However, against tough competition last weekend, the Panthers only won one match in the top five slots of the ladder, which came on Sunday when Kagan jumped out to a 2–0 sets lead in the No. 3 slot against Cornell senior Jordan Brail, whose comeback attempt Kagan managed to stave off for a five sets victory.
Despite the results, the Panthers made things difficult for the Diplomats and Big Red.
“I thought everyone was pushed to play their best,” said Kurth. “The result was disappointing, but we really made these higher ranked teams ‘beat us’ rather than ‘roll over’ for the them. I thought we showed our true colors. We fought hard this weekend.”
These were some of the positives that the Panthers can take with them as they head into this weekend’s pivotal matches in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which features a date with 14th-ranked Virginia on Saturday.
A win over the Cavaliers would go a long way to helping the Panthers boost their resume.
“With a good opportunity against a beatable No. 14 UVA,” said Swope, “the top-16 finish is still attainable.”
In addition to the opportunity on Saturday against Virginia, the Panthers will also get a crack at No. 9 Drexel, No. 11 George Washington and No. 13 Navy next month before Nescacs.
Kurth believes that the Panthers can use the Nescacs as an opportunity to overcome bumps in the road they faced earlier in the season.
“I hope our results at Nescacs nullify our early results against, for example, Williams,” he said, referencing a match the Panthers dropped in Williamstown 6–3 on Jan. 6. “We are looking forward to University of Virginia, the Naval Academy, Drexel, George Washington University. We will continue to train hard and prepare for these great opportunities.”
Despite the losses, the Panthers’ best is likely in front of them because the team may have shooed away the injury bug just as it enters the season’s homestretch that features matchups against quality competition to get back on track.
“We have had a really tough go with injuries this season with as many as three players out of our lineup at times,” said Swope. But Swope asserted that things are looking up because the team believes Bermingham may have a chance to return this weekend.
“If Nick does return [for this weekend’s slate], this will be our first week with a truly full, healthy lineup,” said Swope. “We could not be more excited about that as we head to Boston to take on MIT and UVA.
“Morale is still high,” Swope said. In all, the team believes that things are trending upward.
“This [past] weekend was disappointing, if we’re speaking purely in terms of results,” said the captain. “But we are playing well and with, hopefully, a full lineup moving forward after this week, most of the guys have faith we will perform quite well.”
With their season on the line, the Panthers will be in action at MIT tomorrow afternoon in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they will take on a 22nd-ranked Engineers squad. Saturday will be the big showdown for the Panthers, as they make the short trip from MIT to Harvard where they will take on 14th-ranked Virginia.
CSA’s Men’s Squash Rankings
Nos. 10–25 (Panthers’ result when played)
10. Dartmouth (L, 0–9)
11. George Washington
12. Western Ontario
13. Navy (Feb. 9, Annapolis, MD)
14. Virginia (Sat., Cambridge, MA)
15. Cornell (L, 3–6)
16. Franklin and Marshall (L, 4–5)
“B” Bracket
“C” Bracket
17. Dickinson
18. Bates (W, 5–4)
19. MIDDLEBURY
20. Brown
21. Williams (L, 3–6)
22. MIT (tomorrow, Cambridge, MA)
23. Colby (W, 7–2)
24. Amherst (W, 9–0)
25. Hobart
(01/17/18 10:02pm)
The men’s squash team will enter this weekend with an opportunity to beat teams more highly ranked in the College Squash Association poll. A win over either No. 15 Franklin & Marshall or No. 16 Cornell would go a long way to helping the Panthers stay in the running for a top 16 ranking to qualify them for the second division at the national championships and a chance to compete for the Hoehn Cup.
In their last match before winter break, the Panthers hosted No. 10 Dartmouth at the squash center. Already a tall task for the Panthers, they were without Jacob Ellen ’20, who missed the match with a leg injury. Despite the setback to Ellen and the eventual 9–0 defeat at the hands of the Big Green, there were many positive takeaways for the Panthers.
The most notable performance of the match was that of Will Cembalest ’20. Cembalest showed excellent skill, raw talent and a willingness to take risks throughout his first-year season last year. In the Dartmouth match, Cembalest was tasked with facing Dartmouth’s No. 1, Alvin Huemann, a senior who finished 12th in the top bracket at last year’s individual championships. For reference, Cembalest finished 67th at last year’s individual championships. For those of you doing the math at home, that is a difference of 55 spots. But you would never have known that by watching Cembalest put Huemann on the ropes in December.
“Dartmouth has a very strong men’s program,” Cembalest said. “I knew how good the No. 1 [Huemann] would be, so it was little pressure going into the match.”
Cembalest lost in straight sets, but that is misleading. He probably should have won the first two sets as he held an 8–6 lead and set point opportunities in both of them. Regardless of the outcome, Cembalest went shot-for-shot with Huemann, mixing in a couple of slick backhands, changes of pace and shots to keep Dartmouth’s No. 1 on his heels.
“I knew the kid was tall and physically strong,” Cembalest explained, “so my game plan was to be very patient and try to volley as much as possible. Making as few mistakes as I could and keeping the ball in play would get me the most success.”
While the loss to Dartmouth was not the way the Panthers hoped to leave things for the break, they showed signs of progress, especially among the slew of sophomores on the top half of the ladder. However, when the Panthers returned to action on Saturday, Jan. 6, they lost 6–3 at the hands of No. 21 Williams on the road.
Last season, the Panthers split their two matches with Williams, both of which were 5–4 nail biters. However, they were without Ellen in the match they lost.
This time around, the Panthers dropped the match 6–3, although they had the services of Ellen at full strength. Cembalest continued his roll with a straight-set victory, all by a score of 11–7, against the Ephs’ No. 1 Will Means. Ellen, in his return, fell in the second slot to John Fitzgerald who Ellen had split his pair of matchups with last year.
Part of the challenge in the Williams match was a hamstring injury to Nick Bermingham ’20. Without Bermingham to occupy the fourth slot, everyone from there on down had to play a spot up.
This proved to be no problem for the Panthers’ pair of first-years in the middle of the ladder, Wiatt Hinton ’21 and John Epley ’21. Hinton won a hard-fought, down-to-the-wire victory in the No. 5 match. In doing so, he managed to overcome a 13–11 setback in the first set and a 2–1 set deficit by taking a marathon fourth set 13–11 and an 11–5 victory in the rubber match. Epley won his matchup in the sixth spot in straight sets. He won the first two of those 11–5 and 11–4 before having to outlast the Williams No. 6, David Pincus, 12–10 in the final game.
Further down the ladder the Panthers had a harder time adjusting. Williams took all matches in the No. 7 through No. 9 slots, although Sam Giddens ’18 and team captain Ryan Swope ’18 managed to take a game off of their opponents at the bottom of the ladder.
After the setback against Williams, the Panthers had four days to recuperate before they hosted No. 24 Amherst a week before yesterday, Jan. 10, at the squash courts for a matinée. In a match the Panthers needed to win to keep their goal of cracking the top 16 in play, they rose to the occasion, easily dispatching the Mammoths 9–0. The top two-thirds of the ladder played exceptionally well for the Panthers as they made it through the match without dropping a set.
With the win over Amherst in hand, the Panthers began their yearly Maine round-tripper with their most important match of the year to date against Bates in Lewiston.
Bermingham was again not in the lineup, but the Panthers managed to win 5–4. Ellen and Jack Kagan ’20 headlined the Panthers’ efforts with wins in the second and third slots, each doing so in four sets. In the top slot, Cembalest lost in four sets, but did so in close fashion.
Cembalest dominated the first set with an 11–2 victory. After falling 11–7 and 11–6 in closely contested sets, he almost slipped by Yousry in the fourth set before dropping it 13–11.
“My match against Bates was a good experience for me,” said Cembalest. “[Yousry] came out slow in the first game and I was ready on the first point. This boosted my confidence, but possibly too far that I was a little bit thrown off by how he turned it around in the second game. He was a very talented player with a large crowd at his home courts, so it was difficult to outperform him on that day. I am happy with my performance.”
With Ellen limited by injuries and with Cembalest playing excellent squash, for the moment Cembalest has claimed the No. 1 slot on the ladder.
“I have been working extra hard this season on court and have put a lot of time into my mental game,” said Cembalest. “I put in numerous hours at the end of the summer working on fitness and my movement on the court. It feels awesome to see the results from my pre-season work.”
Following the Bates win, the Panthers travelled the next day to Waterville to play No. 23 Colby at the Mules’ Dunaway Squash Center, where they won easily 7–2. Kagan and Pearson continued playing well even though they were slotted up due to Cembalest’s tweak of an ankle in the Bates match the day before. Kagan continued to prove he is capable of winning in the No. 2 position as he played his opponent to scores of 11–5 and 6–11 before he finished off Colby’s No. 2 with a pair of 11–6 scores. Kagan is now 2–1 in the second slot on the season and 3–1 in the third slot.
“I’ve been really excited about and impressed with the top four this season,” Kagan said of the slew of sophomores at the top half of the ladder. “We don’t typically have a top group that we can count on to always put up points; we often rely on the middle or our depth to beat teams.”
This year has proven different and the most promising aspect is that the top performers are sophomores.
“I have to feel confident about our top four,” said Kagan. “It takes pressure off of the bottom guys while giving the top guys a big confidence boost.”
All of this has not come without hard work, though.
“I would have to attribute this to work everyone did in the summer and the fall,” Kagan said. “We’re all just better players than we were a year ago, simply put. We really have been able to match up with most of our opponents this year from the top to the bottom and that’s a good thing to see looking forward.”
Pearson and Hinton also kept the Panthers rolling against Colby, as Pearson won in the third slot in a set sequence of 11–9, 11–4, 7–11 and 11–7. Hinton split his first two sets against the Colby No. 4 before taking the third set 11–5 and holding on for a 13–11 victory in a marathon fourth set. After defeating his Bowdoin opponent, Hinton now has a five match winning streak, leading Kagan, Ellen, Swope and Will Kurth ’18 each by one match for the longest current winning streak by a Panther.
After defeating Colby, the Panthers got back on the bus and travelled approximately 50 miles south to Brunswick where they took on Bowdoin at the Polar Bears’ Lubin Squash Center to wrap up the Maine trip.
Still without the previously red-hot Cembalest, the Panthers nonetheless won easily against Bowdoin, 7–2. Ellen was dominant in the top position, allowing only four points in the first set and then only two each in the second and third sets. Kagan once again won in the second position, also in straight sets. The match of the match was probably Thomas Wolpow ’20’s.
In the No. 6 spot, Wolpow found himself down out of the gate when he dropped the first set 11–7. He nearly evened the match in the second set, but the Polar Bears’ No. 6, Uday Khanna, edged him out 13–11. Wolpow battled back even though he could have shut it down in the third set. In another nail-biter, he flipped the script in the third set and won 13–11, which shifted the momentum firmly to his side. After winning the fourth set 11–7, Wolpow gutted out a victory in the deciding fifth set 11–9.
With the annual Maine trip behind them, the Panthers now head into a weekend that can help their chances of qualifying for the top 16. By winning at least one of their two matchups with F&M and Cornell, they will be firmly in the conversation to qualify to compete for the Hoehn Cup.
“Success in this weekend’s matches,” Kagan said, “is [us] winning one or two of those. We beat Bates who is ahead of us, but lost to Williams who is behind us. There’s some teams in our range who we don’t play in the regular season, so to reach our goal of top 16 in the country, beating No. 15 [F&M] or No. 16 [Cornell] would be a huge help to our case. We lost a tight 5–4 match to F&M last year and we’re out to flip that one this year for sure, having them at home this time. We see these two matches as 100 percent winnable.”
Added Cembalest: “I am really looking forward to Cornell and Franklin and Marshall next weekend where I will be playing more top-ranked players. I’m looking to bring the heat on my home courts.”
You can catch both the men’s and women’s squads in action this coming weekend at the squash courts. They take on F&M on Saturday at 11 a.m. and Cornell on Sunday at noon.
(12/07/17 12:22am)
Last Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017, the men’s squash team began their 2017-18 season by cleanly sweeping Hamilton 9–0 in the Little Squash Center in Clinton, New York.
While the Panthers are clearly a program on the rise, their ranking has slipped since the season officially began and the College Squash Association (CSA) released its preseason poll. Last season the Panthers finished strong and won their draw in the C bracket, which put them at 17th in the final CSA ranking and brought home the program’s sixth Summers Cup in the last nine years. Nonetheless, this year the CSA put Virginia at No. 17 and spot ahead on the Panthers in the preseason poll. Having not even played a match, the Panthers were bumped down to No. 19 in the ranking the committee released on Dec. 1.
This is the lowest the Panthers have been ranked since head coach Mark Lewis took over the program prior to their epic 2015-16 season, when the Panthers rode the surging duo of David Cromwell ’16 and Henry Pearson ’18, top-ladder stalwart Wyatt French ’17, and the stable pair of Ben Krant ’17 and Will Kurth ’18 at the lower half of the ladder to a thrilling victory over Bates in the Hoehn Cup.
“The team’s training went well this fall and although the list of opponents is difficult they are progressing nicely and we have ambitions to break into the top 16,” said Lewis.
On the court, Middlebury simply overmatched the Continentals. Jacob Ellen ’20, who has solidified his position at the top spot on the ladder for the Panthers, got better as his match went on and took down Hamilton’s top player, junior Colin O’Dowd 14–12, 11–7, 11–4. Last season, Ellen took down O’Dowd in straight sets, 11–5, 11–6, 11–3, but having played each other before, there was no element of surprise this time around.
“I have actually known Colin [O’Dowd] for a while, since junior squash,” said Ellen. “So I know his game very well and I approached both matches the same way trying to play very quickly without making a lot of mistakes.”
Ellen is still getting over a slightly banged-up knee that has bothered him through training the last few weeks, but for those watching this team it seems like this was the perfect match for the No. 1 to shake off the rust.
“I came into the first game a little bit rusty, so I almost lost it, but became much more comfortable on court as the match went along,” said Ellen.
In the second spot, Will Cembalest ’20 also outdid his opponent, Callum Sondhi, in straight sets 11–6, 11–5, 11–4. Rounding out the top third of the ladder was yet another Panther sophomore, Jack Kagan ’20. Kagan played most of his matches last winter in the No. 5 slot, but had no trouble in his first competition as the No. 3 as the sophomore took it to Nicholas Conzelman in straight sets, winning the first two 11–4 and the decisive one 11–3.
Heading into the offseason, Kagan made it a goal to improve his pace, shot strength and technique – all of which are reasons he now finds himself in the No. 3 slot.
“I lifted a lot during the summer after taking the spring to relax and hit more casually,” Kagan explains. “I switched rackets from Wilson to Technifibre and worked on some new swing mechanics while training this past summer. These were all pretty instrumental to me to come in in the fall and feel like my average pace of shot was much higher than ever before.”
And the results are starting to show for Kagan and his team.
“I’m now much more comfortable hitting harder on a regular basis without worrying about making a mistake,” Kagan said. “It’s helping me apply more consistent pressure on my opponents and move them around and often close out points. There’s still work to be done and I’m not yet consistently where I want to be but that’s what practice time is for.”
Coach Lewis is excited about the team’s depth and says that Ellen, Cembalest and Kagan are just the people to face the tough match-to-match competition that they will face it head-on.
“Right now our biggest strength is our depth,” said Lewis. “Even though Jacob Ellen, Will Cembalest and Jack Kagan are securely at the top of our ladder they will face difficult tests in nearly every match they play.”
The barrage of sophomores Middlebury is throwing at the competition this season continued in the No. 4 spot last Saturday when Nick Bermingham ’20 beat one of the Hamilton first-years, John Sawyers, in straight sets. Bermingham finished last season playing in the No. 9 slot for the Panthers, after having split his time between eighth (six appearances) and ninth (twelve appearances) on the ladder.
“The biggest change would have to be sophomore Nick Bermingham going from No. 9 to No. 4,” said Lewis. Bermingham has managed to work his way to the upper half of the ladder even with the strong sophomore and first-year classes that Lewis has recruited.
“He has put in a lot of time on his own and with me,” Lewis continued about Bermingham, “and his efforts and overall consistency have improved dramatically.”
However, it was in the fifth spot where senior Henry Pearson broke up the sophomore parade and also took part in the most compelling match of the day for the Panthers.
Pearson lost in a marathon first set to Tristian Chiax 20–22 which is usually something hard to come back from.
“The first game was tough for sure,” said Pearson. “I was pretty impatient, trying to put the ball away and hitting a lot of tins, and [Chiax] was definitely feeding off that. We went back and forth like that until he eventually pulled out the win with the first game,” although Pearson did battle back after finding himself in an early hole.
“I was pretty frustrated with my mistakes during the match,” Pearson continued, and explained that he “was also making a conscious effort to play relaxed and just enjoy the experience.
“That was hard to do, though, because Chiax definitely fed off that and played with more intensity and aggression. The match did feel like it was going on forever because we were pretty much just feeding off each other’s mistakes over and over again.
Pearson took down Chiax with a pair of 11–5 victories in the second and third sets, before dropping the fourth game to set up a rubber match in which Pearson defeated Chiax 12–10, all the while having to complete a comeback to win the match.
“I didn’t really change my strategy until I was down 10-7 in the fifth,” Pearson said in reference to the decisive fifth set. “I felt like I really had to play smart to win the match. I just started playing straight length to the back and taking whatever opportunities he gave me as quickly as possible, hoping he would make an error first.”
After a year’s absence, Pearson’s return gives the Panthers additional experience.
“The beginning of the season was definitely tough,” Pearson said. “I was pretty out of shape. Now that I’m back in decent shape, it’s mostly been a mental battle for me. I’m still working back into developing an effective and consistent competitive mindset.”
Nonetheless, Pearson assured: “Super fun match overall and I enjoyed the fight!”
Thomas Wolpow ’20 recorded a straight-set victory in the No. 8 slot for the Panthers which clinched the match victory for the team. The Panthers’ pair of first-years who made appearances in the starting nine, Alex Merrill ’21 and Wiatt Hinton ’21, also took their debut matches in straight sets in the No. 6 and 7 spots. Hinton’s win in the seven spot is even more impressive given that it came over Hamilton’s lone senior, Jonathan Ruth, and given that it wasn’t even close — 11–3 in the first two sets and then 11–2 in the final set.
Sam Giddins ’18 rounded things out for the Panthers in the ninth slot as he also registered a straight set victory 11–8, 11–9, 11–6. While team captain Ryan Swope ’18’s match technically was in the 10th slot and did not count toward the final scoring, he put a beat down on his opponent, Jarrod Gerstein, in straight sets 11–9, 11–1, 11–5 for good measure.
Although the Panthers’ dominated the Continentals, Hamilton entered Saturday ranked No. 28 in the CSA rankings so Middlebury probably won’t move up in the next set of rankings the CSA releases this week. However, next up for Middlebury is a date with a No. 10 Dartmouth squad which will take place at the squash center on Saturday at 6 p.m.
This will be the first of nine matches the Panthers play this season against teams currently ranked higher than Middlebury by the CSA.
Although other programs have been at it in match play for weeks, do not let the Panthers’ open November schedule fool you.
“Because we didn’t play any matches in November and could thus really ramp up our practices physically, I think we’re in good shape,” said Kagan. “For this, everyone’s excited to see where we stack up and to try to become one of the top 16 teams in the country.”
Dartmouth is only the first of many challenges the Panthers will face in a quest to break into the top 16.
“We know that Dartmouth is a really tough team,” said Ellen. “But our team has worked extremely hard since September and we are all playing really well and are excited for the challenge they present.”
While the Panthers struggled mightily last season on the road against Dartmouth, Ellen says the team is hoping to put up a better fight this year.
“They beat us easily last year at Dartmouth and I was out because of the flu,” said Ellen, whose flu also caused him to miss the Panthers’ match against Williams, which they lost 5–4. “Hopefully we can scare Dartmouth a little bit more this year at home and win some matches.”
“It is a challenging schedule,” said Lewis. “The key matches for us are [No. 21] Williams, [No. 18] Bates, [No. 17] UVA and [No. 14] Navy.”
Saturday’s opportunity against Dartmouth will coincide with the women’s side’s match with the also 10th-ranked Dartmouth women’s squad and start just after the conclusion of the women’s hockey game against Castleton. A win or a close battle for the men’s squash team against Dartmouth would lead to a Panther surge in the rankings.
(10/11/17 9:27pm)
The women’s golf team took to Route 7 and headed south last weekend toward Williamstown, Massachusetts, to play for the Nescac championship on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 7 and 8. While the Ephs once again took to conference crown, the Panthers held their own on Williams’ home course at Taconic Golf Club.
The Panthers finished in third, only four shots behind second-place Amherst, shooting a 628 on the weekend. Williams took the trophy with a collective 612 for the weekend, with rounds of 306 on both days.
“Everyone on the team dedicated themselves to improving mentally and technically this fall,” Chloe Levins ’20 said after Sunday’s round was over. “There is nothing but motivation to take away from the season. It’s exciting to be inches from great success as a team.”
It was really a three-team race from end-to-end, as Williams, Amherst and the Panthers were within seven shots of each other after the first day of play (306, 307, 313). The next closest team at that point was Bowdoin, who was a distant 26 shots behind Middlebury.
Even more impressive about the Panthers’ weekend performance at Taconic is the fact that their weekend total of 628 was 13 shots better than their two-day score the last two times the team played at the familiar course, when they shot rounds of 641 twice last season.
After the first day, Helen Dailey ’19 and Chloe Levins ’20 found themselves in a share of the fifth spot on the individual leaderboard. Their rounds of 76 led the way for the Panthers, and it marked a career day for Dailey. Her 76 was the lowest round of her collegiate career thus far. For Levins, the 76 tied her second-lowest score for the season.
Blake Yaccino ’20 turned in an 80 on the first day, which for the third straight round, put Yaccino just on the precipice of breaking the 80 mark.
Hope Matthews ’18, one of the team’s two senior captains, was the last Panther to register in the day-one scoring, as she shot an 81.
In a stroke of bad luck, the Panthers’ other senior captain who almost always is among the team’s lowest scorers, Katharine Fortin ’18, had her highest round of the season on Saturday. She turned in an 83 on a course that has been hit or miss for her throughout her career. Fortin has shot rounds as low as 76 and as high as 87 at Williams’ home course.
However, the scoring played out differently for the Panthers last Sunday.
Fortin followed her tough Saturday with a key 79 on Sunday, which would prove to be the second-lowest score for the Panthers on day two. The lowest scorer was Yaccino, who finally overcame her tendency to add strokes to her score in the second round of tournaments and shaved five strokes off her Saturday score to register a 75. Her two-day total of 155 was the team low and was good for a fifth-place overall finish on the individual leaderboard.
Levins, the team’s no. 1 for much of the fall and the Nescac tournament individual champion at the event last year, fell off the lead on Sunday and fell short of defending her title. Her 84 pushed her from a tie for fifth to a tie for ninth. Although it rained over northwest Massachusetts on Sunday morning, Levins is not going to chalk up her higher score to anything but a tough round and a constructive experience.
“It rained heavily for the first four holes on day two,” Levins said. “This made the course trickier for everyone in the field to manage. My higher score, however, was not a byproduct of course conditions. I’m just still learning how to stay in contention on day two. One of these times, I’ll get it.”
Dailey also fell off of the pace she set for herself on Saturday, as she went from a 76 to an 81 on Sunday, putting her weekend total at 157 and her in a three-way tie for sixth in the individual competition. Matthews managed to shoot an 80 on Sunday, and her two-day total of 161 saw her claim a tie for 10th on the individual boards.
The Nescac tournament marked the end of the fall season for the women’s golf team, which has a lot to be excited about for the spring season and beyond.
“It has been really interesting to watch the team grow and develop over the past few years,” Matthews said. “I think we have gathered a lot of great talent in recent recruiting and it is definitely showing in our results. Although we have not won any tournaments yet, we are getting closer to catching our competitors each time. I’m really excited to see how we can challenge Williams, Amherst, NYU, and other opponents in the spring.”
As was the case for Matthews, the weekend also marked Fortin’s last conference tournament, and although the team did not push Williams as hard as they had hoped, Fortin was able to reflect on how far the program has come.
“This season has been a great show of our ability to compete with the other top NESCAC schools,” Fortin said. “We are driving the program in the right direction.
“When I came onto the team as a freshman, we were good, but we did not have the depth needed to compete with Williams and, eventually, Amherst and NYU,” Fortin said. However, the Panthers’ recent success with recruiting and seeing through the development of new players in the program looks to change that narrative.
“We have acquired some really strong underclassmen and have shown rising collegiate golfers that the Middlebury women’s golf team is in the thick of the competition every week,” Fortin said. “This will certainly help to further develop the program and recruit successful players in the coming years.”
More immediately, however, the short spring season will be here before fans of Middlebury golf know it. Fortin, who will have her fourth opportunity to measure up to the challenge of playing golf competitively in upper-New England Aprils, is looking to make the most of it.
“The short Spring season is definitely hard coming out of a cold winter,” Fortin said, “but we will continue to be up there with Williams and Amherst, especially if we stay on top of our games and keep up our strength through the winter months.
“Everyone is in the same position at the beginning of April, so we will be competing at the same level and will continue to give ourselves a chance to be on top of the leaderboard.”
Like the senior captain, the team’s emerging star—Levins—is looking forward to April and is boiling everything down to what really matters the most.
“It’s important to keep a singular focus on your own game from week to week,” Levins said. “However, on the weekends, we play as Middlebury Women’s Golf. The process of getting better never changes and neither does what we represent.
“The best thing for me, and everyone else, to do looking forward, is to keep it simple and get the ball in the hole for Middlebury.”
(10/04/17 11:35pm)
Last weekend, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, saw a changing of the guard on both sides of the golf program.
For the women’s squad, a second-place finish in the George Phinney Golf Classic hosted by Middlebury on the Ralph Myhre Golf Course is a sign of things to come for a team on the rise. The Panthers finished only three strokes behind Amherst and a whopping 12 strokes ahead of perennial powerhouse Williams, potentially a sign of things to come as the team heads to Taconic for the Nescac tournament next weekend.
Katharine Fortin ’18 notched the third individual tournament title of her career last weekend in what will be one of her last tournaments playing at home (spring schedule pending).
Fortin shot an 81 on Saturday, well off the pace set by her teammate, Chloe Levins ’20. Levins shot a 76 on Saturday which qualified as the second-lowest score carded on the weekend. However, Levins’ 84 on Sunday put her on the outside-looking-in for the race for the individual top spot, but the strong weekend overall puts her in a good position for Nescacs this weekend.
Meanwhile, Fortin’s Sunday round of 75 was the lowest round of the weekend, tied with Williams’ Cordelia Chan. In the past, Fortin has found herself tied atop leaderboards neck-and-neck with Chan. But this time it was Fortin who got the last laugh.
Chan and Fortin followed a similar trajectory over the weekend, as both were faced with bouncing back in their second outings if they wanted to compete for the individual top spot. Fortin’s Saturday round of 81 was just enough though, since Chan shot an 82, meaning that a putt here and there made all the difference.
“As soon as I walked off the 18th green on Sunday, it sunk in that this is my last year,” Fortin said. “I am driven to make the most of next weekend at NESCACs. My teammates and I are ready to take on Taconic.”
Fortin also talked about how it was important to have a good week in practice to insure the momentum carries over from last weekend.
“This week, we will work on the final round push that held us back this weekend, remembering that every shot really does matter and no bad shot can keep you from shooting a good score,” she said. “Our negative thoughts are what have held us back from hoisting a trophy, and I know we are good enough to overcome them.”
Helen Daily ’19, Hope Matthews ’18 and Blake Yaccino ’20 shot 163, 164 and 165 for the weekend, good enough to support the effort spearheaded by Fortin and Levins to push the Panthers into second place.
But last weekend also saw a team that has dominated the men’s side of the Nescac for a better part of the decade falter. Without Reid Buzby ’19 and Phil Morin ’19, both of whom are abroad, the Panthers battled through the fall season and hoped to patch things up by the time the qualifier for the spring championships rolled around.
The Panthers were on the right trajectory heading into the weekend, but they could not muster enough low rounds at the qualifier. After having won seven of the last 11 Nescac crowns and having made the Nescac tournament every year that a qualifier has been held, the Panthers’ streak of dominance looks to be on hiatus.
Jeffrey Giguere ’20 managed a top-five round weekend with a 147 overall and a two-day split of 76–71. Giguere’s strong performances this fall have been a bright spot for the Panthers.
“It certainly was difficult to miss the cut this weekend,” Giguere said. “However, sometimes that’s just what happens and you can’t do a whole lot about it. We still have some tournaments coming up so all is not lost.”
Former Nescac individual champion Bennett Doherty ’18 shot a 156 for the weekend. Doherty followed the round one–round two improvement narrative of Giguere, but Doherty’s improvement was even more pronounced given that he bounced back from a round in which he shot 82 on Saturday with a 74 on Sunday.
Joe Ko ’18 shot a 163 for the weekend and also saw a five shot improvement from his 84 on Saturday to when he turned in a 79 on Sunday. Ko’s scores were slightly higher than they have been in his last several weeks of solid play. Likewise, David McDaniel ’19 recorded scores that were slightly higher than his trajectory indicated he might perform, as he shot rounds of 82 and 83. First-year Jordan Bessalel ’21 also saw action and shot a 169 for the weekend with rounds of 85 and 84.
Looking ahead, the women’s team will look to seize on their momentum as they head into this weekend’s Nescac championship on Oct. 7 and 8 at Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
(09/27/17 11:43pm)
Last weekend, Sept. 23 to 24, the men’s and women’s golf teams were back on the tees as they continue tuning up for Nescac events at the beginning of October. In preparation for its visit to Connecticut for the Nescac qualifier, the men’s squad was in action at Williams’ Taconic Golf Course in Williamstown, Massachusetts, while the women’s squad was still two weeks away from the Nescac championship and tuning up at the Mount Holyoke Invitational.
On the men’s side, it was the team’s last chance to tune up for this weekend’s Nescac qualifier which will be held at Indian Hill Country Club in Newington, Connecticut, Trinity’s home course.
For the Panthers to qualify for the Nescac championship in the spring, they will need to place among the top four teams in the qualifier. Middlebury’s fifth-place finish in the Williams Fall Classic last weekend was nevertheless a good sign of things to come, as only two Nescac rivals finished ahead of them – defending conference champion Williams and Trinity.
Jeffrey Giguere ’20 once again led the way for the Panthers. With a 72 on Saturday and a 74 on Sunday, Giguere continues his string of scores in the mid-to-low 70s, driving down the team’s scores.
I don’t know if the team feels that I singularly need to step it up, although it’s true that I do. I would say I need to build off of the good weekend I had and the positive things I did over the course of 36 holes. As much as golf is individual, our success will depend on the consistency of our team scoring. The sentiment among all of us is that we collectively need to do a better job of preparing for this coming weekend. We all need to identify the particular part or parts of our game that need work and take it upon ourselves to find time outside of normal practice times to tighten them up. Unfortunately, we are no longer top dog in the NESCAC, and we can’t become complacent. Trinity is a very strong competitor, as is Williams. We have our hands full, but we have shown we have the capability to do it.
“With regard to the qualifier, we did talk about how we would have finished third had it been this past weekend,” Giguere said. “Even though that means we are to be in a position to be in contention next spring, we are by no means happy with that.”
Giguere asserts that the team’s collective goal is higher.
“Our collective goal is to win the qualifier at Trinity so we can bring the NESCAC Championship to Middlebury in a few months,” Giguere said. “If we accomplish that goal, the offseason will feel so much better and we would have so much more confidence going into the spring. We need a really solid week of committed preparation, and what happens this coming weekend will be the best we could have done.”
Giguere also praised McDaniel’s efforts.
“He finished off last season strong,” Giguere said of his teammate.
Joe Ko ’18 followed what was an excellent performance in the 34th-annual Duke Nelson Invitational with another solid weekend as he rebounded from a round of 83 on Saturday to card a 76 on Sunday.
The highlight of the weekend for the men’s squad, though, was probably the experience that two of the team’s newest members gained. Jordan Bassalel ’21 and John Mikus ’21 both had their first of many chances to play at Taconic. Bassalel shot 79 and 81 for a total score of 160 for the weekend and Mikus shot 78 and 85 for a 163.
On the women’s side, the Panthers managed a total team score of 634 for the weekend and fourth-place finish out of 18 competing teams. The Panthers were 30 shots back of the tournament champion Williams, but still have one week to make up ground on the perennial conference power.
Blake Yaccino ’20 was the team’s low-scorer, as she carded rounds of 75 and 79. Yaccino hopes to work on her second day performance in this weekend’s George Phinney Tournament at the Ralph, as she has yet to shoot better on Sundays than on Saturdays. Nonetheless, to those around the team Yaccino seems to be hitting her stride.
“I am definitely capable of scoring low as are my teammates,” Yaccino said. “For me, I just need to put in the reps and make a few adjustments in my swing this week to improve my consistency. We’re all extremely excited and I think we will all play well in the next two weeks.”
Chloe Levins ’20 also had another solid performance for the Panthers, registering the team’s second-lowest score of the week with rounds of 79 and 78.
Like Yaccino, Hope Matthews ’18 has also started to hit her stride at the right time. Matthews hit an 82 on Saturday and then had her lowest round of the fall on Sunday with a round of 77.
Team leader Katharine Fortin ’18 did not take part in last week’s tournament, but look for her to be out there for the Panthers this weekend on the Ralph.
“I am looking forward to next weekend on our home turf,” Fortin said. “We will have an advantage over the other teams because the greens at the Ralph are difficult and knowing how they roll will set us up for opportunities to beat the field.”
Although the team was 30 strokes back of Williams last weekend, they did manage to hang with Amherst and ended up six strokes behind the Mammoths.
“I am still very optimistic about this team’s success,” Fortin said. “The level of focus has increased immensely and we have the lower scores to prove it. It’s exciting to see returning players shooting more consistently in the 70s, especially Yaccino and Levins. I am also hopeful that our first year, Erika Nakagawa ’21, will keep improving as she becomes more confident and comfortable in collegiate competition.”
The women’s squad will tee off at the Ralph for the George Phinney Classic on Saturday at noon, while the men’s squad will be in action in Connecticut looking to clinch another bid to another Nescac championship.
(09/21/17 12:39am)
Last weekend, Sept. 16 and 17, the golf teams took the course to tune up for future tournaments with greater Nescac implications. The men’s squad was at the Ralph, placing ninth out of a 25-team field in the 34th-annual Duke Nelson Invitational. The women’s squad also took part in an annual invitational, but they had to take a familiar three-and-a-half hour trip south down I-89 to the Nehoiden Golf Club in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for the Ann S. Batchelder Invitational. The Panthers recovered from a tough first day to finish third in the six-team field.
For the second straight week, the women’s team saw a significant first-to-second round improvement. Unlike their first week of action in the St. Lawrence Invitational that was held at the unfamiliar Oliver D. Appleton Golf Course in Canton, New York, the Nehoiden course in Wellesley is relatively familiar to the Panthers.
“In golf, there’s a fine line between being focused and trying too hard,” Chloe Levins ’20 said, speaking to the team’s slow starts. “Golf likes low expectations. We let our desire to win get the best of us on day one.”
After carding an 84 on Saturday, Levins apparently took her own advice and marked down her score by eight strokes to shoot a 76 in Sunday’s round.
Levins expressed that the team played a more characteristic game on Sunday by staying “patient and present.”
“On day two, we went back to doing what we do best,” Levins said.
While it was the second competition the team has played in thus far, last weekend’s tournament was the first time the team has played since classes started.
“With classes underway, it’s always more difficult to perform at your peak level in any sport,” Levins said. “Our ability to play good golf while keeping up with school will only get better as the season goes on. We’ve started on the right foot.”
Blake Yaccino ’20 once again saw her score slightly decrease from the first to second rounds. But scores of 78 and 80 are nothing to sneeze at.
“I can’t really attest to improvement between rounds because in both tournaments I did worse the second round,” Yaccino said when asked about the relative struggles the team appears to have on the first days of tournaments. “However I believe that my team did better the second round due to confidence. Nerves have calmed by the second round and having played holes before you are aware of course management and can play the course more wisely.”
Katharine Fortin ’18 was among the Panthers to improve markedly from Saturday to Sunday, shooting an 80 then a 75. Among the top three teams in the tournament, only Levins had a better round-to-round stroke reduction (eight) than Fortin’s five stroke improvement.
In preparation for next week, Yaccino said that the team’s focus should be on the little things.
“I hope that we can prepare ourselves by working on little things that shave off strokes,” Yaccino said. “Wedges from 100 yards in and decreasing the amount of three putts by working on distance putting this week,” she said, are among the aspects of the game the team will work on.
“I hope we can go into the weekend with confidence in our preparation and be ready to compete and shoot consistently better in both rounds,” Yaccino said. “Not just the second round.”
“It goes without saying that we all want to perform our best at Nescacs,” Levins said of the tournament looming next month. “The best way to do that is by staying completely present and purposeful about our practice each and every day. There’s always something to work on, so now it’s time to get to work.”
And the Panthers are not that far off from their goal, which Yaccino addressed directly.
“We’re just around five to 10 strokes off Williams,” she said. “So it’s really exciting for the team and I think knowing that helps push us to keep grinding.”
Meanwhile, the highlights on the men’s side were Graham Kenter ’17.5’s and Joe Ko ’18’s career weekends. Kenter shot a 75 on Saturday, and Ko shot two fantastic rounds of 71 and 72, proving that it may actually be possible to master the Ralph.
Ko credited the improvements we are seeing in his game with the work he put in this offseason.
“I think the main reason why I did well was due to the amount of work I put in leading up to the tournament,” Ko said. “Like in any other sport, sometimes spending the extra 30 minutes to work on your game can definitely make a difference during the real game.”
When asked if he knew he would have a career day early on in Saturday’s round, Kenter reported that he actually had to overcome quite a bit of adversity at the start.
“Saturday started off really slowly,” Kenter said. “It was a shotgun start so I started on hole number two and was five over thru my first five holes, and six over thru seven holes.”
Kenter kept pushing though.
“I played really solid for the next 11 holes, going two under,” he said.
Despite the ninth-place finish, the weekend was productive for the Panthers.
“It was great that everyone got a chance to compete over the weekend,” Kenter said. “It is really hard to replicate tournament golf in practice so it is great that we were able to have 12 guys out there.”
With that, Ko and Kenter both alluded to a trend that coach Beaney and many of the Panthers have noticed over the last season-plus.
“The competition in the Nescac has ramped up the past two years and we still need to grind as a team,” Ko said.
This is certainly true. In fact, the competition overall has been improving, not just in the Nescac.
“Bennett, Joe and I were talking after the round about just how much better the level of play has gotten since we came into the program,” Kenter said. “Babson shooting 572 would have been unheard of a couple years ago. And I think seven teams broke 600. Even with the great scoring conditions this weekend, it really goes to show how much better the level of competition is now then it was four or five years ago.”
The Panthers have long dominated the conference and have had the likes of Williams, Trinity and Amherst striving to gain ground. Especially with the absence of Reid Buzby ’19 and Phil Morin ’19, both abroad, the Panthers need to take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way to ensure a top-four finish at the Nescac qualifier next month.
“I think we have a really deep team,” Kenter said, “even with Ben Bichet ’19, Phil and Reid abroad. I think our depth will serve us well in the next couple of weeks.”
“I think this tournament was a reminder for the entire team that we still have a lot of work to do,” Ko added. “We saw a lot of great things this week from the team, especially the first-years. However, we are definitely not content with the results. I think this weekend will be a great motivating factor for us to work harder.”
The men’s squad is heading into what will be a pivotal weekend in their last chance to tune-up for the Nescac qualifier. They will head to Williamstown, Massachusetts, for the Williams Fall Invitational at Taconic.
“I hope that this can be a tournament where we can play well, get confidence, and have it be a testament to ourselves that we, as a team, are more than capable of bringing Nescacs back to the Ralph in the spring,” Ko said.
The women’s side will also make the trip to the Bay State, as they will play at The Orchards golf course in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for the Mount Holyoke Invitational.
(09/14/17 4:01am)
Last weekend, Sept. 9–10, Middlebury golf started the fall season on the right foot. The men’s squad took to I-125 and headed northwest to play in the Middlebury Fall Classic at Lake Placid Golf Club in Lake Placid, N.Y., where the team placed second in the opener. The women’s side also finished second, as they headed about two hours further northwest on the interstate to Canton, N.Y., where they took part in the St. Lawrence Invitational held on the St. Lawrence University campus.
The highlight of the weekend for the women’s team had to be their day-one-to-day-two split. After shooting a collective 312 on Saturday, the Panthers came out strong on Sunday to shoot a 303, and their nine-stroke improvement from Saturday to Sunday was the best out of the 11-team field.
“The conditions were wet all weekend,” said Katharine Fortin ’18. “The course had been saturated in late summer and a considerable amount of rain fell on Friday, leaving us with a wet and muddy course. However, wet conditions mean shooting at the pin and going for birdies. Everyone faced the same conditions, and the driving range was closed, so no player could hit balls prior to playing (only putting and chipping). This affected our play on Saturday, but we were much looser on Sunday and were able to shoot better scores. This course demands informed shot-making, so seeing the course on Saturday definitely had a positive impact on Sunday’s scores.”
Fortin, the mainstay and consistent backbone of the roster, led the way for this improvement. Fortin has already enjoyed quite a decorated career teeing off for the Panthers, finished the first weekend of her senior fall with her lowest collegiate round by shooting a 73 on Sunday.
“I am very excited that my best collegiate round fell on a weekend that the team was also on their game,” Fortin said. “In previous tournaments, I could not get below the 76 number, and coming at the start of my senior season makes this 73 feel extra sweet. As always, there’s work to be done, but we’re celebrating this one.”
Alongside the senior was Chloe Levins ’20, who is sure to avoid a sophomore slump. She tallied the lowest round of her career on Saturday as she also shot a 73. This was quite the way for the Vermont native to begin a campaign in which she will aim to defend her crown as the individual Nescac champion on Oct. 7–8 when the best of the conference take to the course in Williamstown, Mass.
“Patience was key this weekend,” Levins said. “After a summer of good practice, it was important to go into this weekend without expectations. Even though a lot of putts didn’t fall, I played solid golf, stayed patient, and kept it all in perspective. I’m happy to have started the season on a good track.”
Familiarity with the course played a factor in the team’s round-over-round improvement.
“A lot of the team had never seen the course until Saturday morning,” Levins said. “In general, shooting 312 and 303 as a team is a really good indicator of solid work over the offseason and good things to come from Middlebury women’s golf.”
Helen Dailey ’19 joined Levins and Fortin as Panthers who enjoyed a day-to-day stroke improvement, as she followed an 80 on Saturday with a round of 77 on Sunday. Hope Matthews ’18 shot an 80 on day one and an 82 on day two, slightly off the average pace she set last season. Blake Yaccino ’20 had a solid weekend for the Panthers, shooting a 76 on Saturday and an 80 on Sunday. Yaccino figures to play a big role in whether the Panthers will have success this fall, so the team will need her to consistently play the way she did last weekend going forward.
The men’s tournament in Lake Placid was only a one day event. The Panthers’ second-place finish was spearheaded by 2016 individual Nescac champion Bennett Doherty ’18 and Jeff Giguere ’20.
Giguere picked up right where he left off last season when he wrapped up the campaign with strong showings at the Williams Spring Invitational and at Nescacs. He shot a 74, his second-best round thus far in his young Panther career.
“I do think this is a baseline for me,” Giguere said. “Over the summer, I played in a few tournaments and my performance there was consistent with the score I shot this weekend. I do think I can still shave shots from my game.”
Graham Kenter ’18.5 also had a strong showing for the Panthers, as carded 78 that ties the lowest he has tallied as a Panther.
Despite the strong performances from Doherty, Giguere and Kenter, the Panthers still finished nine strokes back of the defending Nescac champions, Williams, providing all the motivation Middlebury needs to continue working on its game.
“Looking back on this weekend, I have found some areas of my game that need improvement and I will work hard this fall to tighten them up,” Giguere said. “Overall, I am pleased with how both the team and I started off the season. We can only get better from here.”
Knowing the team has ground to gain on Williams, Doherty shared Giguere’s sentiment.
“Williams has a lot of great players,” Doherty said. “Any one of them could end up on the top of any given leaderboard. But I think everyone on our team is capable of finding themselves atop the leaderboard as well. I think to close the gap on Williams we will just have to focus on getting better each and every day. We have a pretty balanced team this year and I know that as we improve together we will be right there with them.”
With Ben Bichet ’19, Phil Morin ’19 and Reid Buzby ’19 all abroad for the fall semester, and with the Ephs remaining as the team to beat, the Panthers need someone to step up and be a dark horse to bring Nescacs back to the Ralph next May. When asked who it might be that steps up for the Panthers, Giguere and Doherty offered that everyone looks to be playing good golf and positioned well, but that David Packer ’20 is someone to keep an eye on.
“I would like to see Packer play well and I think he’s got the ability to do so,” Giguere said, complimenting his sophomore teammate.
“It was great to see David Packer win his two matches this weekend and I think he will keep getting better,” Doherty said, also starting to look ahead to the upcoming Duke Nelson Invitational. “It will be fun to see everyone play in our Duke Nelson tournament this weekend and I look forward to the addition of our first-years as well.”
The men’s team will be back in action this weekend, Sept. 16–17, as they are set to host the 34th annual Duke Nelson Invitational at the Ralph. The women’s team will hit the road once again and head to Wellesley, Mass., where they will take part in the annual Ann S. Batchelder.
(05/04/17 1:58am)
The men’s golf team saw its streak of winning the NESCAC tournament end at three last weekend, April 29-30, when they played at the Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass., for the second time in as many weeks.
Williams dominated the event, shooting a collective 18-over 586 with the tournament’s lowest four scores all coming from Ephs. First-year Will Kannegieser shot a 145 for the weekend, taking individual championship honors by one stroke over fellow first-year Sam Goldenring. Just behind the Ephs’ pair of first-years was its pair of seniors as Jacob Watt-Morse shot a 147 and Grant Raffel shot a 148. The best round of the tournament belonged to Goldenring, who followed a 76 in Saturday’s round with a one-under 70 on Sunday.
The weekend totals for Middlebury, Trinity and Amherst were no match for that of the Ephs. The Panthers and Bantams tied for second with each shooting 602’s for the tournament. Amherst, competing in the event at the Mammoths for the first time, was a distant fourth as they shot a collective 628 over the two rounds.
Leading the Panthers were the usual suspects, as Rodrigo Andrade ’17 and Phil Morin ’19 recorded the lowest score for the Middlebury squad in what proved to be Andrade’s last collegiate competition. Andrade, the defending NESCAC individual champ, shot a 76 on Saturday and a 74 on Sunday.
“I felt like my putter was a great asset this weekend,” Andrade said. “It was the reason why I was able to score the way I did.”
The weekend-total of 150 actually was one stroke better than his score at NESCACs last year, although those were at the Ralph. Despite his low scores, he was never in the running for a repeat individual championship.
“I felt like this weekend was a blast and a true wake up call to the changes in NESCAC golf over these past few years,” Andrade said about his final weekend of collegiate golf. “150 over a weekend would have won most golf tournaments my first three years here but now it seems to be just short of the level of golf we are playing.”
Andrade added that he is grateful for his time with the golf team.
“I have gotten to know great guys over the years,” Andrade said. “Both of the older kids [Matt Marra ’17 and Graham Kenter ’17] have taught me so much on and off the course. So have the younger guys, who [I have tried to show] some of the things I have learned in the past. [These] have been huge aspects of my time at Middlebury. Could not be prouder of my team, and could not be prouder of our success.”
On the other hand, Morin was positioned well when play ended Saturday afternoon, as he walked off the course and into the clubhouse with a 73 on his scorecard. The wheels fell off Sunday though, as Morin struggled to the finish line with a 77. However, both of those scores were lower than the 81 and 78 he recorded in the tune-up at Taconic a week prior at the Williams Spring Invitational.
“Game felt pretty good,” Morin said shortly after the team wrapped up play on Sunday. “Just a couple misses and some tough bounces. Tough that we couldn’t get the job done for four in a row.”
One shot behind Morin and Andrade was Reid Buzby ’19 who shot a weekend total of 151. The results had to be tough on the sophomore given that only a week before he recorded a 141, 10 shots better, on the same course at the Williams Spring Invite.
“I was extremely confident going into Saturday’s round,” Buzby said. “My game was in the best place it has been in a while going into the tournament. I think I just wanted to play well too badly and when things started to go wrong I didn’t handle it very well mentally. On Sunday I actually injured my neck while warming up and it made it difficult to swing, so I was more focused on the injury than the golf and I think it made me play better. I was more relaxed and was enjoying being out there much more than I was on Saturday.”
Jeffrey Giguere ’20 was next in line for the Panthers as he shot a 153 over the weekend with a 74 on Saturday and a 79 on Sunday. Giguere’s presence at NESCACs kept a running theme of first-year success going for the Panthers. Fitz Bowen ’17 and Bennett Dougherty ’18 each won the individual conference crown in their first seasons with the program and Buzby and Morin were key factors in the Panthers’ ability to three-peat last year.
Giguere had an uneven weekend but his 74 for Saturday’s round put him in a position to take the individual trophy and put the team in a position to make it four in a row with good rounds on Sunday. Although Giguere was five strokes off of his own play Sunday he still managed to turn in a factoring score, as Joe Ko ’18 could not repeat Saturday’s success of 76 with another good contribution in the second round where he shot an 80.
“Today I just couldn’t hit the shots,” Giguere said once he was back on campus last Sunday. “I felt like my swing was fine, but I would either get unlucky bounces or I just wasn’t thinking through the shots as well. I didn’t do as good [of] a job of visualizing what shot I needed to hit for the situations I was given.”
Reflecting the feelings of his teammates, Giguere commended Williams for playing the collective round of a lifetime.
“Williams played impossibly well,” the first-year said. “We would have had to shoot so low to catch them. They’re great opponents and I don’t think we should be too disappointed with how we played. We are a great team and I know we can’t wait to get going again next season.”
When asked if he was looking forward to developing what seems to be a budding rivalry with Williams’ top first-years, Kannegieser and Goldenring, in coming seasons, Giguere said that he is “absolutely” embracing the opportunity to play against them again.
“I actually got the chance to play with Kannegieser today and he is a very solid player,” Giguere said of the new individual NESCAC champion. “I could sense that he wanted to beat me badly and the feeling was mutual. I was just unable to get it done today. Goldenring went bogey-free last weekend [April 22-23] for the whole tournament [Williams Spring Invitational], so he’s certainly a top player around here. I definitely have to step up my game, but yes, I am looking forward to playing many more rounds with these two players.”
While their run of consecutive NESCAC titles has come to an end and although Andrade is graduating, the Panthers’ future looks bright. Buzby and Morin, the staples of the roster, have two years left with the team. They will be joined by fellow sophomore David McDaniel ’19 who has shown tremendous improvement over this past season. For now though, that puts a wrap on all things golf for the 2016-17 seasons for Middlebury.
(04/27/17 3:30am)
Last weekend, April 22-23, the golf teams headed straight south for a two-hour car ride down US Route 7 to the familiar confines of the Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass., for the Williams Spring Invitational. Both teams finished third, with the women’s squad wrapping up the 2016-17 campaign with a two-day total of 641 and the men’s squad getting one last match under their belts before NESCACs, shooting a collective 593.
On the women’s side, the always reliable Katharine Fortin ’18 was the Panthers’ low scorer. Fortin shot 154 for the weekend and tied for fifth in individual play. She shot below 80 in both of her rounds with a 76 on Saturday and a 78 on Sunday.
First-years Blake Yaccino ’20 and Chloe Levins ’20 ended their rookie seasons on high notes, as Yaccino finished just outside of the individual top 10 shooting a 161 for the weekend. She was one-under 80 on Sunday. Levins had a solid outing on Saturday as she went into the clubhouse with a 78, but fell off of her pace on Sunday as she shot an 85 to tally a 163 for the weekend.
Helen Daley ’19 shot a 168 for the weekend and Hope Matthews ’18 shaved four strokes off of her Saturday score with a strong second round on Sunday, bringing her two-day total to 170 to round things out for the Panthers.
Theo Yoch ’17, the team’s lone senior, competed in her last collegiate match and put together one of the best weekends of her time in the program, as she walked off of the course Sunday with a weekend total of 162 on her scorecard.
Meanwhile, the men’s squad got one last chance to play in a competitive setting before they head back down US Route 7 to play at Taconic again this weekend, April 29-30, in search of their fourth-straight NESCAC Championship crown. If they accomplish the feat, it would mark the eighth time in 11 years that the NESCAC Championship trophy will come back to Middlebury.
The top three team finishes on the men’s side of the tournament were Williams, Trinity and Middlebury, with the Panthers 15 strokes off the pace set by the Ephs. Trinity finished with a weekend total of 589, four strokes better than the Panthers. Nonetheless, the team is confident that it can make up those deficits this weekend.
“Winning NESCACs my four years at Middlebury would mean the world,” Rodrigo Andrade ’17 said with an eye toward the playoffs, “especially since I was a walk-on. Middlebury has never won four in a row, and I feel that if we play well, we can win.”
Phil Morin ’19 was more direct in his assessment of the situation. “We’ve got a chance to make history. Let’s do it.”
Reid Buzby ’19 led the way for the Panthers this past weekend, as he was one-under par with a 141 for the weekend to tie for third on the individual board. Next in line for the Panthers was Joe Ko ’18 who shot a 150 for the weekend to tie for eighth.
After shooting a 73 on Saturday, Andrade entered play Sunday sitting just outside of the top five but dropped out of the top 10 as he shot an uncharacteristic 79, his worst round of the season.
Jeffrey Giguere ’20 finished the weekend with a 151 for the Panthers, while David McDaniel ’19 and Morin rounded things out with respective weekend totals of 154 and 159.
This weekend, things get teed off on Saturday midday at Taconic and should wind down by mid-afternoon on Sunday. For those who will be following the team’s progress over the weekend, Buzby enters NESCACs with the hot hand and Andrade is always sure to have a strong showing at the big tournaments. Keep an eye on Giguere as well, as Panther first-years have a knack for recording strong weekends at the conference championships.
(04/21/17 6:04pm)
Last week, April 14-15, the men’s golf team was back on the course in competitive play for the first time since the fall NESCAC Qualifier. They took part in the Kravetz Invitational at the Irondequiot and Oak Hill Country Clubs in Pittsford, NY, finishing first in the six-team field as they continue tuning up for the NESCAC Tournament that will take place next weekend, April 29-30, at Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass.
The Panthers finished with a two-day total of 637, but shaved 17 strokes off of their first round on the second day when they shot a collective 310. The tournament winner was McDaniel College which beat-out Franklin & Marshall via a tiebreaker as both finished with a 617.
Phil Morin ’19 and Rodrigo Andrade ’17 were the team’s low scorers, as both shot two day totals of 155 to tie for eighth place. Morin took seven strokes off of his Saturday total when he carded a 74 on day two for the team’s lowest round of the weekend. Andrade took three shots off of his day one total of 79 with a 76 on Sunday.
Reid Buzby ’19 was next in line for the Panthers, as he shot an 82 on Saturday but recovered for with a 77 on Sunday. Buzby, a native of San Francisco, CA, is benefitting from his experience last year when it comes to getting used to taking several months off between competitive outings due to the harsh northeast winters.
“Last year I wasn’t really sure how to approach the offseason because I had never gone through a winter without playing golf,” Buzby said.
“I think I tried to do too much with my game when practicing indoors. This year I didn’t try to do too much over the offseason, I wasn’t worried about what my swing looked like. My game definitely feels like it is in a better place than last spring, and with some more practice these next few weeks I think I can get it back to what it was this past fall.”
David McDaniel ’19, who played an important role in the Panthers’ qualification for NESCACs in the fall, shot an 85 on Saturday and an 83 on Sunday as he looks to regain that fall form.
The women’s team did not compete in the Jack Leaman Invitational at the Hickory Ridge Golf Club in Amherst, Mass., as scheduled, but first-year Chloe Levins ’20 did partake and shot a 76 and an 83 for a tournament total of 159.
Both teams will be back in action at the Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass., this weekend, April 22-23, as they play in separate tournaments hosted by Williams. The men’s squad will be playing to tune up for NESCACs on the same course next week, April 29-30, while the women’s squad takes center stage in what will be the de facto spring conference championships and their last tournament of the season.
(03/10/16 3:56am)
Last weekend, March 4-6, David Cromwell ’16 and Wyatt French ’17 represented the men’s squash team at the College Squash Association individual championships at Chelsea Piers in Stamford, Conn. Cromwell and French won the consolation championships in their respective pools within the Molloy Cup draw. The CSA’s top 16 players play for the national title in the Pool Cup draw, while individuals ranked 17 to 80 play in the Hoehn Cup draws. Heading into the weekend, Cromwell and French were ranked 55th and 56th nationally.
Both Cromwell and French drew tough opponents in their first matches of the weekend. Friday morning, March 4, French opened against Trinity’s Afeeq Ismail, who holds the 41st ranking nationally and is rated a high 5.6 by U.S. Squash.
Even in the underdog role, French played with his characteristic grit and stole the first game from Ismail, winning 11-5.
“I think I did take him by surprise in the first game with good length and high pace,” French said. However, as one of the top players in the country, Ismail bounced back and defeated French in each of the next three sets.
“It was great to play Afeeq [to begin the weekend],” French said. “However, in the last three games, he wore me down and did a great job of keeping me under pressure.”
Meanwhile, Cromwell took to the court on Friday morning to face off with Princeton’s Cody Cortes to begin his tournament slate. Cortes played much of his first collegiate season in the second slot on the Tigers’ ladder. Cromwell spent the first two sets adjusting to the lefty, dropping both 11-6.
“I was a bit thrown off because he was a lefty and I haven’t played many lefties this year,” Cromwell said.
Cromwell managed to squeak out a 13-11 victory in a back-and-forth third set, but dropped the fourth set 11-7 to lose the match.
“I didn’t play particularly well and I never really settled into a rhythm and didn’t find ways to really hurt him so he took the match,” Cromwell continued. “I was frustrated because that [match] was definitely winnable, but I knew I had to move past it. It helped clarify some things I needed to do if I wanted to win the next one.”
And win the next one both Cromwell and French did. They were both up early Saturday, March 5, to prepare for 9 and 9:45 a.m. matches, respectively. In the first round of the Molloy A group consolation bracket, French went up against Dickinson freshman Brian Hamilton. Hamilton was no match for French, as the Middlebury number two took down Dickinson’s number two in straight sets.
Cromwell began his run in the Molloy B group consolation bracket by facing C.J. Smith, a senior from Colby who was named second team all-NESCAC earlier last month. After winning the first set 11-6, Cromwell had to mount a comeback against Smith. The second set slipped from Cromwell’s grasp, as he narrowly lost 12-10. It appeared as if Smith would take the match after he edged ahead two sets to one with a big 11-3 third set victory, but true to form Cromwell held out. The Panther senior battled back and controlled the rest of the match, winning the fourth set 11-8 and the decisive fifth set 11-5.
With their victories, Cromwell and French then played again that afternoon. Once again, French steamrolled an outmatched opponent, MIT’s number one Justin Restivo, in straight sets. Cromwell was tasked with facing a familiar foe, Brown’s Jack Blasberg. The Panthers have already narrowly defeated Brown twice this season, the most recent bout coming two weekends ago, Feb. 26-28, in the CSA team championships 15th-16th-place playoff. Cromwell played Blasberg on one of those two occasions, during the Middlebury round robin, Jan. 16, and won a closely contested four set victory.
This time, Cromwell had to overcome a hamstring issue aggravated over the course of the weekend. Nevertheless, an extra hurdle could not stop Cromwell. He took the first game 12-10 and then fought back after dropping the second and third sets with another 12-10 win to even the match at two sets apiece. He took the match with an 11-6 fifth set victory.
French and Cromwell entered the championship matches of their pools on Sunday, March 6, looking to end two brilliant seasons with an exclamation point.
This time it was French who took on the familiar face, Williams number three Galen Squires, who French has had a lot of success against this season.
“I definitely had a mental edge going into the match because I had already beaten him twice,” said French “He is a really solid player and it was fun to play him again. But I did play pretty well and he was also less consistent than usual.”
French made clean work of Squires, beating the Williams senior in straight sets for the third time this season.
Cromwell’s final collegiate match came against Rochester’s Lawrence Kuhn, a high quality freshman who spent much of the season hidden at fifth on the Rochester ladder despite his semi-professional experience in his home-country, South Africa, and the fact that he finished the season ranked 34th nationally. Yet, it was Cromwell who looked the part of the higher-ranked favorite on Sunday morning.
Cromwell and Kuhn swapped 11-8 victories to start off the match.
“I had a hamstring issue heading into the match, and I knew I had to capitalize on opportunities and cut the points a bit shorter than usual,” Cromwell said.
Cromwell used the attacking strategy to propel himself to victory, as he defeated Kuhn 11-6 in the third set before finishing him off in the fourth.
“Turns out,” Cromwell quipped, “that attacking style serves me well. I should play like that more often.”
Cromwell is not done, though. After an inspiring, stellar senior season in which he traversed the Panthers’ ladder and won the clinching match against Brown in the 15th-16th-place playoff in the top slot, he will look to continue playing squash on the pro tour.
“I am taking a couple days off this week,” Cromwell said of his future plans, “and then I will continue training because [next week, March 14] I head down to Virginia to compete in the U.S. closed nationals.”
Cromwell then plans to train rigorously for the rest of the spring under the watchful eye of Coach Mark Lewis, who formerly played on the tour himelf.
“[Coach Lewis] is going to guide my development,” Cromwell said, “which will help me keep a steady rate of improvement before I start playing in tournaments this summer.”
French will return to the team next year for his senior season. Having played most of the season in the third slot and with Andrew Jung ’16 and Cromwell graduating, French will likely occupy one of the top slots on Middlebury’s ladder again next season.
“It does seem like I will play high on the ladder next year,” French said. Yet, he echoed what team has said since the season ended with six recruits set to join the team next season. “Everyone is very motivated to improve.”
(03/02/16 6:19pm)
The men’s squash team rounded out its season last weekend, on Feb. 26-28, when it travelled to New Haven, Conn., for the CSA National Championships. Ranked 15th in the CSA’s final regular season rankings, the Panthers qualified to play in the second division at nationals for the first time since the program made back-to-back appearances in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 seasons.
The team had a tough start to the weekend when it lost its top player Andrew Jung ’16 due to illness. On Friday, the Panthers faced tenth-ranked Cornell. They lost 9-0 in the quarterfinal match, but played close games throughout the lineup.
Coach Mark Lewis said the team learned of Jung’s illness a week-and-a-half before nationals.
“As you might suspect everyone was upset first for Andrew and for the team,” Coach Lewis said. “He has been a great number one, captain and teammate, and to see his final opportunity to play for Middlebury taken away was difficult. I can only imagine how difficult it was for him.”
On Saturday, Feb. 27, the Panthers faced Navy for the second time this season in a consolation semifinal game. When the teams first met, Middlebury won a 5-4 squeaker in a match played at the Yale Round Robin. This time when the teams met at the Yale courts, the Panthers dropped the match 9-0. While
Middlebury’s lineup had to be shifted up because of Jung’s absence, the Panthers still played the Midshipmen closely in their individual matches.
David Cromwell ’16 and Wyatt French ’17 had to play in the top two slots in the rematch after both won in the second and third slots during the regular season meeting. Cromwell lost in straight sets but gave Navy’s top player, sophomore Jack Herold, three tough games including a 13-11 second set. French’s match went to five games in the second slot, winning the second and fourth sets 11-6 and 11-5, respectively. French dropped the first and fifth sets 11-8, but almost pulled off a third set victory before falling 11-9. Will Kurth ’18 also took his match to five games in the seventh slot and even led two sets to one before losing the fourth and fifth sets 11-9 and 11-5, respectively.
On Sunday, Feb. 28, the Panthers closed what has been an excellent season with a storybook ending.
In the 15th-16th place game, the Panthers faced a rematch with a talented Brown team who the Panthers defeated 5-4 at home during J-term.
Again, the Panthers faced an uphill battle as each individual was slotted up. But that was not going to stop Middlebury.
“I suspect that on a subconscious level Andrew’s absence in our line-up versus Brown might have served as extra motivation for everyone to step up their games,” Lewis speculated.
ahead when he came from behind Brown’s Foster Hoff in the sixth slot. Krant showed resolve in the comeback effort, as he exchanged 12-10 games with Hoff before dropping the third game 14-12. Fitness paid off for Krant as he followed a win in the fourth game with a 12-10 win in the decisive match.
“It was the longest match I’ve ever played in terms of minutes,” Krant said, “and the only time every game except for one was more than 11 points. But it was our senior’s last match so everyone was willing to work as hard as possible.”
French outlasted Jake Blasberg in the second slot, winning close games in straight sets, while Cadienhead and Kurth won in four sets on the third and seventh spots on the ladder. Cadienhead, who played most of last season in the second slot for the Panthers, played well in his return to the top three.
“I think Cadienhead’s mindset for his match was sheer determination,” Lewis said. “He’s a gifted athlete who can open up the court sometimes for his opponent. I suggested that he keep his game simple and use straight hitting to limit his opponent’s options before using lots of angles. Although it is difficult to stick with this plan, he did and it paid off.”
With the teams tied 4-4, Cromwell took the court against Brown sophomore Thomas Blecher, who had defeated Jung in straight sets at the top of the ladder earlier in the season. Cromwell faced a tough task, but with the final match of the season in the balance, he proved up to the challenge.
“Cromwell was simply impressive in his match,” Lewis said. “He slowed the pace of the game down, kept the tempo in his wheelhouse and took away the shooting skills of Blecher.”
Cromwell won a close first set 11-9 before Blecher took the second one 117. Cromwell proceeded to shut Blecher down with an 11-3 win in the third game, but he could not carry this momentum over into the fourth set as Blecher forced a fifth winner-take-all set.
“David knew exactly what he needed to do,” Lewis said when asked about what they talked about between sets. “All I said was, ‘you know what you need to do...keep doing it.’ I felt that it was important to keep things really simple and obvious so his mind wouldn’t be cluttered and so he could concentrate only on things that were effective.”
Characteristic of the season he has had, Cromwell persevered and won a close 12-10 game in thrilling fashion, securing the victory for the Panthers and a 15th place in the season’s final standings — the program’s best finish since 2012.
Lewis reflected that the biggest takeaway in his first season at the helm was getting to know his players.
“This takes time but I feel like everyone, myself included, made significant strides in this area.”
Cromwell and French will be back in action next weekend, March 12-13, when they head to Chelsea Piers in Stamford, Conn., for the CSA Individual Championships.
(02/25/16 2:58am)
The Middlebury women’s club Water Polo team successfully opened their season at the Natatorium last weekend, Feb. 20-21, where they hosted the first tournament of the season for the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA)’s Women’s New England Club Division. The Panthers, who ranked 11th out of the 16 teams competing for the 2015 National Collegiate Club Championship, emerged from the weekend in a tie for first place with their 3-1 record.
Middlebury went 2-0 with consecutive wins over Boston College and Dartmouth on day one of the tournament, followed by their convincing 11-point victory over Northeastern and hard-fought loss to Boston University on Sunday, Feb. 21.
After just four days of official team practices, the Panthers opened the season with a one-point victory over Boston College in a nail-biter on Saturday, Feb. 20. Middlebury got on the board in a hurry against the Eagles, as first-year Kate Claman ’19 scored the first two goals of her career at Middlebury in the first two minutes. Claman went on to sink three of the Panthers’ six goals in the first half, en route to a team-high of four goals.
Hannah Grotzinger ’16, one of the four senior team captains, explained why Claman’s performance was integral to the Panthers’ success.
“I play the set position — in front of the center of the goal on offense — and Boston College decided to double or triple-team me, so the shots on goal had to come from players at other positions,” Grotzinger said.
Following Claman’s initial 2-0 lead, Grotzinger traded goals with Boston College (BC), who brought the score to 5-3 by the end of the first quarter.
Co-Captain Alex Spencer-Wong ’16 then broke the Eagles momentum with a counterattack goal to open the second quarter, and Grotzinger tied the game at five goals apiece three minutes later. BC proceeded with a goal of their own before Claman shot from the outside to knot up the game at six apiece.
It looked like the teams would head into the halftime break tied at 6, but Boston College managed to score its seventh goal in the waning seconds, taking a 7-6 lead into halftime.
Emily Bustard ’17.5 led the charge for the Panthers after her stint as goalie in the second quarter, and added two goals in quick succession to put Middlebury on top 8-7.
Boston College would score with 13 seconds remaining in the third, leaving the fans on the edge of their seats with the game tied at eight as they awaited the final quarter.
The Panthers looked to continue putting pressure on the Eagles.
“Our goalie [Anna Lueck ’18.5] hasn’t been able to play recently, so some of our starters were playing in goal for the entirety of the tournament,” Grotzinger said.
“Because of [Lueck’s absence], our strategy against Boston College (and all teams) was to put a lot of pressure on their offense and guard them tightly to make passing difficult [and minimize their shots on goal].”
The game was in the balance until the very end, as Boston College went up 10-9 with 2:29 remaining on the power-play. One minute later, Claman found the back of the net for the Middlebury equalizer. Then, just as the game seemed destined for overtime, a five-meter penalty shot was awarded to the Panthers with 10 seconds left; Grotzinger’s five meter shot found the back of the net, allowing the Panthers to pull off an 11-10 victory.
The Panthers took on the Big Green of Dartmouth that same evening, coming through with a 9-6 victory.
“We were really excited before the game,” Grotzinger said. “Dartmouth has been our biggest rival for many, many years so we had a very strong desire to win before the game even started. This mentality definitely helped us during the game.”
It only took Grotzinger 20 seconds to get the Panthers on the board.
“In all the games we won this weekend, we scored the first goal of the game,” Grotzinger said. “The first team to score a goal in a game gets a very positive surge of adrenaline, and a lot of the sport is based on mental strength, not only physical strength.”
The Dartmouth game was all but over at the half, which began with a score of 6-1. “I think the most decisive point in the Dartmouth game came at the end of the second quarter after four different players on the Middlebury team had scored goals and we had prevented Dartmouth from scoring.”
“We had great momentum coming out of the second quarter, and one of our goals for the season is to be able to keep that going, even against a high-pressure defense like the one we faced from Dartmouth in the second half,” said Bustard, who scored her second goal of the game in the second half.
The Panthers held on in the second half for a 9-6 win. In addition to two-goal contributions from Bustard and Grotzinger, Co-Captain Christina Denbow ’16 scored 3, while co-Captainn Sam Horn ’16 put away one goal.
The Panthers hit the pool early on Sunday, Feb. 21 at 9 a.m. to commence a 13-2 rout of Northeastern. Middlebury jumped out to a 7-0 lead, going into the half up 8-1 over the Huskies.
“[The] Northeastern game was great because our newer players got to see a lot of game-time [where they could] practice the skills we’d been working on in practice,” said Grotzinger, who found the back of the net five times against the Huskies.
Other goals against Northeastern came from Bustard (4), Spencer-Wong (2), Julie Ehrlich ’17.5 (1) and Amanda Geller ’16 (1), while Denbow won three of the four sprints to start each quarter.
“Our team is naturally fast, so we were able to score on many counter-attacks against Northeastern — despite the fact that we’d only been training for four days before the tournament, compared to the other teams who had been practicing since mid-January,” Grotzinger said.
A few hours later, the Panthers took to the pool for the last time of the weekend against conference newcomer Boston University. The Panthers fell 7-4 but played the Terriers closely.
The Terriers jumped out to a 1-0 lead when they scored just under five minutes into the game. Grotzinger quickly answered with a backhand goal assisted by Horn.
Denbow began the Panthers’ second-quarter scoring as she netted an assist from Bustard off of the counter-attack. But every time the Panthers scored the Terriers had an answer, and then another when they scored just a minute later. Nevertheless, Bustard rounded out the quarter by sailing in a lob shot from the set position.
The third quarter began with another Grotzinger backhand goal, but again Boston responded with a quick goal to break a 4-4 tie. The Terriers followed with another three goals in the final half of play.
Despite ending the weekend with a loss, the Panthers had a successful first weekend and are in good position in the conference standings.
“I’m proud of the way we played this weekend, especially with it being so early in the season,” Bustard said. “I can’t wait to see what we can do in our next home tournament in April,” Grotzinger said.