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(02/18/16 4:16am)
After a long season of preparation, the Middlebury Swimming and Diving teams recorded multiple best times over the past three weeks in two of the most important culminating meets: the Middlebury Invitational and Women’s NESCAC Championship. Though team scores were not recorded in the Middlebury Invitational (Jan. 29-30), this last meet of the regular season gave the Panther men and women the opportunity to race tough competitors from Williams, Springfield, Tufts and the University of Vermont. Two weekends later, the Middlebury women hosted NESCAC Championships, placing fourth out of 11 teams with 1,090.5 points over the course of three days (Feb. 12-14).
The ‘A’ relay team of Bryan Cheuk ’16, Paul Lagasse ’16, Jack McLaughlin ’18 and Brendan Leech ’19 began the meet for the Middlebury men with a victory in the 200 freestyle relay (1:26.07). Building upon their teammates’ success, Justin Cho ’17, Stefan Pla ’18, Jack Dowling ’19 and Stephan Koenigsberger ’16 later touched the wall first in the 400 medley re- lay in 3:35.08.
The quartet of Eric Stanton ’17, Dowling, Andrew Grant ’17 and Leech went on to earn second in the longer, 800 free re- lay (7:11.57), while the teams of Noel Antonisse ’17, Nathaniel Smith ’16, Alex Smith ’18 and Koenigsberger, and Lagasse, Grant, Charlie Nuss ’19 and McLaughlin, each finished third in the 200 medley relay (1:38.57) and the 400 free relay (3:16.15), respectively.
Dowling and Grant each picked up victories for the Panthers with top individual performances in the 200 fly (1:57.47) and 100 breast (1:01.33), respectively.
Meanwhile, Connor McCormick ’18 placed second in the 1,000 free (9:48.55), and Chris Mombello ’18 took third in both the 200 IM (1:59.91) and 100 breast (1:01.78).
Michael McGean ’17 secured fourth place in the 200 free with his personal-best time of 1:46.43, coming in just behind Koenigsberger who took third (1:46.17). Koenigsberger missed the podium in the 500 free by just 58 hundredths of a second (fourth, 4:52.69).
Elissa DeNunzio ’18 (363.15) and Will Greene ’19 (408.35) finished third in the one-meter diving competition, while Greene earned enough points (439.35) on the three-meter board to clinch second.
On the women’s side, Middlebury won four relays in the 200 free (Morgan Burke ’17, Isabel Wyer ’18, Megan Griffin ’16 and Stephanie Andrews ’18, 1:37.42), the 800 free (Burke, Wyer, Caitlin Carroll ’17 and Maddie Pierce ’16, 7:49.97), the 200 medley (Caroline Kelly ’16, Liza MacCowatt ’19, Griffin and Kelly Delane ’18, 1:49.95) and the 400 medley (Claire Treesh ’17, MacCowatt, Margaret Pollack ’18 and Grace Stimson ’19, 4:03.50). The women clocked in podium finishes in individual events as well. With a time of 58.00, Griffin won the 100 fly — the event in which Audrey Bangs’ ’18 personal record of 58.85 earned her fifth place. Griffin went on to place second in the 50 free (24.52) as well.
Meanwhile, Bangs and Katie Aman ’19 swept the top two spots in the 200 fly with times of 2:11.64 and 2:13.48, respectively, and Andrews placed third in 200 free (1:58.27) — just 0.07 seconds off of the second place time.
Middlebury earned second through fourth place in the 500 free, with Alaina Pribis ’19 in second (5:14.84), Burke in third (5:15.02) and Bangs in fourth (5:15.61, PR).
Wyer was runner-up in the 200 IM (2:09.05), and won the 200 back (2:04.88), just in front of second-place finisher Katie Corrigan ’19, who clocked her second personal record of the meet at 2:12.70.
When it came to breaststroke events, Pierce placed third in 200 (2:30.87), while Jen Koide ’17 placed third in the 100 (1:08.34) with MacCowatt less than a second behind (1:08.98, PR).
Coming out of the Middlebury Invitational, the women had two weeks before hosting the Women’s NESCAC Championship on Feb. 12-14, where they placed fourth out of 11 with a score of 1090.5: just one position below last year’s finish.
On the diving platform, DeNunzio racked up enough points to secure seventh place in the one-meter final (347.50) and fifth place on the three-meter platform (391.25).
“This was a team that set out day one to be successful while enjoying each other and performing instinctively. They achieved all of that,” said Bob Rueppel, who was named the NESCAC Women’s Swimming Coach of the Year on Tuesday, Feb. 16 after five years at the helm of the program. His swimmers have set a total of 24 school records and multiple All-American accolades.
Not only did Griffin and Wyer make the All-NESCAC team with their top- three finishes in the meet, but they also broke a total of three school records in the process. On top of their record-breaking swims, Griffin placed seventh in the 100 fly (56.86), and Wyer placed sixth in the 200 back (2:03.27).
Griffin bested her own record by 0.05 seconds on Friday in the preliminary rounds of the 50 fly (25.29), before placing third in the event final with a time of 25.44.
Wyer’s won the 500 free final by a margin of 2.74 seconds earlier that night; time of 4:54.36 in the 500 free earlier that night was fast enough to win theNESCAC by a margin of 2.74 seconds, and to break Middlebury’s record (set by Marika Ross in 2007) by 4.51 seconds.
On Saturday, Feb. 13, Wyer swept the championship heat of the 200 free with her second record-setting time of 1:50.36, eclipsing Nora Daly’s 2010 mark of 1:51.00. Burke touched the wall less than three seconds later to come in fifth (1:52.63).
The Panthers’ 200 free quartet of Burke, Wyer, Griffin and Andrews (1:36.47) finished fourth, and the medley relay of team of Sarah Bartholomae ’18, MacCowatt, Griffin and Andrews placed eighth (1:47.00).
Burke, Griffin, Wyer and Andrews also earned sixth in the 400 free (3:29.31), while Wyer, Burke, Kristin Karpowicz ’19 and Andrews touched the wall fifth in the 800 free (7:36.82).
Individually, Burke tied for 10th in the consolation final of the 50 free (24.40), and clinched fourth in the 100 free 51.94.
Lily Sawyer ’16, Carroll and Pollack placed 10th, 11th and 13th in the 200 fly with respective times of 2:08.94, 2:09.03 and 2:09.74. Additionally, Pierce got eighth in the 400 IM (4:39.66), fol- lowed closely by Stimson in 11th place (4:39.04).
In the Panthers’ distance events, Lucy Scott ’16 swam to ninth in the 1,000 free (10:33.09) and eighth in the 1,650 free (17:41.22).
Cumulatively, the Middlebury women clocked in eight NCAA ‘B’ Cut times, which they hope will qualify them to compete in the NCAA Division III Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina on March 16-20.
“Our 800 free relay is currently ninth in the nation but fifth in the NESCAC... an indication how good this conference is in swimming,” Rueppel commented. “We hope the 400 free relay [will make] the cut. Isabel [Wyer] will compete in the 500/200 free and 200 back, and Morgan Burke in the 200/100 free. If the 400 free relay makes it, Meg [Griffin] will swim the 100 fly.”
Rueppel “was thrilled with our weekend. Simply put, [it was] a culmination of 5 years of work. Our seniors were my first recruiting class and had blind faith in the future of the program[, and our] NESCAC performances were a reflection of that. They [have] led this team to success I hoped for but never imagined.”
The men’s teams will travel to Williams for NESCAC Championships this coming weekend, Feb. 19-21.
(02/18/16 4:03am)
With each passing week, the Middlebury track and field team has looked more and more ready for the New England Division III Championships coming up this weekend, an important step on the road to Nationals. School records have been falling left and right, going back to the Middlebury Invitational three weeks ago when James Lynch ’16 set a new heptathlon score and John Natalone ’19 left his own mark on school history in the pole vault.
The ladies had no shortage of stellar performances either: Maddie Provonost ’17 gave the Panthers a sweep of both heptathlons by winning the women’s, Paige Fernandez ’17 took the title in the 500-meter dash, Abi- gail Nadler ’19 crossed the line first in the 1,600-meter competition, and the squad of Halle Gustafson ’16, Alexandra Morris ’16, Lucy Lang ’19, and Jackie Kearney ’16 out- paced the competition en route to winning the 4x400 relay.
The weekend after, the squad sent athletes to both the Dartmouth Indoor Classic and the Cupid Challenge at Tufts, where the 4x400 relay team of Lang, Kearney, Fernandez and Morris placed second overall and smashed the old school record by almost three seconds at 3:56.72. James Mulliken ‘18 led the charge for the men, separating himself from the field to win the 500-meter dash. Down in Boston, Adrian Walsh ’16 smoked the competition in the 5,000-meter race, finishing more than 10 seconds in front of the second-place competitor in the field of 32.
Just this last weekend, Kevin Serrao ’18 blew past the previous 800-meter record by more than a second at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational at Boston University; in the same meet, Alex Nichols ’17 set a new mark in the 400-meter dash, only to watch Jimmy Martinez ’19 break it again minutes later.
Against a field of female athletes from all three divisions, Fernandez placed first in her 500-meter heat and Lauren Bougioukas ’16 wound up second in her 800-meter heat.
Morris also lowered the 400-meter mark she already held by a little over half of a second. Her time of 56.43 earned her 20th out of 196 athletes and was the top DIII runner at the meet. She currently sits second in the country.
Lynch, whose performance helped the Panther men land first place out of eight teams at the Middlebury Invitational, spoke about some of the unique challenges that ath- letes in his event face.
“It’s a grind over the two days,” he said. “The hard part is going to bed sore on Friday night having competed in the 60-meter dash, long jump, shot put and high jump, and knowing that you have to wake up the next morning and perform near your best in three more events [60-meter hurdles, pole vault, 1,000-meter dash].”
The women almost did equally well, coming in second out of six (behind Williams). That being said, the ladies will have another chance to compete at the Virtue Field House this next weekend when Middlebury hosts the women’s New England DIII Champion- ships.
Newly hired Assistant Coach Jordan Schi- lit, who boasts his own impressive collegiate athletic resume (six-time DIII All-American in cross-country and track), was very excited by the attention that the meet drew. “Several people had marks that ranked in the top 10 in the country for Division III,” he noted. “All of the teams were very excited to compete at our new facility and are looking forward to returning next winter.”
Schilit also reflected briefly on his first year working with the Panther athletes. “My job has been extremely enjoyable so far,” he said. “I try to bring the same passion and enthusiasm I had as a competitor to my coaching role. The most helpful information I can pass along is how to avoid the mistakes I made as an athlete and to convince the team to not set barriers.”
If helping the team avoid barriers has been his goal thus far, things seem to be according to plan; Lynch could barely contain his optimism as he looked forward to the rest of the season and beyond. “I feel great about this team,” he beamed. “We’ve got some great new faces and our returning athletes are excited to be here. This team is hungry. I would be lying if I told you I didn’t know how many days there are until NESCACs. This field house is going to give us incredible momentum into the outdoor season. I am excited for this year, but I think we are really going to see something special out of this team over the next three years.”
Looking forward to next week and beyond, Serrao hoped that the team would be able to put the finishing touches on the training that’s led them to the success they’ve had so far. “Personally, I have a lot of strength in my legs right now, but not a lot of speed,” he explained. “I think across the board the team is working on improving turnover for the championship season. We’ve already done the long slow distance, but we all need to get some speed in us to hang with the big league boys in the weeks to come.”
For the DIII New England Championships next weekend, the men will be at MIT; the women are looking forward to competing in front of a crowd of Panther fans at home.
(02/18/16 3:57am)
The men’s basketball team secured a home playoff game set for this Saturday, Feb. 20 against Wesleyan with a couple of conference wins in February. In their first meeting of the season, Middlebury won 86-76 on the road in Middletown, Conn. against Wesleyan. Overall, the Panthers finished 3-3 (2-3 NESCAC) over the final six games, good enough to earn the fourth seed in the eight team NESCAC tournament. The semifinals and finals of the tournament will be played at the home site of the highest remaining seed after this Saturday’s quarterfinal action.
The Panthers finished off January with a road trip to Clinton, NY, where they took on Hamilton College and fell to the upstart Continentals 64-62 on a last second tip-in from freshman Andrew Groll. It was a frustrating result for the Panthers after they controlled the game for much of the first half and took a seven-point advantage into halftime. In the second frame, though, the Panthers went ice cold from the floor. They shot 10-34 (29.4 percent) from the field, going 2-8 (25 percent) from beyond the arc and went the final 6:04 of the contest without a basket.
Hamilton fought back and finally evened the score at 62 with 4:28 to play, and that was the last basket until Groll’s tip-in winner. Matt St. Amour ’17 led Middlebury with 14 points, while center Matt Daley ’16 had 12 and seven rebounds, and Adisa Majors ’18 racked up eight points and nine boards.
With a few days to get over their last second defeat, the Panthers took to the road on Tuesday, Feb. 2 and took on the Keene State Owls. Though an out- of-conference matchup, this game held particular significance for the team’s leading scorer, Matt St. Amour. Two years ago, St. Amour’s first-year campaign was cut short when the shooting guard blew out his ACL at Keene State. With that on his mind, St. Amour exploded for a spectacular 32 points on 8-15 (53.3 percent) shooting, 5-9 (55.6 percent) from beyond the arc and 11-11 from the charity stripe.
“I wouldn’t say there was extra pressure,” St. Amour said, “I was just very anxious. It brought back a lot of memories, just little things like the locker room and the spot I tore [my ACL]. After three quick fouls, I was starting to I’d never actually get the chance to play at Keene State. Luckily, the second half went very well.”
Coming out of halftime with the game knotted at 31, the Panthers went on a 17-5 run in the first five minutes, led by St. Amour with eight points and point guard Jack Daly ’18 with six points. Keene State. shrunk the lead to six with 5:05 to play, but otherwise the lead remained at a comfortable distance, and Middlebury finished off the 83-74 victory.
“It was a big win for us,” St. Amour said, “because it proved that we can travel on the road to a tough place to play and beat a tournament level team on their home court. It showed our toughness that we have developed throughout the season.”
The following weekend was very kind to Middlebury, as the seniors celebrated their final regular season home series with a pair of victories over Maine rivals Colby and Bowdoin.
The Colby Mules did not make it easy on Saturday, Jan. 6, and the Panthers had to claw their way to a two-point win, 67-65. In many ways, the Mules outplayed Middlebury, making nine three-pointers to Middlebury’s two and outrebounding the Panthers 45-28, but ultimately the difference came in the shape of 22 turnovers for Colby and just nine for Middlebury. The Panthers tallied 18 points off of those turnovers; Colby just one. The game featured a staggering 15 lead changes and eight ties. When St. Amour made a layup with 6:57 left in the first half to tie the game at 21-21, there had already been seven lead changes and the deficit had not gone beyond five points. St. Amour’s tying lay up came just moments after center Daley made an early exit from the ball game. The big man suffered an elbow to the mouth that caused a chipped tooth and some dizziness, but the injury seemed to spur the Panthers, who then finished the half on a 14-1 run to go up 35-22.
It took Colby nine minutes and 21 seconds to close the gap, tying the game at 47-47 after a 25-12 start to the half. Colby then proceeded to go up 54-47, capping a 32-12 run for the Mules. Middlebury chipped away for the remainder of the half, getting contributions from multiple different players. Majors and Daly scored the final two buckets, both assisted by point man Jake Brown ’17, that pushed the Panthers ahead for the 67-65 win. Brown had one of his best offensive games of the season with 18 points and six assists.
The Panthers had a slightly easier time on Senior Day the following afternoon when they bested the Bowdoin
Polar Bears 78-69. Bowdoin boasts the reigning NESCAC Player of the Year and top scorer in the league in senior guard Lucas Hausman and an electric freshman forward by the name of Jack Simonds. Stopping Hausman is usually a losing proposition, but Daly and his backcourt mates did well to force him into tough shots all game. The talented Hausman finished with 29 points but shot under 50 percent from the floor, while Simonds tallied 23 points. The rest of the Bowdoin roster scored just six field goals. For the Panthers, St. Amour matched Hausman shot-for-shot and finished with 26 points of his own and nine rebounds.
“We had a job going into that weekend,” Forward Connor Huff ’16 said, “and that was to sweep the weekend.
Middlebury’s final NESCAC weekend of the regular season saw the Panthers on the road against the league’s top two teams, Amherst and Trinity. Middlebury came into the weekend with the chance to secure the No.1 seed in the NESCAC tournament with a weekend sweep, but that proved too tall a task. While the contest between Middlebury and Amherst stayed competitive throughout, the home team never let the Panthers get too close, and Middlebury eventually fell 83-70. Amherst has maintained the best three point field goal percentage defense in all of Division-III for much of the season, and Middlebury was unable to overcome that strength, shooting just 2-11 (18.2 percent) from deep. On the other end, Amherst’s 10 made three pointers made the difference. Amherst sharpshooter Jeff Racy was lights out from beyond the arc, going 6-6 for 18 points. Amherst led by as much as 12 halfway through the first half and continually rebuked any Middlebury challenges over the remaining 30 minutes. Racy, of course, put the game away with two three-pointers in the final three minutes. St. Amour and Majors lead the Panthers in scoring with 20 and 18 points, respectively.
The following day’s trip to Hartford, Conn. had a similar feeling, as a 17-7 run by the Bantams midway through the first made the score 33-23 in favor of Trinity and the home team never looked back. The Bantams could not miss from the field or the stripe and wound up with the 97-86 victory. For Middlebury, guard Bryan Jones ’17 did his best to bring the Panthers back late in the second half. Jones entered the game with 6:13 to play and Middlebury down by 16, then proceeded to pour in 14 points in a four and a half minute span. The onslaught from Jones was not enough, however, as Trinity could not be stopped offensively. Majors lead all Middlebury scorers with 15 points while also hauling down eight rebounds, and St. Amour tacked on 12 points of his own.
The Panthers are set to host the Wesleyan Cardinals on Saturday, Feb. 20 at 2 p.m. The last playoff meeting between these two programs came in the 2013 NESCAC Championship quarterfinals, a game won by Middlebury 61-49, when this year’s seniors were first-years. Middlebury has defeated Wesleyan in the last 13 meetings between the two teams, two of which have come in NESCAC playoff tilts. The Cardinals’ last win came on Jan. 15, 2005. With a win, the Panthers will likely have to hit the road to either Trinity, Amherst or Tufts in pursuit of a third NESCAC title.
(02/18/16 1:40am)
As an elite liberal arts school that routinely tops lists of college rankings, Middlebury has a reputation for attracting a certain kind of student: predominantly white, relatively affluent, hailing from boarding and preparatory schools in the Northeast. Most of these students have been successful all their life academically, and have received very well-rounded educations. They have had access to resources like guidance counselors, college counselors, a high quality curriculum, well-paid teachers and beautiful campus facilities.
Historically, preparatory and boarding schools were, by design, intended to prepare their students to attend prestigious schools. Phillips Exeter Academy, for example, was considered more or less a pipeline for Harvard. Films like The Dead Poets Society dramatize the pressure these boarding school students feel to attend elite higher-education institutions, and the almost mythic nature of doing so.
This is the stereotype, at least. And the Campus set out to explore it: does it really exist? Does the stereotype work both ways — that is, does it create a culture here, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy? The thoughts of students, professors and administrators help to tell the story.
***
This semester, Professor of English and American Literatures Kathryn Kramer is teaching a course called “Boarding School: Fiction & Fact.” With the exploration of the boarding school experience forming the heart of the class, the course considers novels, memoirs and films, from Roald Dahl’s Boy to Anita Shreve’s Testimony.
Kramer noted that these works often feature humorous accounts of boarding school life wherein it is not uncommon to see characters forming tight, familial bonds with their peers and responding to everyday experiences “with a kind of irony” and admirable sense of adventure. Nonetheless, Kramer also said that the unfazed quality these characters project is, in reality, not always so effortless.
A particular example that crossed Kramer’s mind is S.R. Khan’s ethnography Privilege, which provides a rare glimpse into student life at the St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. An institution that is highly steeped in tradition, St. Paul’s offers all students the chance to participate in a weekly formal dinner.
While the idea of a formal dinner seems simple and harmless on the surface, emotions can run deep.
“The weekly dinner teaches the students about manners, but it also teaches them to never look uncomfortable in a situation no matter how uncomfortable it is,” Kramer said.
Just as students strive to maintain a stoic air of “coolness under fire” in front of their peers, Kramer said that the boarding school can also become a contradictory — and confusing — institution that, on the surface, promotes student growth, but simultaneously binds them to seemingly unbreakable tradition.
“There is a paradoxical sense of real tradition and things having always been that way, but also a sense of open possibility,” Kramer said.
***
To hear first-hand accounts of these places, we interviewed several students who went to boarding schools. They are all students of color who now attend Middlebury. We asked the students about their academic, social, athletic and other experiences, if and how their experiences prepared them for Middlebury, and what their perceptions are of the boarding school stigma.
Sunho Park ’18 — Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass.
“I haven’t thought too much about it, but I guess going to Deerfield was somewhat of a middle ground between college prep and interest in learning. Students generally took five classes every year. Teachers were always willing to help us out, whether we were struggling or doing just fine. We had sit-down meals on certain nights of the week, and I would often see students staying behind with a faculty member and going over some class material. And, faculty apartments were often visited by students during study hall hours.
“Living with my friends on campus, I found all of the school year to be a lot of fun. There were so many ways to befriend everyone on campus, through class, dorm life, sports teams, community service, meals and so on. People often tend to stereotype the kind of students that attend boarding school, and yes, there are many students that fit that stereotype, but there are also many other students that come from different backgrounds who have their own stories to tell. It was great meeting these people, and becoming best friends with some of them.
“During my sophomore year, nine other students and I wanted to help out with the kitchen staff during meals, so we formed a group called ‘Dish Crew.’ Some of us were close friends from the start, but others only knew of each other vaguely. Many of us had different friend groups during our time at Deerfield and came from different backgrounds, but Dish Crew gave us a place to came together as classmates. I share this story because cliques do naturally form on campus according to similar backgrounds sometimes, but there are also many times where everyone just comes together.”
***
Qadira Al-Mahi ’19 — Peddie School in Hightstown, NJ
“Peddie was pretty challenging academically, and the school induced much more anxiety than it cared to admit for the students. Peddie did prepare me well for college academics, though. Socially, it is a different environment for everyone. I personally did not have a good social experience at Peddie because of who I was, how everyone perceived me based on their preconceived notions of black women and where I come from, as well as the pervasive Eurocentric beauty standards. I obviously had friends, but all of my closest friends were students of color. We all ended up gravitating toward one another because no one else would accept us into their groups. This led us to form our own friend group.
“Despite the intense pressure to be outstanding academically and the stress that that induced, I will always look upon my boarding school experience positively because of the friends I had to get me through it. The people who made up the administration and the institution I do not look upon as fondly because many were ignorant, blatantly or subtly racist, some sexist and unwilling to make Peddie a more inclusive places for students of color when we, particularly the women of color, asked to work with them to make a more inclusive space. Even though that is not something I consider a positive, this aspect also prepared me for the lack of effort for inclusivity I knew I would face at an institution like Middlebury from both students and administration.
“My perception of boarding school versus public high school is that there is a bit more pretension among boarding school students than at public, and a bit more of a sense of entitlement to the education. I think we earn that in our own right by being there, which is fine, but when I think of public high school, I feel like people have less motivation to like school or figure out what they want. My perception is that they do not have as many resources or sometimes the same quality of resources — because the curriculums steer them to becoming worker bees instead of finding a passion, and more often than not the teachers themselves don’t even want to be at school, much less teach. That discourages people from wanting to be there even more.”
***
Addis Fouche-Channer ’17 — Westover School in Middlebury, CT
“My Westover experience was definitely academically challenging. My middle school is a feeder for a lot of boarding schools, so I felt really prepared to do the schoolwork once I got there, but there were definitely times where I felt overwhelmed. I think because it was a relatively competitive environment everyone wanted to get into an impressive, name-brand college and that definitely fueled a lot of the students’ desire to do well.
“Westover was an all-girls school, so socially it was interesting. Everyone was really focused on being themselves, discovering who they were and having fun. Obviously, it wasn’t a utopia; there were definitely people who didn’t get along but it was generally great. My friend group of six girls still talk almost everyday, and I feel like I’ll be friends with those girls for a really long time.
“Comparing Middlebury to Westover is a little tough because of the addition of boys. I definitely noticed myself becoming more conscious of how I looked and what I wore after coming to college, and there is definitely more pressure to be perfect here. But I felt academically prepared to come here, and also I had been living on my own since I was 13 so that wasn’t too difficult.
“Honestly, many of the students here from public schools have the same ability to do well here as the ones from boarding schools because of general wealth inequality.”
***
One student at Middlebury, Jessica Gutierrez ’17, went through the very experience Fouche-Channer described. After attending a charter high school in Chicago, Gutierrez was nominated for a scholarship to attend the College via the Posse Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks to identify highly motivated student leaders at urban public high schools. The result of this rigorous selection process is a diverse group — or “Posse” — of scholars who are eager and ready to bring new dimensions to social and academic life at whichever institution they ultimately matriculate at.
Nonetheless, Gutierrez said that while the program does bring an incredible amount of diversity to campus, many students at Middlebury often remain shortsighted in their understanding of what constitutes a diverse campus. “I think Posse is often stereotyped by students as being a program that upholds ‘diversity’ as its sole purpose and hence attracts only a certain type of student. There is an overarching sentiment on campus that the large majority of Posse scholars are of a certain ethnicity and come from same socioeconomic class.”
Interestingly, Gutierrez’s remarks push us to a more nuanced — and important — discussion of campus diversity across both boarding schools and colleges: she noted that the very conception many students hold of ‘diversity’ is stereotypical and restricted to a certain kind of individual.“In my experience, the Posse program is stigmatized as bringing diversity to the campus, but the diversity within each Posse is not recognized. I have met Posse students who come from so many different academic, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.”
***
While the consensus seemed to suggest that there is nothing inherently wrong with seeking a quality private education for high school, the boarding school experience still has a stigma, whether deserved or not, associated with it — as a place of entrenched privilege by which the families who least need class ascendancy benefit the most. But most — if not all — of the country’s most sought-after boarding schools, following in the footsteps of elite colleges and universities, are taking deliberate actions to increase campus diversity through programs such as the Posse Foundation, affirmative action and class-conscious admissions practices. Ultimately, as Kramer noted in her interview, it remains up to us to observe whether boarding schools are actively bringing progressive “change to the culture” of secondary and higher education, or whether the students are becoming “honorary members” of age-old institutions that keep privilege in the hands that hold it.
The Campus hopes to run more stories in the future evaluating and deconstructing the boarding school stigma at Middlebury. To add your voice to the conversation, please email campus@middlebury.edu.
(02/17/16 8:57pm)
January was National Mentoring Month! We at Community Engagement wanted to say: Thank you to our Middlebury College mentors!
National Mentoring Month (NMM) was created by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and MENTOR in 2002. The month aims to focus national attention on the need for mentors, highlighting how we all—individuals, business, government agencies, schools, faith communities and nonprofits—can do our part. For the past 14 years, NMM has celebrated mentoring and the positive effect it can have on young lives with the goals of raising awareness of mentoring in its various forms, recruiting individuals to mentor and promoting the rapid growth of mentoring by recruiting organizations to engage their constituents in mentoring. This year, NMM’s theme is Mentor in Real Life, lending way to discussion of mentoring’s real life benefits. In Vermont, the organization Mobius, Vermont’s Mentoring Partnership, is an NMM ambassador.
The month works to celebrate and set apart the special role that mentors play in the lives of others through various events and days of gratitude. All the while, we must remember that our involvement, gratitude and excitement for volunteerism and mentorship cannot be contained to a single month, and instead needs to carry us throughout the entire year. It’s never too late to go forth and thank the mentors in your life, and to also consider stepping up as a mentor in the life of someone else!
Interested in volunteering as a mentor? Here at Middlebury, Community Engagement supports a number of student-led mentoring programs, including: Community Friends (1-1 mentoring for local children) and Xiao Pengyou, DREAM (group-based mentoring), MiddCAM (high school student mentoring for college-access initiatives), Sister-to-Sister and Brother-to-Brother (with a focus on middle school children), Page-1 Literacy (school-based literacy programs) and NOM (nutritional outreach and mentoring).
To find out more about any of these programs or how to get involved, visit go/CE.
Questions? Contact Nestor Martinez with Community Engagement at nmartinez@middlebury.edu or at 802-443-3010.
Nestor Martinez '10 on behalf of Community Engagement
(01/28/16 1:35am)
BLACKSMITH: BACK TO BASICS
Warren Rinehart has been teaching Blacksmithing 101 workshops since Winter Term 2014. Students in his class last Saturday worked on small projects – metal spoons and hooks – that could be completed in the one-day course. Rinehart said that blacksmithing is simple, but not easy.
“You’re learning to move metal with hammer on anvil,” he said. “It’s a skill that you develop with time, to get good hand-eye coordination it takes some practice.”
Rinehart’s blacksmithing shop sits behind the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum near Vergennes, and is cluttered with various metalworker tools and furnaces gathered over years of experience.
“I’m an orthopedic surgeon by trade, and I retired four years ago,” he said. “I’ve been blacksmithing for about 40 years as a hobby, and it continues to be a hobby that’s kind of gotten out of hand.”
EDM PRODUCTION
Jack Tipper, super senior Feb and professional electronic dance music producer (read: jacktipper.com), is leading, for the second year in a row, an intensive workshop on how to make the next club banger. The workshop is taught exclusively in Ableton Live 9, a digital music sequencer available on the CFA’s instrument-equipped workstations. It is a program the likes of which Calvin Harris or Zedd might use. Students selected songs they admire, and over the course of the term are learning how to create original music in a style of their choice.
In class, Tipper focuses on electronic sound design, arrangement and emulation theory within software synthesizers. He also discusses sample warping, digital effects, mixing and mastering — the kind of tweaks that professional producers handle on a daily basis. The best part: participants will end J-term having crafted an impressive audio file for their final project. Who knows — maybe the local clubs will put one of the tracks on their rotation.
HENNA STUDENTS LEND A HELPING HAND
Hands On Henna participants have spent the J-Term learning how to doodle with plant-based dye. On Saturday, Jan. 23 workshop leader Mariam Khan ’16.5 led students to Project Independence on Exchange Street where they put their skills to work.
“For the people at Project Independent, it’s cool because a lot of people here don’t know about henna,” Khan said.
Most students in the class had never worked with henna before, but Khan said many had discovered they a natural talent. Participants began practicing basic patterns and shapes on paper towels to finally freehand on themselves, each other, their friends and community members like those on Saturday.
Sibylle Saunders, who received a henna design from one of the students, said the class challenged Elderly Services members to try new things. “We love when people come. I think it’s wonderful that the old folks are willing to expand their comfort zone.”
Gerry Maysonhad, another Project Independence elder, agreed. “This is a treat for us,” she said. “We don’t get this very often.”
Next Saturday, Jan. 30, students will again volunteer their skills in a fundraiser for MAlt Mexico, an alternative break trip to Mexico organized by Khan.
JAMAICAN DANCE & POP CULTURE
Jillian-Jo Duncan-Taylor ’18, who hails from the island of Jamaica, wants to bring her home’s culture to students here in a workshop that is simultaneously a cultural learning experience and a PE class. This workshop explores various dance types, featuring a blend of Jamaican dancehall and reggae moves. Participants will have the opportunity to learn both cultural dance and the aspects that bring the dance together, such as dress and speech. Motto for the month: Get ready to move like an islander!
MIDDKID GYMNASTS JUMP AROUND
Handstands, Backflips and Tumbling! introduces beginner gymnastics to the basics of acrobatics. The workshop description promises “a challenging and athletic experience…eight-pack guaranteed.”
Yvonne Chan ’16, Anja Kuipers ’18, Tess Weitzner ’18.5 and Joel Wilner ’18 comprise the four-member board of Midd Acro, an acrobatics organization for students of all skill levels. Chan said many students are curious about gymnastics, but intimidated because they have little to no experience.
“Gymnastics can be kind of daunting if you’ve never done it before. We’re trying to include as many people as possible, so this is a great way for beginners to join in,” she said. “Our workshop is mostly beginners, but our club Midd Acro tends to be not beginners because it’s hard to just jump in and learn this stuff.”
Chan added that the workshop, in its second year, quickly reached its capacity of 27 participants.
Sammy Abdulrahim ’19 decided to join the class to improve flexibility in his back. “It’s great,” he said. “The coaches are very accommodating.”
LEATHERWORKING: DEERSKIN MOCCASINS
Alden Laev ’18, native Wisconsinite and Mountain Club winter guide, is teaching his fellow students the way of the woods: leatherworking, specifically with deerskin. Moccasins are great shoes for the fall and serve as comfortable slippers in the winter. Historically, the moccasin is the footwear of many indigenous peoples of North America, and they are the shoe of choice for hunters, traders, and (back then) European settlers. In this workshop, participants will learn how to design and craft their own soft-sole moccasin shoes using natural leather and thread.
Mr. Laev promises experience the satisfaction of working with your hands to create a durable, wearable product. In addition, you will learn how to design a shoe to fit your foot, create a model and use simple and elegant leather sewing techniques. Leather working experience is not necessary. All materials and tools will be provided. Participants will leave this workshop with a pair of handmade moccasins to wear around their hunting lodge, tent or dorm.
(01/28/16 12:43am)
Your ship is shot down in orbit over an uncharted planet. You and one other shipmate manage to make it onto one of the remaining escape pods and are sent careening toward the planet’s surface. Unlucky for you, the escape pod doesn’t stop when it hits the surface. The escape pod buries itself deep into the planet. There is only one way to go and that’s up.
Dungeon of the Endless is a squad-based, top-down, dungeon crawler. The game focuses on your ability to manage a small team as you gather resources, defend yourself against hostile aliens and recruit other survivors as you slowly climb through the extensive dungeon hidden beneath the planet’s surface. The game moves forward as you open doors on each floor of the dungeon. Behind each door lies any number of things. Monsters, resources, merchants and other survivors are only some of the possible outcomes of opening a door. Once all of the doors on a floor are opened, the player must successfully muster all of their characters as well as the power supply crystal to the floor’s elevator while fighting off swarms of aliens to progress to the next floor.
Dungeon of the Endless has a lot going on at once. As the player, you have to be in complete control of all aspects of the game to succeed. You need to make sure you are generating the right resources and spending them at the right time. You also have to stay on top of which rooms you keep powered and which to leave off. In addition, characters need to be assigned roles and placed in strategic locations. Lastly, the player must monitor all their characters during waves of hostile aliens. If this sounds stressful, that would be because it is. The game is very difficult which makes it that much more fulfilling when you complete a successful run. The game has two difficulty settings: very easy and easy. Don’t be misled. This is cruel joke on the part of the developers. The settings should be labeled as “Very Hard” and “Lord Help Your Soul”.
The game is built around replayability. Every time you beat the game, you unlock new ways to play. This variety comes in a couple different ways. When you recruit a new survivor, you unlock that character and can start any future game with that character. The other way the game can change is with the addition of new escape pods. The different pods offer different challenges for the player. These challenges include the removal of healing abilities and the removal of certain resources from the game to name a couple. Extra challenges like these ones prevent the game from becoming stale even after multiple successful playthroughs. There is always one more difficulty to test your resolve and your ability to work as a team.
One of my favorite aspects of the game was its multiplayer feature. You can play the game with up to three of your friends. This gives the game a social component that makes any game better. Some of the stress is alleviated because you can split responsibilities up between players. However, this by no means makes the game easier. You are simply trading one type of difficulty for another. Multiplayer removes the ability to pause the game. In addition, there is the added element of maintaining a clear line of communication between you and your teammates. Each player must fulfill their role perfectly if the team hopes to be at all successful in making it to the next floor. The builder has to keep resource supplies up. The researcher has to make sure new defenses and resource generators are constantly being researched. Finally, the door man acts as the final checkpoint, making sure all other duties are completed before opening the next door. I spent more than a couple late nights over vacation desperately trying to complete a run with friends. Most ended in laughs as a lack of communication led to multiple doors being opened at once, which resulted in an unmanageable horde of aliens overwhelming our characters.
Overall, I give Dungeon of the Endless an eight out of 10. The game does what it set out to do and does it well. However, I never felt like the game went the extra mile to shock or wow me. At the end of the day, Dungeon of the Endless is a very solid game and definitely worth picking up with a group of friends. You will have no shortage of challenges or excuses to yell at each other for scrapping a perfectly good run two hours in.
(01/28/16 12:07am)
As the indoor season begins to pick up more steam, the Middlebury men’s and women’s track and field teams both had remarkable showings at the Smith College Benyon Invitational this past Saturday. En route to a second-place team finish for the women and a third-place finish for the men, a number of Panther athletes distinguished themselves in various events. Jimmy Martinez ’19 stole the show by setting a school record in the 600-meter run (1:22.96) and by finishing first in the 200-meter dash (22.79). Not to be ignored, the ladies made their presence felt in the mile run when a pack of Panthers outpaced the rest of the field and swept the top four spots: Sasha Whittle ’17 led the charge with a personal best of 5:09.15, followed closely by Nicki Schachman ’16 (5:10.51), Lauren Bougioukas ’16 (5:10.93) and Robin Vincent ’18 (5:11.49).
Always looking ahead to the national-level meets at the end of the year, Head Coach Martin Beatty ’84 prioritized the season-long development of his athletes in deciding who would be running in what event. “We really planned to train through the Smith meet,” he explained. “That meant keeping some key people home to nurse injuries and running many of our athletes out of their priority event in order to change things up a bit.” Nevertheless, Beatty was pleased with the squad’s showing.
“The team performed great, garnering the school record [from Martinez in the 600] and some impressive PR’s such as Sasha Whittle’s in the mile,” he observed. In fact, he was so optimistic about the team’s development that he couldn’t help but lament having to lose some of his athletes down the road. Using Whittle as an example, he praised the progress she’s made during her time at Middlebury: “Sasha is going abroad for the spring, so I’m very sad that we won’t have her next semester. She’s really come into her own and is finally running the times that we knew she had the potential to run.”
Still, when a team gets contributions from top to bottom, even from first-years like Martinez or Lucy Lang ’19 (who broke the 500-meter school record in last week’s meet)—it’s hard not to be optimistic about the future. Beatty had especially high praise for the young man following this week’s performance: “Jimmy has had a marvelous start to his first year. Breaking Kevin Bright’s 600m record is especially impressive since Kevin was a three time All-American in the 400 hurdles. He has a long range of running well in races from the 200 meters to the 600 meters. But really, Jimmy is just one in a good group of hard workers: our whole team.”
For the men, other victories included Kevin Serrao’s ’18 winning 1,000-meter run (2:30.59) and the 4x200 quartet of Adam Markun ’17, Jackson Bock ’18, Brandon Cushman ’16, and Alex Nichols ’17, who came out on top with a time of 1:33.45. On top of their mile sweep, the women saw Halle Gustafson ’16 win the 600-meter dash (1:42.39), Lang take the top spot in the 800-meter run (2:18.18), and Katherine MacCary ’19 claim the 3,000-meter crown (10:31.88). James Mulliken ’18 posted impressive results with a second-place finish in the 800-meter race (1:59.54), saw the meet as a crucial step in turning the team’s hard work into results.
“As is usually the case with early season meets,” Mulliken explained, “the goal heading into this competition was not necessarily to ‘run fast’ as much as it was to reacquaint ourselves with racing. We have all season to run fast, but now is when we build our training base and start to tap into our competitive focus. There’s a reason why we call early meets like these ‘rust busters.’”
Next weekend, the Panthers will be excited to return home for the two-day Middlebury Invitational, with events getting underway at 3 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 29, and 11 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 30.
(01/28/16 12:07am)
Middlebury Swimming and Diving had their last dual meet of the season at Williams on Saturday, Jan. 23. The Panther men and women fell to the Ephs 186-94 and 211-83, respectively, struggling to keep up with Williams’ nationally ranked teams.
Head Coach Bob Rueppel explained back in Nov. that swimming against top NESCAC teams like Williams “[is] great because … that’s the bar we’re shooting for.”
“Williams is always a tough, but fun meet,” said Women’s co-Captain Maddie Pierce ’16 in an echo of Rueppel’s sentiment. “They are an incredibly strong team, but we enjoy racing them.”
Lily Sawyer ’16, one of Pierce’s two co-captains, was “[excited] that all of our girls held their own [against] some of the strongest swimmers in D3.”
The Panthers started with a strong showing in the long-distance 1000 free. Mike McGean ’17 won the men’s 1000 with a time of 10:04.63, just 3.09 seconds before his closest competitor. Andrew Rosenthal ’16 finished fourth in the close race, touching 6.22 seconds behind McGean (10:10.85). Lucy Scott ’16 and Angela Riggins ’19 secured second and third in the women’s event with their 10:54.13 and 11:07.29 performances.
Middlebury’s next couple of victories came when Isabel Wyer ’18 clocked a 1:56.07 to win the 200 free, and Stephan Koenigsberger ’16 finished first in the 50 breast (27.65) a few events later. Liza MacCowatt ’19 took third for the Panthers in the women’s 50 breast with her 32.46-second swim.
Grace Stimson ’19 led her heat in the 200 fly with a time of 2:16.51 and Morgan Burke ’17 sprinted to third in the 50 free (25.53). The Middlebury men captured second through fourth in the 50 free, with Jack McLaughlin ’18, Taylor Moore ’18 and Paul Lagasse’s ’16 times of 22.07, 22.69 and 22.72.
Elissa DeNunzio ’18 and Will Greene ’19 competed next on the three-meter diving board, earning second and first place, respectively, with their 209.47 and 217.57-point dives. DeNunzio and Greene went on to finish second (196.65) and first (232.72) on the one-meter board as well.
Then back on the blocks, McLaughlin and Burke were runners-up for the men and women in 100 free (48.82 and 55.11). Wyer finished second in the 200 back (2:11.93), while Brendan Leech ’19 clinched third for the Panther men in the same event (2:01.12).
Connor McCormick ’18 earned Middlebury’s seventh collective victory of the day in the 200 breast (2:15.37) by a margin of 4.87 seconds. Meanwhile, Stimson came second in the women’s 200 breast with a time of 2:34.47 and Alaina Pribis ’19 rounded out the day by swimming to a third place finish in the 500 free (5:23.43).
“The team is [now] excited to head into championship season,” Pierce said. “We have a great group of girls finishing out their season at Midd Invite. We know they will swim fast and set the tone for the team heading to NESCACs.”
The Panthers will swim in the Middlebury Invitational this Friday evening at 5:30 p.m., and Saturday at 10 a.m. (Jan. 29-30).
“We are training at a level that we’ve never done before ...[and] have built up an incredible base this season,” co-Captain Megan Griffin ’16 said. “At this point it’s about fine tuning the details and believing that everything will come together when it matters.”
(01/28/16 12:06am)
Senior Nordic captain Kelsey Phinney ‘16 picked up her second win of the season as the Alpine and Nordic teams combined for a fourth place finish last weekend, Jan. 23-24. Alpine events took place at Sugarloaf Mountain while the Nordic team took to the trails at the Quarry Road Recreational Area in Waterville.
Carnival action kicked off Friday morning at Sugarloaf with the alpine team racing in the giant slalom. The Panther men put in another solid effort, finishing three in the top-12. Colin Hayes ’17 led the pack in sixth place, while Riley Plant ’18 turned in a great second run to finish eighth. Christopher McKenna ’17 had a strong second run to land a 12th place finish.
On the women’s side, first-year Caroline Bartlett ’19 just missed the podium, landing in fourth place for the best finish of her young collegiate career. Also contributing to the scoring was Lexi Calcagni ’19 (13th) and Elle Gilbert ’16 (22nd).
Saturday’s Nordic races were again highlighted by Phinney, who took home first place in the 15K classic race.
“Kelsey is skiing really well right now,” Head Nordic Coach Andrew Johnson said. “In Saturday’s 15K mass start classic she was able to control the race and finish strong to pull away from the rest of the field.”
Nicolette Amber ’16 (15th) and Kaitlin Fink ’16 (29th) also contributed to the Panthers’ efforts, good for a third-place finish. Pacing the men’s squad in Saturday’s race was Patrick McElravey ’17, who crossed the line in 12th place. Evan Weinman ’18 was next for the Panther men in 26th place, while Adam Luban ’17 rounded out the scoring in 28th.
On the second day of alpine racing, Rob Cone ’17 set the pace for the men’s team with a solid podium performance that landed him in second place.
“Limited snow has made the prep period difficult in both events,” Cone said.
Cone added that more training has led to his improved slalom performance.
“With the slightly increased training, my performance in slalom is closer to where I’d like it to be,” Cone said. “Two medium quality runs in the slalom paid off, especially with a difficult second run set, and I was able to get a solid finish.”
Other contributors to the men’s third place finish were Hayes, McKenna and Ghassan Gedeon-Achi ’16. Hayes registered a strong eighth place finish while McKenna and Gedeon-Achi tied crossed the line tied for 15th place.
The women’s alpine team was not able to come together as strongly as in the previous event, with only one girl finishing in the top-20. Bartlett again led the pack, placing in 18th overall. A pack of Panthers were close behind, with Gilbert, Calcagni and Katy Greene ’17 claiming spots 23-25.
The carnival action concluded on Sunday with a Nordic team sprint, which saw the duo of Phinney and Amber race to a third place finish. The pair of Fink and Katie Feldman ’18 also added to team scoring with a 13th-place finish. On the men’s side, McElravey and Luban were the first Panthers to cross the finish line, good for 11th overall. The team of Weinman and Lewis Nottonson ’19 turned in a 21st place finish.
Middlebury just missed the podium, finishing the carnival fourth overall. Dartmouth won with 921 points, with Vermont (917) and New Hampshire (912) not far behind. The alpine team will return to action this weekend at Stowe for the UVM carnival, while the Nordic racers will not take to the slopes again until Feb. 5-6.
(01/28/16 12:03am)
Women’s basketball split a pair of inspired games this past week. On Tuesday, Jan. 29, the Panthers outlasted Smith for a 70-57 victory. The Panthers returned to conference play Sunday, Jan. 24, when they travelled to Williamstown, Mass. to play Williams in the Chandler Athletic Center. The Panthers entered the game needing a win to climb above .500 in conference play and tied with Williams with a 2-2 record in the NESCAC standings.
The Panthers’ victory over Smith did not come easily, as they fell behind the Pioneers 12-10 early in the first quarter. The turning point came in the second quarter when Middlebury broke a 17-17 tie with a nine straight points, propelling the team to a 14 to seven run and a 31-24 halftime lead.
Eileen Daley ’18 and Sarah Kaufman ’18 helped the Panthers hold onto the momentum when they came out of the locker room for the second half. Daley and Kaufman hit five jump for the Panthers combining for 17 of the team’s 21 third quarter points, which gave Middlebury a comfortable 52-39 lead heading into the fourth.
Daley finished the game with a double-double, scoring a career high 14 points to go with 13 boards, two assists and three steals on the defensive end. Kaufman led all scorers with 21 points, played a game-high 38 minutes and went five-for-five from the free throw stripe.
Catherine Harrison ’19 and Sabrina Weeks ’18 also contributed to the winning effort. Harrison had 10 points to go along with eight rebounds, while Weeks added 11 points off the bench.
The Panthers improved to 10-5 with the win.
The Panthers again struggled out of the gate again Sunday in Williamstown. However, after the team dug itself a 10-0 hole, the Panthers bounced back and took a 19-17 lead after Kaufman sunk a clutch three-pointer with 3:41 to go in the first half.
The travel, the injuries and the team’s depleted bench began to take a toll on the Panthers. Middlebury was trailing 49-37 by the end of the third quarter, having lost the momentum they built up at the end of the first half.
In the end, the Panthers were undermanned, limping to a tough 66-49 loss.
For the game, Middlebury shot an uncharacteristically low 32.7 percent from the field and went just eight for 15 from the free throw line. If the Panthers are going to compete against the tougher opponents on their NESCAC schedule, they must be more efficient from the field. Even in their NESCAC wins against Bates and Wesleyan, the Panthers only shot 44.6 percent and 41.4 percent, respectively. Despite the loss, the Panthers had two players score in double figures as Kaufman netted 14, Harrison just missed a double-double with eight points and 11 rebounds and Collins added 10 off the bench.
“We’re looking forward to another opportunity to prove how hard we have been working,” said Harrison as the team hopes to shake off their low shooting percentages in the Williams game.
After last night’s home game against Castleton — the results of which can be found on the Middlebury Athletics website — the Panthers will take on Hamilton for another important NESCAC game this Saturday, Jan. 30 in Pepin Gymnasium. With just five NESCAC games left in the regular season schedule, the team will need to capitalize on the weak opponents heading into the playoff race against tougher teams.
(01/28/16 12:01am)
The Middlebury men’s basketball squad continued its climb through the ranks with a 2-0 week. Coming off of five straight losses to the Williams Ephs, the Panthers held on for a 75-69 win on Sunday, Jan. 25 before beating Lyndon State on the road on Tuesday, Jan. 26. The win against Williams improved the Panthers’ conference record to 4-1, putting them in solid position to return to the NESCAC playoffs after missing out last year.
Sunday’s contest featured two of the NESCAC’s best offensive stars, Williams’ junior guard Dan Aronowitz and Middlebury’s Matt St. Amour ’17. Neither player would disappoint, as each finished the game with 20 points. Aronowitz tallied a double-double by chipping in 11 boards, and St. Amour filled the stat sheet with four rebounds, four steals, three assists and five made three-pointers.
Middlebury got out to a sluggish start against the Ephs at home and entered the break down by five, but a 39-28 advantage in the second half and excellent free throw shooting eventually sent Williams home with their third conference loss.
The Ephs led for the majority of the first half, but they were never able to pull far away from the Panthers. St. Amour tallied 10 first half points and had plenty of help from his co-stars. Center Matt Daley ’16, nursing a foot injury that held him out of last week’s action, came off the bench and scored nine points in just six minutes in the first half while snagging three rebounds. With Daley’s injury, some of the team’s first-years have been called on to step into bigger roles. One of those youngsters making an impact is swingman Zach Baines ’19, who got his second start of the season and responded with seven first half points, three rebounds and one block.
Williams finally got some breathing room near the end of the first half when the Ephs’ own first-year sensation Kyle Scadlock made a layup to push the margin to eight points. A few Middlebury free throws before the break made it 41-36 at the half, though.
Both teams came out frigid in the second half. Through the first six minutes, the teams combined for three field goals and one made free throw, leading to a 45-39 score with 14:00 to play in the game.
There was 12:13 remaining in the matchup when Middlebury forward Adisa Majors ’18 decided to make his mark on the game. Majors made a layup off of a St. Amour pass to make it a 49-46 game in favor of Williams. Over the next 12 minutes, Majors would rack up 10 points and two critical rebounds. Majors’ pair of free throws with 9:58 remaining gave Middlebury the lead 50-49. The Panthers would fall behind for all of 64 seconds over the last 10 minutes of the game.
“Adisa was the key in that victory,” St. Amour said. “He made a couple of huge plays down the stretch.”
The final four minutes saw a flurry of activity, which St. Amour kicked off with a three-pointer from the right wing to put the Panthers up 65-62. Williams’ Cole Teal would respond moments later with a game-tying three-pointer. After a Daley layup put the Panthers up one, St. Amour drilled another three-pointer and what would prove to be the game-winning bucket, making the score 70-67. Just like last week when Middlebury outlasted a ranked Tufts team in overtime, the Panthers outplayed their opponents down the stretch.
“One of the biggest improvements that we’ve had is our poise and toughness,” St. Amour said. “We’ve been able to battle back in some tough times. … We’re a lot tougher team this year.”
Up just one with 1:45 to play, Majors knocked down a short jumper from the base line to make it 72-69. In the final minute, Middlebury milked the clock and needed one more bucket to seal the victory. St. Amour missed his jump shot attempt, but Majors came to the rescue with a critical offensive rebound and was able to get the ball into the hands of point guard Jack Daly ’18 who was fouled and sent to the charity stripe. Trailing 73-69, Aronowitz missed a shot on the other end for Williams, which was corralled, fittingly, by Majors. Majors then sunk the final two free throws to make it a 75-69 game, where it would remain.
St. Amour lead the Panthers with his 20 points, followed by Matt Daley with 14 in just 13 minutes, Majors with 10, Baines with nine and Jack Daly with eight. Matt Daley added seven boards, Baines had six and Jack Daly dished out eight assists.
“This was a big confidence builder,” St. Amour said, “to finally get over that hump [of beating Williams]. We believed in ourselves that we were a good team, but now this shows that we can beat anybody . . . I think teams will start to take notice a little bit.”
The Panthers kept their winning streak going with an 85-74 victory on the road at Lyndon St. on Tuesday, Jan. 26. Middlebury has not lost to Lyndon St. this milennium.
Middlebury opened the game with an 8-0 run capped by a layup from the athletic Baines. The Panthers lead for the first 14 minutes of the contest before Lyndon St. jumped ahead, but Middlebury entered the half up by two. The Panthers then slowly increased their lead over the course of the second half, stretching the lead to as much as 12.
Baines exploded for a career-high 20 points in the game on 9-10 shooting. St. Amour topped 20 points for eighth time this season with 23. In 20 minutes off of the bench, Daley chipped in 12 points of his own and six boards. Overall, the Panthers shot 47.7 percent from the field against Lyndon St., a season high.
Middlebury’s next conference game comes on the road this Saturday at Hamilton. The Continentals have yet to win a conference game this season, although it took an overtime period for Middlebury to best Hamilton last year, 82-77. The Panthers follow that up with a road tilt against Keene St on Tuesday, Feb. 2.
(01/27/16 11:59pm)
The Middlebury women’s hockey team won a two-game homestand against NESCAC foe Bowdoin this weekend, winning 2-0 on Friday, Jan. 22, before surging to a 4-2 victory Saturday, Jan. 23, in Chip Kenyon ’85 Arena.
Coming off a 5-0 home win against Endicott College on Jan. 16, the Panthers returned to the Kenyon ice on Friday to post their second shutout in a row. The first period was fast-paced as both teams created good scoring chances in the first few minutes of play.
The Panthers controlled the puck for most of the first and had 10 shots on goal to Bowdoin’s five. Middlebury had a golden opportunity in a power play with 34 seconds left in the first period. Sophomore star Maddie Winslow ’18 capitalized by sending a loose puck over Polar Bear netminder Sophia Lattanzio, giving Middlebury the 1-0 lead with 15 seconds left in the first.
The momentum from Winslow’s goal carried over into the second period. The Panthers came out of the locker room with fury: pressuring the Bowdoin defense just a minute into the second, Elizabeth Wulf ’18, assisted by Jessica Young ’18, fired a slapshot directly at Lattanzio. Her save left the puck behind the net, but Winslow — the girl on fire — hustled to the puck and hooked it gracefully past Lattanzi’s skate. With the goal, Winslow both doubled her team’s lead and brought her total goals scored to seven this season.
Bowdoin’s best opportunity to score in the period came at the 13:48 mark, as Miranda Bell made two moves to get through the Panther defense, but goalie Julia Neuberger ’18 deflected the shot wide.
In the final period, the Polar Bears narrowed their deficit in shots on goal to 5-7. Though they earned three power plays, Middlebury’s defense muted those opportunities. In the final minute, the Panthers, taking no lead for granted, kept the puck deep in Bowdoin’s zone, forcing Lattanzio to stay in her goal and forgoing Bowdoin the chance of an extra attacker.
The Panthers dominated the ice, clocking a 30-13 edge in shots on goal over the course of the game.
At Kenyon the next day, the women’s squad seized another victory, this time 4-2. Middlebury had three power plays and attempted five shots in the first 10 minutes, but Lattanzio was no sieve. The Polar Bears lost the puck to Anna Van Kula ’16, who seized it at the blueline and sent a pass down the ice to Shanna Hickman ’19. The first-year forward muscled her way to the front of the net and placed the puck right through the legs of Bowdoin goalie Lan Crofton. The assist, from senior to freshman, is one of many moments this season proving the viability of the freshman squad. “We have a really young team this year, with 15 underclassman. It’s been fun to see all of the freshman stepping up, making some huge plays and scoring some important goals for us,” Winslow said.
At 15:24, Bowdoin’s Bell tied the game at 1-1 when she gathered the puck in her defensive zone following a Panther turnover. In the final minute of the second, the Panthers, led on a drive by Janka Hlinka ’18, turned up the pressure. Hlinka sent the puck netward, and Winslow tipped it between Crofton’s legs. The goal was Winslow’s team-leading eighth of the season.
The final period saw Middlebury gain some breathing room at 7:48 when Jessica Young stuffed home a loose puck from the edge of the crease for the eventual game-winning score after Crofton saved an attempt by Winslow on the doorstep. Young furthered Middlebury’s lead to 4-1 with a wrister over Crofton’s shoulder at 16:06 in the third. With 21 seconds remaining, Bowdoin’s Jessica Bowen managed a goal to bring the score to 4-2, where it stayed as time expired.
The Panthers are on a four-game winning streak now, and seem to have taken their tough 0-3 loss to top-ranked Plattsburgh State on Jan. 12 to heart.
“We have only been getting better since we got back from winter break,” Winslow said. “I think everyone came back from break on the same page: that we are going to outwork every team we play from here on out. Our team motto right now is to do the ‘little things.’ It’s about winning the little battles — back checking hard, blocking shots. If everyone perfects these ‘little things,’ then we can keep this momentum we have through the rest of the season.”
Having made three goals during the homestand against Bowdoin, Winslow stands out as a powerful force for the team. But she credits her tallies to her teammates.
“I’m glad I have been able to help my team by putting the puck in the net, but all our points have been a collective team effort,” Winslow said. “Most of my goals have been off of beautiful plays and passes by my teammates so they deserve as much credit as me for them. I look at a goal as a collaborative success, so I am happy that as a team we have been able to put the puck in the net and win some big games!”
With the two wins, Middlebury’s record improved to 5-0-3 in conference and 9-3-3 overall. Next stop for the Panthers, who stand at the top of the NESCAC standing and seventh in the national polls, is Clinton, N.Y., where they will take play two tough league games against the Hamilton Continentals on Friday, Jan. 29, and Saturday, Jan. 30, in hopes of maintaining their undefeated NESCAC record.
(01/21/16 4:23am)
Legal action in the John Doe v. Middlebury College case formally ended on Dec. 21. Doe, the student expelled over a charge of alleged sexual assault, dropped his lawsuit against the College after the two parties reached a settlement.
“The lawsuit has been resolved by the parties and they have agreed that the Plaintiff will complete his education elsewhere,” Vice President for Communications and Marketing Bill Burger said this week.
The case against Doe involved an alleged sexual assault that took place while he was studying abroad during the fall 2014 semester at a program run by the School for International Training (SIT). SIT investigated the complaint by a non-Middlebury student and found Doe not responsible in December of that year.
In early January 2015, the alleged victim, anonymously identified as Jane Doe,contacted Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag, which ultimately led Middlebury to begin its own investigation. The College said last September that it had concerns about the SIT investigation and adjudication.
“Under its policies, a Middlebury student’s off-campus conduct may be subject to Middlebury’s disciplinary processes when, among other things, such conduct may represent a threat to the safety of the Middlebury community or any of its members,” the College said in a statement at the time. “Middlebury initiated an investigation and adjudication of the student’s conduct on that basis and we believe we properly applied our policies in this case.”
The College, after conducting its internal investigation through Ellen Coogan, an independent contractor who has investigated sexual misconduct cases on behalf of the College, ultimately found Doe responsible for the assault and, in late August, expelled him. Coogan concluded that John Doe’s conduct towards Jane Doe constituted sexual misconduct based off a preponderance of evidence, a decision that was reached by an evaluation of all evidence and her own assessments of credibility in which she was “struck by the consistency of Jane Doe’s account.”
Doe then filed suit against the College in federal court, claiming his expulsion was “unjust and unlawful,” noting that the SIT investigation did not find him responsible for the charge. According to Doe’s complaint, the College relied “on SIT’s determination to permit [Doe] to return to Middlebury for the spring semester” and did not conduct its own investigation until the alleged victim of the assault had contacted the College. Doe’s counsel consisted of Lisa B. Shelkrot of Langrock, Sperry & Wool LLP in Burlington, VT, and Monica R. Shah and Naomi R. Shatz of Salkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP in Boston, Mass.
On Sept. 16, the same day classes began for the fall semester, U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha issued a preliminary injunction ordering the College to re-enroll Doe while the legal proceedings continued, ruling that Doe would suffer irreparable harm if he were to win the lawsuit but be prevented from accepting a job offer because he had not been allowed to complete his courses and graduate. Murtha’s decision sparked public demonstrations on campus by students dissatisfied with the ruling and led students to create a go/doe link and a social media campaign with the tagline, “Doe must go.”
The College later filed an appeal to reverse Murtha’s order.
The College declined to comment on details of the settlement of the lawsuit, including whether he ultimately will receive a Middlebury College diploma or a degree from another institution once he receives the credits needed to graduate.
“It is difficult to say what I feel about the Doe settlement because the exact terms of his settlement with the College remain unknown,” said Maddie Orcutt ’16. “I hope that the survivor in this case, Jane, knows that there are students at Middlebury who were deeply unsettled by John’s actions to file civilly. I hope that Jane knows that even if she didn’t have a voice in [the case], there are students on this campus who believe her and stand with her.”
“My hope is that the recent developments in the John Doe case allow those who felt unsafe this past semester to feel more comfortable on Middlebury’s campus,” said Kyra Gray ’17, who acts as co-director for sexual and relationship respect on the Student Government Association (SGA) Cabinet.
According to administrators, the case has prompted the College to review the wording of its sexual assault policies governing Middlebury students studying abroad.
“It’s not uncommon for us to make revisions to our policies and we’ve done so every year in the last few years,” Burger said. “Policies and regulations governing how institutions of higher education should handle allegations of sexual assault change often, as do practices by other colleges and universities that are determined to do the best job they can investigating and adjudicating these cases. We always try to learn and adjust our practices based on our experiences.”
John Doe did not respond to our request for comment. Doe’s counsel, Lisa B. Shelkrot, declined to comment on the specifics of the settlement.
(01/21/16 4:15am)
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia University and UCLA, filled Mead Chapel last Friday night as the keynote speaker for the grand opening of the Anderson Freeman Resource Center (AFC). Crenshaw’s speech was one of many events held over the weekend to celebrate the opening of the new intercultural center on Saturday, Jan. 16.
The opening of the AFC is the culmination of more than a year’s worth of effort by students and former Vice President of Affairs and Dean of the College Shirley Collado. The grand opening coincided with the College’s second Alumni of Color weekend.
Crenshaw is known for coining the term “intersectionality.” Her talk, titled “Intersectionality Matters: Why We Can’t Wait for a Racial Justice Agenda That Centers Us All” highlighted the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppressions are experienced.
Crenshaw spoke to changes happening on college campuses nationwide. She said: “We are at a moment to transform our society. In some ways, racial discourse has reached a new low with the presidential candidates. But at the same time, we have new forms of social justice agitation that have sprung the conversation back to life.”
She also talked about the defenders of Justice Scalia’s recent comments on black students’ incompetency at elite institutions. “If it is not institutional factors, structural factors, historical factors, that explain inequality, then we are talking about racial differences without talking about racial power, creating a formula for individual and cultural responsibility,” she said. “Individuals in their social groups are responsible for their lack of participation in higher education, for the lack of access.”
Crenshaw then turned her focus to injustice for women and girls in society. She discussed how critical it is to reverse the cycle of invisibility for women and girls with initiatives such as President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” which excludes girls and young women of color.
She asked the audience to identify the names of victims of police brutality, revealing that females were mostly unknown. “We don’t know who these girls are, because the media doesn’t tell you; our leaders don’t tell you,” she said.
Crenshaw concluded her speech with a plea for racial justice and inclusion. “I can’t think of a better time than now to create a new inheritance and a better legacy to foster creating inclusion for everyone. I hope we all lift up in our hearts the possibility of creating racial justice that fulfills the desperate needs of everyone and unfolds to embrace all of us,” she said.
The AFC will function as a center for the College community to come together to foster inclusion and education in support of students who have been “historically underrepresented or marginalized in U.S. higher education.”
“Meeting alumni who are doing amazing things makes me ask them how they survived. There was a joke at the keynote where Crenshaw was amazed that alumni of color actually came back, because I don’t know if I’d come back. But with the alumni here, and the center here, there is a sense of victory,” Jenn Ortega ’18 said.
The celebration continued on Saturday afternoon with a panel discussion titled “History of Diversity and Student Activism at Middlebury College.” Participants included Collado, Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernandez ’85, Leroy Nesbitt ’82, Alumni of Color and current students.
One of the first discussions addressed themes of collaboration. Nesbitt noted that student activism at the College has been important throughout its history. He said, “Every growth around issues of diversity have come from student activists. It was activism that created the Chellis House, the Jewish Center, Palana House and Coltrane. The spirit of collaboration also speaks to those faculty and administrators who were excited to see the student activism over the years so they could find ways to join in and support.
In 2010 Collado became the first ever woman of color to join the College’s administration. Last Jan. Collado left the College to work at Rutgers University- Newark but she has remained dedicated to efforts of diversity. She said, “We wanted to dream up what would it mean to move the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice to the center of a place rather than leaving it at the margins of a campus. Harder questions of policy, are we really talking about all students?”
Some of Collado’s turning points included leading a working group of faculty who made the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity possible.
“We felt that we needed a space for something as simple as, but as loaded as, using the word race in the name of a building, in the name of a place at the institution in 2007,” Collado said. “The issue of intersectionality was a great concern because if we focused on race, some assumed everything else would get lost gender, class, ability. But we worked hard to have race in the title.”
Collado also spoke about inclusion programs on campus led by students such as the First Generation Peer Mentoring Program.
“What also emerged were white students who cared, vocal about their curriculum and faculty not being as diverse as the student body, alongside, and sometimes separate, from students of color,” she said.
“There was amazing visibility in that the administration realized this is no longer an issue for just students of color, and this is going to hit us in the face repeatedly because the demographics of this nation are changing,” she added.
The dedication was followed by a ribbon cutting by President Laurie Patton. Associate Professor of History William Hart then gave a talk titled “To ‘engraven her [Middlebury College] an imperishable name ... with honor’: Martin Henry Freeman 1849, Mary Annette Anderson 1899, and the Challenges of Early Diversity at Middlebury College” Anderson was the first woman of color to graduate from the College and Freeman was the first African American college president in U.S. history.
Fernandez finds the AFC playing an essential part in talking, processing and making a plan of action. “Some people say we shouldn’t have a multicultural center because it separates. But collaboration is possible in that center. We live in a racist society and we need to think of our institutions. Students who felt they had no space on campus opened our eyes.”
Roberto Lint Sagarena, director of the AFC, called it a day of celebration, and a day of awareness. “The center is only as powerful as the community,” he said.
(01/21/16 12:43am)
The women’s basketball team started 2016 by racking up bus mileage, travelling to New York City, Boston and Lewiston, Maine. The team left for break with a 3-1 record and have gone 6-4 since they returned. They currently stand at sixth place in the NESCAC with a 2-2 conference record.
After a 79-58 win over Salve Regina at Pepin Gym on Wednesday, Dec. 30, the Panthers opened the new year in the Big Apple for the Jan. 2-3 NYU Holiday Classic. The Panthers started hot with a 72-59 victory over Bridgewater State. First-year Catherine Harrison ’19 led the Panthers with a game-high 23 points, while Sarah Kaufman ‘18 added 19. In their second game against the hosts and fourth-ranked NYU, Middlebury led 34-32 at the half thanks to 13 points from Sabrina Weeks ’18 off of the bench. Ultimately, the Violets pulled ahead and held onto a narrow 70-62 loss.
The Panthers opened NESCAC play against Wesleyan at Pepin Gym on Tuesday, Jan. 8. Middlebury dominated the Cardinals from the tip, jumping out to a 23-8 lead by the end of the first quarter. Kaufman once again led the charge with a career-high 31 points on the way to a pivotal 76-59 win. Harrison carried the defense with 15 rebounds to go along with her 12 points, while sophomore guard Eileen Daley ’18 followed closely behind with 11 boards of her own. The Panthers faced a quick turn around to take on Connecticut College on Jan. 9, and fatigue ultimately held them back in a back and forth 66-53 loss. After falling behind early, Colleen Cavaney ’19 spurred a 12-0 Panthers run to give them a 25-24 lead at the half. The score remained tight until just under six minutes to play at 47-46, but the Camels pulled away down the stretch to even the Panthers’ NESCAC record at 1-1. Kaufman had a team high 17 points, while Harrison added 15 rebounds.
In a break from league action, Middlebury capitalized on a weak opponent with a 65-45 win over SUNY Postdam, holding control of the scoreboard for the whole game. Alex Huffman ’19 had a career- and game-high 16 points for the Panthers in the first of a three game road stint.
After the Jan. 12 victory over SUNY Potsdam, the Panthers took on defending league champion and 12th-ranked Tufts in Medford, Massachusetts. The Jumbos dominated the Panthers 57-37.
In a game when the Panthers needed one of their best performances of the season, they shot a dismal 21 percent from the field, 11-51, and they committed 19 turnovers, more than twice the amount the Jumbos committed.
Coach KJ Krasco called the 20 point loss “a wake-up call,” as the the team will most likely return to Medford in February for the NESCAC championship.
The next day, journeying all the way to Maine, the Panthers battled Bates 43-43 going into the fourth quarter. The final ten minutes could be a defining moment of Middlebury’s season, as they avoided slipping to a 1-3 conference start. The Panthers proved resilient, recovering nicely from their loss to Tufts with a 61-56 victory as they clawed their way back to .500 in the NESCAC. The victory against Bates was a true team win, with each starter scoring at least nine points. Kaufman led the way with 11 points, seven rebounds, five assists and a steal.
In the midst of Middlebury’s early January games with Elizabeth Knox ’17, the team’s only junior, injured, the underclassmen continued to shine. Highlights included Harrison, who continued her strong freshman campaign, earning NESCAC Player of the Week honors the week of Jan. 4 and a spot on the NYU Holiday All-Classic Team. She is averaging a double-double on the season with 13.5 points and 11.9 rebounds per game, and is shooting an impressive 53.5% from the field. After she shot just 16 percent, 2-12, in the Tufts loss, it became clear that a key going forward will be consistency from Harrison and other underclassmen. Kaufman anchors the team, averaging almost 17 points-per-game, and shooting an impressive 36.6 percent from beyond the arc.
The team will be back in action this Sunday, Jan. 24 when they travel to Williamstown, Mass. to take on the Ephs to try and climb above .5oo in league play.
(01/21/16 12:34am)
Nordic skier Kelsey Phinney ’16 picked up her first career win on Saturday, Jan. 16 as the nordic and alpine teams combined for a 4th place finish in the opening carnival of the season. Alpine events took place at Sunday River, while the nordic teams competed at the Quarry Road Recreational Area in Waterville.
The alpine team opened with a strong performance in Friday’s Giant Slalom, placing four racers in the top 12.
“Usually the first carnival of the year is a little slow for us, but that was probably the best we’ve done in an opening race in at least five years,” Head Alpine Coach Stever Bartlett said. “Now we are looking to continue that momentum for the upcoming carnivals.”
Rob Cone ’17 led the group, finishing fourth overall. Riley Plant ’18 had the second-fastest time in the second run to finish in sixth overall, while Colin Hayes ’17 rounded out the scoring with an 11th place finish. Just behind Hayes with a 12th-place effort was Christopher McKenna ’17.
The women’s alpine team was led by Caroline Bartlett ’19, who finished seventh in her first career carnival. Lexi Calcagni ’19 placed next for Middlebury, coming in 15th overall. Rounding out the scorers was Katy Greene ’17, who finished in 20th. Both Elle Gilbert ’16 and Captain Linley Shaw ’17 were unable to finish their first runs.
On the Nordic side, Phinney began her strong performance over the weekend in Friday’s 1.5K-sprint race. She had the fastest qualifying time in the women’s race, beating the field by nearly five seconds, before finishing second overall. Nicolette Amber ’16 aided the team effort finishing in 14th overall, while sophomore Katie Feldman ’18 came in 41st. On the men’s side, Patrick McElravey ’17 paced the team, placing 12th in the men’s classic sprints. Two spots behind in 14th place was Evan Weinman ’18, while first-year Zeb Millslage ’19 rounded out the scorers in 58th place.
Saturday’s 5K Nordic race was highlighted by Phinney’s win, where she beat out the rest of the field by a significant margin of seven seconds.
“I had great momentum going into Saturday’s race after finishing second on Friday,” Phinney said. “I felt pretty confident going into the start that if I skied my best possible race I could win … my teammates ended up telling me I had won and that was just an amazing feeling.”
On the men’s side, McElravey earned a top-10 finish in the 10K free, placing ninth overall. The scoring was rounded out with two Panthers claiming back-to-back spots, as first-year Lewis Nottonson ’19 finished in 30th and Weinman crossed the finish line just seconds later for a 31st place finish.
The alpine team struggled a bit more in Saturday’s slalom race, with three men failing to finish their second run. Despite the setback, they were still able to place three finishers in the top-17. Cone paced the group for the second time that weekend, finishing in fifth place overall. Hayes concluded the weekend with a strong ninth place finish, while Captain Christoph Niederhauser ’16 crossed the finish line in 17th. On the women’s side, only Greene cracked the top 20 in 17th place, while Calcagni and Shaw rounded out the team in 35th and 36th places, respectively.
The Panthers concluded the carnival in fourth place out of 17. Both teams return to action this weekend in the carnival hosted by Colby College. Alpine events will take place at Sugarloaf Mountain, while the Nordic team will return to the Quarry Road Recreational Area in Waterville.
(01/21/16 12:29am)
The Middlebury women’s hockey team skated to three wins, two ties and two losses over winter break, bringing their overall record to 7-3-3 and placing them at third in the NESCAC, behind first-ranked Amherst and second-ranked Williams.
Middlebury’s tense first matchup against Castleton on Saturday, Dec. 12, driven into overtime by a late Castleton goal with three and a half seconds left in the third period, marked the second loss of the season. Kelly Sherman ’17 placed her third goal of the year to give Middlebury the early lead 3:50 into the first period, and the Panthers went unanswered for the rest of the period. In the second, Maddie Winslow ’18 made two quick attempts at goals but was denied by Spartan netminder Jess Cameron.
Middlebury took a 2-0 lead on the power play at 9:51 with a rebound shot by Anna Van Kula ’16. But with just 28 seconds left in the second, Castleton struck back to make it a one-goal game. The Spartans dominated the third period, with goalie Cameron blocking a formidable shot by Janka Hlinka ’18 on a three-on-none break. With Cameron pulled in favor of an extra attacker, the Spartans tied the game with seconds remaining, forcing overtime. Only 1:53 into the extra session, Castleton went on the power play, and with an innocent shot at 3:18 that slipped past Middlebury goalie Julia Neuburger ’18, took home the win.
After a break from NCAA play, the women’s squad returned on Tuesday, Jan. 5 to host a formidable Lake Forest team in Chip Kenyon ’85 Arena, where the Panthers handed Lake Forest their first loss of the season in a spectacular showing of grit. Lake Forest entered the game with the nation’s top power play — at 41 percent — and was only one of four teams without a loss.
Ten minutes into the first period, alternate captain Katie Mandigo ’16 placed a loose puck into the slot to give Middlebury an early lead. Netminder Neuberger blocked three attempts by the Foresters in the final five minutes of the period. But 2:34 into the second, the Foresters answered.
The deciding goal of the game came 7:57 into the third, when Van Kula placed her third shot of the season off the rebound. The Panthers tried to bolster their lead on three power plays in the final eight minutes — including a five-on-three — but Lake Forest netminder Allie Carter did not falter. The Foresters pulled Carter with 49 seconds left and sent two aggressive attempts to the slot, but a blocked shot by Winslow and a crucial save by Neuberger preserved a Panthers’ victory.
“Beating Lake Forest was a good start for us coming back after break,” Van Kula said. “We played well for a full 60 minutes and were able to hand them their first loss of the season.”
The Panthers returned to NESCAC play on Jan. 8 for a two-game matchup in Amherst, Mass., against Amherst. A scoreless first period came and went, but early in the second Winslow redirected an attempt from Shanna Hickman ’19 to score her team-leading fourth of the season. Winslow was named NESCAC player of the week earlier in the season.
The Lord Jeffs were quick to answer just a minute later, as Katelyn Pantera led a power play drive to the Panther slot. And later, Sara Culhane finished a valiant drive from Amherst after a Panther turnover turned into a three-on-one play, giving Amherst a 2-1 lead. Early in the third, though, Allie Aiello ’17 scored her first goal of the season to force overtime and ultimately to secure a tie after a scoreless extra session.
A day later, the two squads returned to the ice, hoping to secure a win in the series but tying again, this time with a 3-3 score. Late in the second period, Jessica Young ’18 placed the first point on the board after intercepting a pass from an Amherst defender in the offensive zone and firing a point-blank shot. Just a minute later, Jocelyn Hunyadi responded for the Lord Jeffs on the power play.
The third period was high-scoring as Amherst scored two goals in the first nine minutes, one of which came when Erin Martin won a faceoff in her defensive end, skated the full length of the ice, and sent the puck past Neuberger. Trailing 1-3, Middlebury staged a comeback with shots by Victoria Laven ’17 and Elizabeth Wulf ’18. The Panthers put six shots on the Amherst frame in the overtime period, including hitting the pipe in the final minute, but neither team scored leading to the 3-3 tie.
In Plattsburgh, N.Y., on Jan. 12, Middlebury suffered a 3-0 loss against top-ranked Plattsburgh State (13-0). Melissa Sheeran converted on a rebound of an initial Erin Brand slapshot from the point to give Plattsburgh State a 1-0 advantage 1:07 into the second period. Brand would be on the receiving end of another primary assist to give Plattsburgh a 2-0 edge at 11:27 of the same period. Brand took a slapshot from the point that bounced off Panther goaltender Neuburger over her shoulder and into the crease where Kayla Meneghin knocked it in. Capitalizing on an empty Panther net, Kayla Meneghin scored her second of the game coming via the empty netter with 10 seconds left in regulation to seal a tough, but expected, loss for Middlebury.
Coming off the loss, the Panthers hosted Utica on Jan. 15 in Kenyon Arena and posted a 2-1 win with a strong debut by the freshman squad. Rachael St. Clair ’19 and Katarina Shuchuk ’19 each scored their first career goals and Kiana Verplancke ’19 made 25 saves for her initial collegiate victory. The Panthers made two early scoring bids in the first period on two power plays, but Utica goalie Amanda Lupo blocked both shots.
The Utica Pioneers took their turn on the power play midway through the period, with Elizabeth Dohner placing a rebound into the top corner of the Panther net. But the Panthers pulled even late in the period, when St. Clair collected a rebound on a shot by Katherine Jackson ’19 and tied the game at 1-1.
Middlebury scored the game-winning goal at the 17:08 mark of second, when Jenna Marotta ’19 directed a shot on goal, which was tipped in by Shuchuk to give the Panthers an unanswered 2-1 lead. Utica twice pulled the goalie in the final 1:09 to get the equalizer, but the Panthers held strong to prevent the Pioneers from setting anything up.
“We have a very young team this year but have seen lots of improvement since we started in November,” Van Kula said.
Bolstered by the victory, the women’s squad returned to Kenyon Arena to crush Endicott College 5-0. The Panthers were aggressive in the first period, and Winslow made the first goal on the power play for her fifth of the season.
Middlebury broke through for three goals in the middle period, one each by Jackson, St. Clair and Haley LaFontaine ’18. The goal was LaFontaine’s first as a Panther.
A breakout pass created a two-on-one advantage for the Panthers as Winslow set up Jackson for her second of the game and a 4-0 lead (14:33). Young netted the final goal 5:00 into the third period, bringing the score to 5-0.
“The team is working hard to improve on a daily basis,” Head Coach Bill Mandigo said. “We have had three good weeks of practice and have played some very good teams. We played well against Lake Forest and Plattsburgh, but only came away with the victory against Lake Forest. Different players are having an impact and I have been very impressed with our freshmen.”
Van Kula is excited for NESCAC play, stating “we have had a good start to the new year and are looking to build on that in our upcoming NESCAC games.”
The Panthers (3-0-3 in conference) will host a two-game homestand this weekend against the Bowdoin Polar Bears (3-3), beginning Friday at 7 p.m. and ending Saturday at 3 p.m., and then will face the Hamilton Continentals (2-2-2) in Clinton, N.Y., on Jan. 29 and 30.
(01/21/16 12:19am)
The men’s basketball team has played its best basketball of the season since the calendar turned to 2016 and, after a recent weekend sweep, are in the hunt for a home playoff game in NESCACs with a 3-1 conference record and 9-7 mark overall.
Middlebury ended its 2015 schedule with a blowout over usually tough Plattsburgh State. To begin the new year, the Panthers fell on the road against a tough Endicott team on Jan. 2, but since then have gone 4-1 and established themselves as contenders in the NESCAC. The highlights have come against last year’s NESCAC Champion Wesleyan, No. 18 Tufts and a Bates squad that the Panthers had not beaten in three years. In defeating Tufts and Bates, Matt St. Amour ’17 was named NESCAC Player of the Week by averaging 17.0 points and 5.0 rebounds per game. Middlebury also took down in-state opponent Southern Vermont on Jan. 4.
The Panthers opened NESCAC play with an 86-76 road win over Wesleyan University. The Cardinals entered last season’s NESCAC tournament as the No. 6 seed, but went on an incredible run and won the tournament. After their postseason success, Wesleyan was expected to compete once again for a NESCAC title. A year ago, Middlebury’s 97-60 beatdown of the Cardinals in Pepin Gymnasium seemed to galvanize Wesleyan on their championship run. This time around, the Panthers 86-76 victory over Wesleyan on Friday, Jan. 8 seems to have initiated the Cardinals’ recent struggles.
Wesleyan took a 14-2 lead less than five minutes into the game. At that time, Head Coach Jeff Brown brought all three of his first-years into the game and sparked a Panther comeback. Hilal Dahleh ’19, Zach Baines ’19 and Eric McCord ’19 combined for 24 points and 12 boards off of the bench.
The Panthers began the second half down 37-30 but quickly tied the game at 39 and went back and forth with the Cardinals for most of the second half. With 6:40 left in the game, Wesleyan stretched the lead to five, but that was as large as the lead would get as Middlebury began to chip away. An 11-3 Panthers run sparked by a pair of Jack Daly ’18 free throws that put the nail in the coffin of the Cardinals. A 22-25 performance from the charity stripe helped finish off Wesleyan and seal the 10-point victory, an anomalous performance for the team with the worst free throw percentage in the NESCAC.
“(Free throw shooting) was huge in our Wesleyan win, at Wesleyan,” Coach Brown said. “But it is a weakness of our team right now, just getting to the line and consistently making one-and-ones.”
After taking down the Cardinals, the Panthers were favored to best the Connecticut College Camels the following afternoon, but the upstart Camels surprised Middlebury with an 82-81 win. Despite perennially being at the bottom of the NESCAC, Conn. College has played the Panthers tough the last two seasons, losing by a combined seven points. This time around, the Camels finally got by the Panthers.
Once again, Middlebury started slow, falling behind 21-13 less than halfway through the first half. The Camels ran their lead all the way to 16 points with 4:08 to go in the half and went into the break up by eight.
St. Amour made a bevy of three-pointers early in the second in an attempt to bring the Panthers back into it and, with 59 seconds remaining, led 81-80. With 16 seconds remaining, Conn College Point Guard Tyler Rowe scored the deciding bucket on a runner, and the Panthers were unable to respond on the other end, sealing their fate.
With almost an entire week off to prepare for a home weekend, Middlebury was ready for the nationally-ranked Tufts Jumbos on Friday, Jan. 15 and just outlasted the visitors 85-82 in a thrilling overtime game. With top big man Matt Daley ’16 out with a foot injury, Middlebury had its work cut out for it. Tufts boasts arguably the best post player and second-best scorer in the league in junior center Tom Palleschi and sophomore point guard Vinny Pace. The Jumbos were bit by the injury bug, as well, as senior guard Ryan Spadaford - averaging 11.9 points per game - had to sit out with an ankle injury.
Jack Daly ’18 did a great job slowing down the lethal Pace in the first half, holding the sophomore to seven points on 2-5 shooting. Without Daley, McCord, Nick Tarantino ’18 and Adisa Majors ’18 were asked to fill the void and did so admirably. Coach Brown rotated the trio of young big men frequently to keep them fresh, and their tenacity paid off on the defensive end. Tarantino snagged nine rebounds in as many minutes, and all three did well to stymie Palleschi.
“The biggest thing (without Matt Daley),” Coach Brown said,” is that we were looking to double team Palleschi inside ... and just not allowing him to work one-on-one.”
Also on the defensive end, the long and athletic Baines introduced himself to the Middlebury faithful with a pin against the backboard on a Vinny Pace layup attempt midway through the second half.
“(Zach Baines) is an elite talent athletically, and a piece of that is his wingspan,” Coach Brown said. “He’s got the wingspan of a seven-footer.”
The game was incredibly balanced throughout as neither team lead by more than eight and both squads performed comparably in nearly every statistic. At halftime they were knotted up at 40 apiece, and a block by McCord prevented a three-point attempt from Pace at the end of regulation, sending the game into OT.
St. Amour put the team on his back in the extra period, scoring nine of the team’s 13 points. The Jumbos would not go quietly, though, and relied on their stars in the final period. Pace scored five points and Palleschi made a three-pointer, and Tufts had a chance to tie on the final possession. Pace had the ball beyond the arc but passed up a contested shot attempt to a wide open Stephen Haladyna in the left corner. Haladyna’s shot looked good but it ended up slightly right of the mark, clanged off the rim, and bounced away, clinching an 85-82 victory for the Panthers.
Riding high off of this upset, Middlebury stormed into Pepin the next day, took the lead a little over halfway through the first half, and got the best of a pesky Bates team. Bates has frustrated the Panthers recently. A year ago, a gastrointestinal infection decimated the Panthers roster on the day of the game against Bates, and still Middlebury battled to a four-point loss. Two years ago, since-graduated Graham Safford of Bates drilled a game-winning three from straightaway in Pepin to finish off the Panthers. The previous year’s game was a three-point win for Middlebury. On this Saturday, though, the Panthers got their revenge by defeating the Bobcats 73-61.
Still without Daley, Coach Brown leaned on a similar strategy as the night before, relying on a revolving door in the front court against Bates’ Delpeche twins who each stand over 6’6,” and on Daly to shut down the opponent’s top scorer, senior Mike Boornazian.
“We wanted to double team some in the post because of the Delpeche teams,” Coach Brown said, “who really have a lot of length and athleticism, but again I thought Jack (Daly) did a terrific job on Boornazian. He really made (Boornazian’s) offense really tough to come by.”
On the offensive end, St. Amour was his usual self, canning three three-pointers en route to 17 points while Daly and Jake Brown ’17 combined for 11 assists. Majors tallied 10 points off of the bench.
The Panthers remain at home this weekend and will welcome the currently 11-5 Williams College Ephs, who pummelled the Panthers last season, 87-62.
(01/20/16 7:00pm)
As the New Year arrived, the Syrian Crisis entered the fifth year of its genesis. With a UN estimate of 6.5 million dis- placed within Syria and 3 million fleeing refugees, no near end is in sight. Older teenagers and adults, however, reminisce to a time of malaise when the Jordanian capital (Amman) was a mere two hours’ drive from the Syrian borders. It was not uncommon for Jordanians, Lebanese and Arabs of other nationalities to spend their weekends in Syria exploring its farmlands, visiting its old shops or touring its archaic landmarks. My own family used to take road trips to Syria, even reaching Turkey. These trips seem incongruous now considering the infeasibility of crossing a war torn country.
Nonetheless, failing tourism is the smallest of concerns right now. I grew up in a Jordan that had a population of roughly 5.5 million people, and even then the country had little in the way of natural resources to support its growth. In point of fact, Jordan is now the world’s second water-poorest country. The scarcity of resources once obtained from Egypt and Syria falter the country’s progression and stop it from reaching its sought after goal of self-dependence. The population of Jordan could not sustain itself even before the crisis commenced. Over the last five years, 1.5 million Syrian refugees fled to Jordan causing a twenty-five percent influx in the small country’s population. In 2016, one in three inhabitants of Jordan is a refugee including Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans and Yemenis among other nationalities. Not only are these refugees creating a heavy demographic burden, the conditions the refugees themselves live in are beyond miserable. Many of the refugees arrive with serious medical conditions, thus occupying much needed hospital beds. Moreover, most of the refugees are hauled into refugee camps where the youth and adults cannot work but have to sustain their families, thus constraining them within a legal state of limbo.
Most famed among these camps is the notorious Zaatari refugee camp located in the Mafraq Governorate of Jordan. The camp’s inhabiting populous suffers repeatedly from the lack of sufficient food supplies and better accommodation. And without an official police force of sorts, crimes of violence, drug dealing and prostitution have gradually risen. In addition, the geography of Mafraq has not helped. An open desert, Zaatari has suffered over the years from heat waves, winter snows and severe rain floods that have led to multiple evacuations. The refugee camp now houses 80,000 refugees making it the fourth largest city in the country. And although living conditions are well below acceptable, life there is beginning to stabilize. According to the Telegraph the camp has, “a pizza delivery service, a coffee shop selling shisha and a street named Champs-Elysée.” This newly found stability may seem like a ray of hope for the Syrian refugees, but personal and mutual experience proves otherwise. My own family is originally a Palestinian refugee family that fled to Jordan after the Palestinian-Israeli conflict erupted in 1948. Many family members lived in one of twelve Palestinian refugee camps that were set up by the UNRWA. These camps, like every other camp established in the Middle East, were intended to be a temporary solution until the refugees could return home or were given citizenship or residency. In reality, these camps are now bustling urban slums and ghettos that have transformed into permanent cities and districts in their own rights. The fear lies in the transformation of Zaatari into one of these camps. With no end in sight to the growth of the camp or the crisis itself, the situation may seem helpless from where we stand as college students.
But what if each one of us Middlebury students can help? There have been many college-based organizations like Amnesty International aimed at helping these refugees. But to create a bigger impact, we have launched a petition (Go/Refuge), in collaboration with Jordan University, aimed at creating a minimum quota of refugees to be admitted to Middlebury College. With every extra signature we get, we are one step closer to helping those in need even in our Vermont remoteness.
