John Swords '15

Athlete of the Week: Mariah Rawding '18

Women's Swimming

First-year Mariah Rawding took fourth place in the 50-yard and the 100-yard breaststroke at last week’s NESCAC Championship. She also took third in the 200-yard breaststroke, the last of her three solo events, the maximum number allowed.
Rawding also participated on four strong relay teams—the 400-yard freestyle which finished second, the 200-yard freestyle and 400-yard medley both of which finished fourth, and the 200-yard medley, which finished fifth.
Rawding broke school records in each of her three individual events and earned All-Conference honors in the 200 breaststroke and the 400 freestyle relay. Her performance contributed to women swimming and diving’s best finish in program history.
Rawding completed 14 races over the three-day NESCAC Championship, an average number of events for a short-distance swimmer.
Her performance was somewhat surprising to Coach Brad Burnham and to Rawding herself. For most of the season, she had hovered around the top 20 before leaping into the top five in the conference at the Championship.
Burnham mentioned that he had not had much time to observe Rawding’s technique over the course of the season, as individual attention can be difficult to dole out on a 50-person team. He said that Rawding played a more significant role on the team than he had anticipated during recruiting.
Still, Rawding had believed from the beginning that she would benefit from tapering—the two-week period before big races when swimmers dramatically reduce their workload to regain energy and improve their performance.
“I think I told Brad during Christmas training that I was ready for taper,” Rawding said. “It had always gone pretty well for me.”
Burnham for his part, noticed her post-taper improvements in practice and felt comfortable enough to place her on the stronger relay teams.
“She’d been looking great in practice, but you never really know until someone does it,” he said. “I trusted her. She trusted herself. She said that when she got to taper she’d be faster. It’s more of a relief in some ways. She was confident and I could see some things in there—some flashes of brilliance.”
Her dramatic improvement at the NESCAC Championship—she dropped 12 seconds off her 200 breaststroke—was not quite unprecedented, however. Rawding had achieved something similar between her junior and senior years in high school, after she had already been admitted to Bowdoin.
A Washington state native, Rawding did not do a campus visit. She was only familiar with the school because Coach Burnham swam with her uncle.
“My uncle said he knew a really good coach,” she said. “I thought, ‘It’s in Maine. It’s not going to be fun. It’s going to be cold.’”
Still, Rawding said Burnham was “a really big piece” of her decision to come to Bowdoin and continue her swimming career. She said she appreciated his “quality over quantity” approach to swimming and was glad that she would only have to swim six months out of the year.
Rawding grew up in a swimming household—both her parents swam in college—and her mother coached her to swim competitively from five or six years old. She said this contributed to her mixed feelings on swimming in college.
“I came from a program where I didn’t swim a lot, like I didn’t swim mornings, for example,” she said. “I only swam six months out of the year. It’s the same here. I didn’t want to get burned out again—to get to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore.”
However, Rawding has found that this season’s results have renewed her enthusiasm for competing, particularly in the relays.
“It’s going to be hard to top this season to be honest,” she said. “I swam really well in all my individual events and the relays were amazing. Everybody stepped up. But it’s a great way to start my Bowdoin career because each year I’m going to want to replicate that.”
Rawding will wait for the rest of the Division-III schools to finish their championships to see if she will be selected to compete nationally. She has a strong chance to do so, as she can qualify in most of the events she placed in last weekend.
The sports editor of the Orient chooses the Athlete of the Week based on exemplary performance.
To suggest an athlete, email Sports Editor Jono Gruber at jgruber@bowdoin.edu.

Athlete of the Week: Emma Beecher '16

Women's Lacrosse

Emma Beecher ’16 has tallied 16 goals and seven assists through seven games for the 6-1 Bowdoin women’s lacrosse team, leading them in each category. Beecher has continued to score at a consistent pace despite switching from midfield to attack and moving into the starting lineup. Though she has seen a lot of playing time as a rotation midfielder, Beecher has only started three games this season, and she will likely remain one of the four starting attackers for the rest of the season.
Beecher had been a midfielder for her entire career, and the change was made to give her more playing time while keeping the dominant midfield line of Clare McLaughlin ’15 Taylor Wilson ’15, and Lindsay Picard ’16 on the field together longer.
“She deserves credit,” attacker Olivia Raisner ’15 said. “It could’ve produced chaos.”Beecher has not had much time to learn the finer point of her new position in practice; the team played four games last week. McLaughlin expects that the full week of practice before Saturday’s home game against Trinity will help Beecher get acclimated. So far, she has played the attack position defensively, working further from the crease than attackers generally do.
“I always think of her as a midfielder,” said McLaughlin. “We haven’t had a lot of practices. We haven’t really talked about it. I don’t even really think she’s been taught the attack position.”
“It’s not my first thought, to play behind [the crease]” said Beecher. “But the other attackers are good at playing behind and around the crease so we play to each other’s strengths.”
Typically, attackers try to organize themselves so that two of them are behind the net and two are by the elbows. Beecher has made a habit of lingering up by the restraining line—a position known as “high attack.” The team has taken this in stride, and the seven offensive players have learned to organize themselves to take advantage of Beecher’s strengths: speed and a strong right-handed drive.
More traditional attacking threats Mettler Growney ’17, known by teammates for quick, precise cuts, and Meg O’Connor ’16, known for rolls toward the crease and her stick-handling, can occupy defenders down low, pulling them away from the ball.
“If she’s driving from the top of the eight meter, I’ll occupya defender,” said Growney. “I’ll move them away from where she likes to take the ball. We have to make the right cuts and the right reads.”
This creates lanes and shooting space for Beecher or other midfielders to drive.“[A midfield] strength is driving from the top,” Taylor Wilson ’15 said. “She’s been a midfielder all of her time at Bowdoin. She has that tendency, and it’s also her strength as an attacker. It gives us another person who can drive from the top.”
Beecher beats goalies with an unusually low, precise shot and has the second highest conversion rate of shots to goals on the team; 50 percent of her shots have scored so far.“She has a very distinctive shot,” Picard said. “She shoots at a very low angle, moving from the top or outside. The placement is key.”
“She’s a very strong girl,” said Growney. “She holds her ground and gets into the zone quickly. The goalie doesn’t have time to prepare.”
A change from previous years, the team runs very few set plays or schemes, using their comfort with each other and understanding of the game to create opportunities. Beecher’s success has come largely from this and the variety of scoring threats the Polar Bears have fielded this year. Six of the seven offensive starters have recorded double digit points already this season, with the seventh, Growney, trailing with nine.
Furthermore, the team’s creative freelancing makes it difficult for teams to focus on any one part of their attack, especially since they have their own defenders pushing the pace after a stop. Bowdoin players pride themselves on their speed, and they use it to create mismatches.
“She scores a lot off of fast breaks, where there’s more space and fewer people,” O’ Connor said. “She’s not afraid to go to goal where other attackers might make the decision to bring down and slow it.”
In this way, increased opponent focus on Beecher because she’s scored the most goals may open up driving lanes for Picard, who has scored only slightly fewer goals, or allow passing threats Wilson or Raisner to find the cutters or else score themselves.
“Most of attackers have a number of goals and assists,” Raisner said, “Everyone out there is a threat.”
Given this, Beecher is likely to have a similar number of opportunities, even if she begins to work behind the net more. If not, herexperience in the midfield should help her distribute the ball.

The sports editor of the Orient chooses the Athlete of the Week based on exemplary performance.
To suggest an athlete, email Sports Editor Jono Gruber at jgruber@bowdoin.edu.

Athlete of the Week

Men's Basketball

Alex Vasile

Orient Staff

February 27, 2015

Center John Swords ’15 finished Bowdoin’s 87-74 NESCAC quarterfinal win over Williams with 23 points, 13 rebounds, four assists and three blocks in 33 minutes. He tied a NESCAC tournament record of most shots taken without a miss by going 10-10 from the field. This season, Swords is averaging 12.8 points per game, is third in the conference with 9.9 rebounds per game and second with a shooting percentage of 70.7. Swords, whose shooting percentage benefits from a general affinity for layups, maintained that he attempted an actual jump shot in the game.

“I did take a real shot,” he said. “It was more of a gamble than the usual place or the direct deposit. I don’t really think about that in the game. People told me [I went] 10 for 10 after. I said ‘Oh yeah, I guess so.’”

After comparing his streak to Ethan Embry’s gambling streak in “National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation,” Swords was quick to acknowledge junior teammate Lucas Hausman’s 25-point second half, Hausman’s total of 37 was two points away from breaking the NESCAC tournament scoring record. Swords and Hausman have a good-natured relationship as Bowdoin’s offensive fulcrums; the two scored 60 of Bowdoin’s 87 points in the Williams game and have led the team in scoring since senior forward Keegan Pieri was lost for the season with an injury. This comes despite benefiting from very different offensive schemes—Swords prefers the slower pace while Hausman excels in an up-tempo game. Regardless, Hausman’s emergence has been a large part of the team’s success.

“He scores from everywhere,” Swords said. “This late in the season, teams know I exist, I think. Having me as the first and only offensive option is not going to work. I get scouted.”
And Swords has no problem allowing point guard Bryan Hurley ’15 to dictate the pace of the game.

“Bryan knows the pace,” he said. “If we’re playing a team of five Lucas’ who won’t finish as well as Lucas, he knows to slow us down. But he’ll also make sure we’re not running slow just because I’m slow or running slowly.”

Swords noted that the Williams game was a tale of two halves for the Bowdoin offense. He scored most of his points in the first while Hausman scored most of his in the second. In addition to Hurley, Swords also wanted toacknowledge junior Matt Palecki’s near-double-double and sophomore Neil Fuller’s return to the lineup from injury.

“It’s been a great season,” Swords said, “All that cliché stuff that goes into a [senior] season has been present. My personal forecast was that it wasgoing to be very hard to fill the void left by [Matt] Mathias, [Andrew] Madlinger, and [Grant] White, three really complete players. Pretty quickly this season has turned into something special on its own.”

He also referred to the team’s perseverance through injuries, saying that at times the team has not even had 10 players who could suit up to scrimmage.

Swords has feelings typical of a senior approaching his last few games, but jokingly recognized the positives of being able to move on from basketball.

“I don’t really want it to stop, but I know when it does stop, my body will probably thank me,” he said, then quipping about how his minute total and the up-tempo offense might leave him in a wheelchair. Still, an avid rafter and Outing Club member, Swords does not seem to feel the need to give his body too much rest.

“Post-basketball, I will certainly be spending more time outside. Basketball’s an indoor sport, in a windowless gym. It’s good for the winter,” said Swords.

The sports editor of the Orient chooses the Athlete of the Week based on exemplary performance.

To suggest an athlete, email Sports Editor Jono Gruber at jgruber@bowdoin.edu.

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