The Bowdoin Orient

The men’s and women’s track team competed at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in a non-scoring meet for the second consecutive weekend as they tune up in preparation for vital upcoming meets. This weekend the men travel to Colby for the Maine State Meet, while the women will host the Aloha Relays.

The following weekend, both teams will travel to Waterville to compete in the NESCAC Championship. Athletes who qualify will then go on to compete in the New England D-III Championship, Open New Englands, the ECAC Championship, and finally the NCAA Championship.

One Bowdoin athlete with a considerable chance to make it to Nationals is captain Coby Horowitz ’14, who specializes in the one-mile and 1500 meter (.93 mile) runs. Coming off an indoor season where he broke the D-III mile record and then took the national title at the D-III Tournament, Horowitz has already transitioned well to the outdoor season.

Last weekend, facing over a dozen D-I runners at UNH, Horowitz again won the 1500 event, clocking in at 3:53.37. However, it was only the 11th-best time this season in D-III, which means he will have tough competition if he gets to defend the national title he won last season. Horowitz was named last week’s NESCAC Track Performer of the Week, and said he was optimistic about the prospects of the team for the rest of the season.

“The transition from indoor to outdoor can be pretty tough due to the weather we get in our early season meets, but everyone has handled it well so far and we’re looking strong heading into the championship season,” said Horowitz.

He also thought it was “great to race D-I competition as they provide a good opportunity to hit qualifying times.”

But Horowitz was not the only Bowdoin athlete to best D-I competition last Sunday, as Erin Silva ’15 turned in a stellar performance on pole vault, clearing 11-11.75 to take first. Junior Emily Clark’s 1:07.42 time in the 400-meter hurdle and sophomore Katie Krupp’s 36-08 triple jump were good for second in their respective events, while Jacob Ellis ’16 took home first in the 800-meter.

As both teams prepare for their upcoming meets, Horowitz voiced his expectations for the team.

“We’re hoping to be one of the top teams at the state meet and NESCACs; we’re hoping for some freezing rain or snow to give us an extra edge in the upcoming meets since Bates’ and Tufts’ top guys have been known to skip meets to watch reruns of ‘Friends’ at the first signs of precipitation.”

The No. 7 women’s tennis team dominated the Connecticut College Camels this past weekend, taking all nine matches in New London, Conn. without dropping a single set.

Senior Kate Winingham led in the No. 1 slot, taking down Connecticut College’s Charlotte Marcoux 6-2, 6-1. Though it was her first time in the top singles slot since March 17, it was her third consecutive straight-set victory. The captain has now won six of her last seven matches, with the only loss a 10-7 super-tiebreaker defeat at Trinity on March 19.

Joulia Likhanskaia ’17 also dominated her opponent, dropping only two games en route to a 6-2, 6-0 win. The first year has hit the ground running at Bowdoin—she holds a 14-2 record so far this year.

“It’s definitely a lot different playing here. In college it’s more of a team sport,” Likhanskaia said. “In juniors [competitive tennis for high-schoolers] you don’t have all of your teammates supporting you. It’s just you by yourself on the court. Here you work for the team.”

One of Likhanstaia’s two losses came last fall against Middlebury’s Ria Gerger, in only her third college match. She suffered her second a few weeks ago to Tufts’s Connor Calabro. She had dominated the No. 3 spot on the ladder until this past weekend, when she was moved up to No. 2.

Three other first years grabbed points in singles matches for the young and talented Polar Bears. Kyra Silitch (6-0, 6-0), Samantha Stalder (6-0, 6-0) and Pilar Giffenig (7-6(3), 6-1) all came out winners.

The three doubles matches also went Bowdoin’s way, with senior Emma Lewis teaming up with Likhanskaia to take an 8-0. Stalder combined with Winingham and Giffenig with Tiffany Cheng ’16 for victories in the remaining two doubles matches.

The Polar Bears hope to follow their dominant performance with a strong outing this weekend against two of the toughest opponents they will face all year, No. 3 Emory and No. 4 Amherst. The team faces Amherst at 3:30 this afternoon in its home opener, weather permitting. They hope to capitalize on weather conditions unfamiliar to Emory to pull off an upset on Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

A win Friday against the talented Lady Jeffs would be hugely important, as it would move Bowdoin to 4-0 in the NESCAC and give the team a legitimate shot at the division title. Currently, the Polar Bears stand at 10-2, with the team’s only losses coming to west coast powerhouses No. 5 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and No. 6 Pomona-Pitzer.

This past Saturday, the No. 12 men’s tennis team played its first match since returning from its Spring Break trip to California, defeating No. 24 Brandeis 6-2 in Waltham, Mass.

“The team came out intense and focused,” said Hugh Mo ’17. “Not taking them lightly and just coming out and playing our best was key.”

And so the Polar Bears did, accomplishing one of their goals for the match early on by winning two of three doubles matches, though the No. 1 doubles team did fall.

As the match continued on to singles, Bowdoin continued to dominate. Noah Bragg ’15 started the team off well at No. 1 singles, taking down the Judge’s top player Michael Arguello 6-2, 6-2. Additional straight set victories from No. 3 Sam King ’14 (6-4, 6-3), No. 4 Chris Lord ’14 (6-2, 6-4), and No. 6 Chase Savage ’16 (6-0, 6-4) sealed the Bowdoin victory.

No. 5 Kyle Wolstencroft ’15 was unable to finish his match because the win had already been assured and another team was waiting to play, but Bowdoin Head Coach Conor Smith felt said he would have came out on top.

“I feel confident that if they were gonna play it out, he would have won,” said Smith. “But he understood that the match had been decided.”

The Polar Bears got another great performance out of King, who was named NESCAC Player of the Week three weeks ago after a stellar series of matches in California, highlighted by a key day in which he won both his singles and doubles matches (with partner Wolstencroft) against Pomona-Pitzer. Those two points were significant—Bowdoin pulled out a 5-3 victory over a team now only one spot behind them in the national rankings.

“[King] is one of those guys that really takes the idea of getting better to heart,” said Smith. “He doesn’t just say that and go through the motions, he really works hard the whole practice or match. Mentally, he just found the right energy level to compete at.”

This weekend, the Polar Bears hit the road again, traveling to MIT tomorrow and then Connecticut College on Sunday. The team will finally host its first home match of the year on April 13, when No. 4 Amherst will make the journey up to Brunswick in a hotly anticipated NESCAC matchup.

The men’s swimming team faced many challenges while hosting the NESCAC championship last weekend but at the end of a tough three days, Bowdoin came out with a best-ever fifth-place finish, setting half a dozen school records in the process.

Ryan Kulesza ’15 set new school marks in the 200 IM, the 400 IM, and his 200 leg of the 800 free relay, which as a relay broke the school record that had been in place since 1992. Tim Long ’17 broke a pair of 20-year-old records in the 500 and 100 freestyles, and Logan House ’17 set a new school mark in the 100 butterfly.

While the top few teams jumped out to early leads and held on, Greason Pool was the scene of a tense battle between the Polar Bears and the Bates Bobcats for the middle-of-the-pack finishes. After the first day of swimming, the hosts were in sixth place with 321.5 points, some 27.5 points behind Bates and over 300 behind leader and eventual champion Williams. Even after the second day came to a close, Bowdoin still trailed its fierce rival by nearly 70 points.

But when the third and final day came to an end, Bowdoin finished with 777.5 points, in fifth and a mere half-point over Bates. It was easily the closest finish in the contest, with the next closest being a 11.5-point margin of Colby over Wesleyan.

The Bowdoin-Bates battle went back and forth over the course of three days, with the hosts nearly jumping to a significant lead early Saturday night. However, a relay team was disqualified due to a false start when one Bowdoin racer left .07 seconds before his teammate touched the wall.

Though it took the electronic timing system to confirm, the coaching staff knew immediately the team would be in trouble. Even though the relay team performed well, the 48 points it would have earned for Bowdoin were never counted. It was a huge point swing, letting Bates maintain its lead into day three.

 “A lot of teams might have just written it off and felt like they were going to get sixth, but the guys just did a great job fighting back and scoring every point they could,” said Head Coach Brad Burnham. “That night was one of the best sessions they ever had. They woke up Sunday morning tired but got themselves back into finals in a lot of great scoring positions.”

In the end, the race came down the final relay, with Bowdoin placing just high enough relative to Bates to snatch the fifth spot from the Bobcats. As Burnham was happy to point out, “We somehow found a way to claw back up so relays could finish it off.”

“We set a new school record in the 800 meter free relay and we wouldn’t have done that unless we were right next to Bates,” added Burnham.

Burnham capped off his 13th year as head coach with his second fifth-place NESCAC finish—the best in school history—in three years. But he said he still wants more.

“Even when you beat another team, or swim some fast times, you can always think of places to improve, and after the results its just about getting on to those things,” advised Burnham.Senior distance swimmer Alex Tougas was delighted with the team’s performance and the way they came together to overcome Bates.

“It was amazing to have beaten Bates by a half point and to have done well individually,” he said.  “As a senior, I could not have asked for a better culmination to my swimming career. This team was an awesome group of guys. They are great swimmers and lifelong friends."

Over a month ago, in the midst of its season-opening 12-game winning streak, the men’s basketball team handily beat Colby (8-8 overall, 1-4 NESCAC) by 18 points at home in an out-of-conference matchup. Last Saturday’s rematch was much closer. With a second place position in the NESCAC on the line, the Polar Bears narrowly edged the Mules 64-59 in Morrell Gymnasium to improve to 15-1 on the season (4-1 NESCAC).

After raining down six threes and scoring 28 points on only 14 shots in the teams’ first meeting, Andrew Madlinger ’14 was locked down by the Colby defense, which only allowed him to take seven shots the entire game.

With Madlinger kept in check, the No. 22 Polar Bears were still able to take a 35-28 lead going into halftime with the help of the frontcourt duo of juniors John Swords and Keegan Pieri.

This past Saturday, the men’s and women’s track teams hosted their third consecutive meet. The men easily took first place while the women finished as runner-ups for the second consecutive week.

The men came out on top against the tough competition of Tufts, Colby, University of Southern Maine (USM), Coast Guard and St. Joseph’s. They took first place with 174 points, beating second-place Tufts by 17 and third-place Coast Guard by an even 40.

Senior captains Sam Seekins and Coby Horowitz led the team by combining for 30 points. 20 of those came from Horowitz, who won both the 1000-meter and one-mile events. The All-American also won the mile run last weekend, but this week switched his second event from the 3000-meter run to the 1000. Even though he ran the mile first, he said the new race may have been the reason for his mile being about 10 seconds slower this week, up from 4:11 to 4:21.

Though the women’s soccer team captured its first NCAA D-III Tournament win since 1999 this past Saturday, it was eliminated from the competition on Sunday after falling  7-0 to regional host Montclair State.

 The Polar Bears finished their regular season seeded third in the conference at 11-2-1 (7-2-1 NESCAC) but lost to Tufts in the NESCAC quarterfinals. However, the team’s season continued two weeks later after earning an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

 Bowdoin drew Christopher Newport University, which boasted a 14-3-2 record, on Saturday for its first-round matchup. The game was close from the start, with both sides fighting to take a first-half lead. The Polar Bears very nearly took the lead 15 minutes in, as winger Abby Einwag ’15 let a shot rip from the left of the goal, forcing CNU goalkeeper Haley Casanova to make a diving stop.

Four games into the 2013 season, the women’s soccer team has shown no signs of a hangover from a tough ending to last season. This year, the Polar Bears have come out swinging—and so far they’ve followed through. After tying Amherst and defeating University of Maine-Farmington and Bates this past week, they are 3-0-1 overall (2-0-1 NESCAC).

On Saturday, the women traveled to Amherst for a rematch of last year’s NESCAC semifinal. The game was tough and physical, with Amherst maintaining possession for much of the first half. But Bowdoin defended well, protected their 18-yard box, and starting keeper Bridget McCarthy ’16 only needed to make one save to keep Bowdoin level at half.

The second half was a different story. Bowdoin pushed forward on the wings and got in a couple of dangerous attacks. Though they threatened the Jeffs’ net, they could not convert a goal. Tied at the end of regulation, the game went into overtime. The Polar Bears fought Amherst to a standstill, totaling four shots in both overtime periods to Amherst’s five, and almost won the game when a loose ball fell to Abby Einwag ’15 at the top of the box. Unfortunately, her shot blazed just over the bar.