The Bowdoin Orient

The men's lacrosse team notched two huge wins last weekend and needs only two more for its first-ever NESCAC title. The second-seeded Polar Bears will travel to host Middlebury and play third-seeded Tufts in the conference semi-final tomorrow. With a win, Bowdoin will advance to the NESCAC finals for the second straight year and face the winner of Middlebury-Wesleyan. Though they'll face stiff competition, the team firmly believes it can win the title.

The men's lacrosse team heads into its huge showdown with Tufts tonight in a pitched battle for a home playoff game. Currently tied for third in the conference, the Polar Bears (8-5, 5-3) need a win if they are to host in the first round of the NESCAC tournament. Tonight's game, at home at 7 p.m., is crucial for the Polar Bears and the team will look to run its winning streak to two after a win over Bates on Tuesday. Tufts (11-2, 6-2) sits at second in the standings heading into tonight's game and will also lock up a home playoff matchup with a win.

I've got all of my teeth, my hair is short, and I don't say "eh." I don't skate too well and I haven't been in a fight since fifth grade. I've only seen Mighty Ducks four times. And despite all of that, there is a hockey player inside of me just waiting to burst out and finally figure out which channel is Versus. Hockey is back, baby! I might be a little late to the train, but there are now certainly four major sports on the American landscape. Memo to soccer and NASCAR: you had your chance and you blew it.

After a tough overtime loss to Colby on Wednesday, the men's lacrosse team will have to claw its way toward a home conference playoff game. With two crucial games remaining, the Polar Bears will look to snap a four-game losing streak. "We just need to begin playing with more confidence in ourselves as individuals and one another as teammates," said senior quad-captain Cullen Winkler.

If you think baseball is a boring three-plus-hour game where fat steroid-users parade around with big muscles, big heads, and "bacne," you're right. And you're missing the point. Sure, the games are long and the pants are tight. The muscles may be more artificial than the hot dog meat and the grass not as green as the players' bank accounts. The fans may be more interested in perfecting The Wave and the tickets might cost more than a 50 percent share in GM. But it's baseball, and it's back.

The men's lacrosse team is firing on all cylinders as it rolls into one of its toughest tests of the season tomorrow. The team will host Middlebury in what could become one of the defining moments of the year for the team. "[Middlebury has] some of the best offensive players in the country," said senior quad-captain Rob Halliday. "We have to keep playing as well as we have been on defense, and keep sharing the ball on offense, if we want to get a win. We have to show a lot of poise and play smart Bowdoin lacrosse." Winners of five straight games, Bowdoin (7-1) will look to keep the streak alive against a top-notch NESCAC foe.

A regular season NESCAC championship? Yawn. A league title? Yes ma'am. The NCAA tournament for the 10th straight year? You bet. One of the top 25 teams in the country? Check. If I don't have your attention yet, I'm sorry to disappoint, but you've stumbled on the Orient's sports column. There's not much else the Bowdoin Women's Basketball Team can do. March: the month of mud, spring break and basketball. But in Brunswick, the Madness of March is over and we're left with just the mud and the all-too-distant-and-hazy memories of vacations in the sun. Sure, "The Tourney" still rages on around the country. Brackets are still poised to be made or busted and that company pool prize still seems within reach.

Yes, this is another steroids column. And no, I don't want the blame. I know I'm the one who decided to write it and that I spent hours reading it over and fine-tuning every word. It's true that I thought of this article's subject and I've worked on its extended metaphor. And yes, this column is my space to say and do what I want, but I don't want to be held personally accountable for the product that I put out on Friday mornings.

Every weekend is a big weekend for Bowdoin Women's Basketball. But this weekend is really big. The Polar Bears head to Connecticut for a pair of NESCAC showdowns to end the regular season. Wins at Wesleyan (3-4 NESCAC) tonight and at Connecticut College (0-7 NESCAC) tomorrow afternoon would net Bowdoin the honor of home games throughout the conference tournament.

After a stellar weekend in which the women's basketball team notched two of its biggest wins of the season, the team will look to continue its winning ways in home games tonight and tomorrow. The Polar Bears (16-4, 4-1 NESCAC) handed Amherst its first loss of the season in a 63-61 victory last Friday. The then No. 4-ranked Lord Jeffs had been 18-0 before junior forward Leah Rubega's buzzer-beating lay-up downed Amherst.

I can't tell you that I solved their problems. I don't think that I changed their lives. I'm not even sure that they'd remember me now. I'm positive that I didn't cure AIDS. I'll tell you what though: for an hour every week those kids forgot about their lives. They forgot about the smell of the power plant, of the trash, of the mud. They forgot about walking home in big groups with heads bowed in an effort to draw as little attention as possible. They forgot about their mother, their father, their cousin, who had died of AIDS.

The women's basketball team sits at a crossroads in its season, right in the middle of the most important four-game stretch of its schedule. Certainly the NESCAC tournament will ultimately crown the conference champion, but this weekend the Polar Bears (14-4, 2-1 NESCAC) can begin to stake their claim for the honor. The team has crucial road games against Amherst (18-0, 3-0) tonight and Trinity (14-2, 2-1) tomorrow night, and two wins would prove the team's mettle to anyone.

Two-thirds of the way through its season, the women's basketball team should be proud of its record, but has no time to rest on its laurels. The Polar Bears stand at 13-3 on the season and have won an astounding 10 of their last 11 games. They have played superb defense throughout that stretch, holding opponents to under 50 points per game, and have gotten key contributions from all over their roster. However, they are about to enter the most important part of the season.

Say what you want about sports, but they'll come through for you when you need them the most. You can say it's just a game and you can shake your head at the die-hards in the facepaint and the full costume and without a shirt. You can disapprove of the billion-dollar stadiums and the tax-breaks and the miserly owners. You can even hate fantasy drafts, playoff beards and rally-caps. You just don't get it.

Defense is the name of the game for the women's basketball team. Bowdoin's suffocating defense led to a nine-point road win over Colby-Sawyer on Thursday. The Polar Bears shut down the Chargers with a whopping 17 steals and five blocks in the 54-45 win. Senior tri-captain Maria Noucas scored a season-high 16 points and junior forward Leah Rubega had 10 points and 10 rebounds in her third straight double-double.

Just five games into its season, the women's basketball team has already had its fair share of ups and downs. The team stands at a 3-2 mark, but has lost one of its marquee players for the season. Senior forward Jill Anelauskas suffered ACL and MCL tears last week and will be unable to return to the court for her final season this year. Anelauskas became just the 11th player in Bowdoin history to score 1,000 points in a career in the team's opening win against Western Connecticut State. Her injury will be a tough one for the team to cope with.

In less than a month I'll celebrate my 22nd birthday on the streets of Boston, probably all-too-literally, with some friends. I don't know what Matt Forte will be up to next week when he turns 22, but I'm fairly sure that it'll be cooler than heading to the Brookline Applebee's with two guy friends who will each eat their own appetizer sampler.

There's nothing like going out on top. The Bowdoin Football Team did just that, winning its final three games of the season, including Saturday's 20-6 win over archrival Colby that clinched Bowdoin's third-straight Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Championship. Junior quarterback Oliver Kell shined in the win, amassing 244 yards of total offense himself'23 yards more than the entire Colby team combined.

We may have just finished an exhausting election season, but now it's time to ramp up football season. The Tennessee Titans are a surprising dark horse if I've ever seen one. The infamous and annoyingly undefeated '72 Dolphins squad must have thought that they could break out the champagne early this year while watching Tom Brady writhe in pain on the Gillette Stadium greenway. But heading into Week 11, the Titans are a smooth 9-0 to lead the league.

Buoyed by the NESCAC Offensive Player of the Week and three forced turnovers by its defensive unit, the Bowdoin Football Team won its second game of the season at Wesleyan on the road. The 17-10 victory put the Polar Bears (2-4) in a position to finish .500 and gives the team momentum heading into two tough games against rivals Bates and Colby that will decide the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin (CBB) Championship. Junior Oliver Kell was superb at quarterback for the Polar Bears, amassing 342 of the team's 392 yards of total offense and winning Offensive Player of the Week for the second time in his career.

I'm not much of a crier, but the tears certainly have been flowing lately. There comes a time in every athlete's life when he (or she, because admittedly 99 percent of the female athletes at this school are more athletic than me and could beat me in a fight) realizes that it's over and that his life will never, ever be the same again.

If it was unclear to you before, TBS and Fox have most certainly reminded you by now that there is only one October. And thank God. Don't get me wrong, I love all that goes on in the sports world in October, but if November or December fought October for sports supremacy, I'd be flunking out of school even faster than I already am (Sorry Mom.)

One was named the greatest football player to ever play at Purdue and is one of the faces of its athletics program. The other faces a sentence of life imprisonment for the second time and is currently in the midst of his second criminal trial. One has dedicated his post-football career to keeping kids in school; the other has not been out of the tabloids. One has his bust in South Bend, Indiana as a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. The other has been enshrined in Canton, Ohio, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame game. One had 14 touchdowns in the 1968 season, the other made the end zone 21 times.

The Mafia assassinated Kennedy. I've seen Bigfoot myself on three separate occasions. And I'm positive Tom Brady will be on the field this Sunday for his 129th consecutive start at quarterback for the New England Patriots. At this point, I'm close to hysterics, and I'll believe anything but the truth. Come Sunday, there is no way Matt Cassel will be under center for his first meaningful start since high school. I've convinced myself that Barry Bonds is innocent and Marion Jones is a saint. I know for a fact that Rosie Ruiz is just really fast.

Thanks in large part to a dominant defensive unit, the Bowdoin Football Team beat rival Bates for its second win of the season last weekend.

Although NESCAC football teams do not participate in an official postseason tournament, the Bowdoin Football Team will effectively enter its playoffs this weekend. The team will play Bates on Saturday, beginning its defense of last year's CBB title.

After dropping three road games this year, the Bowdoin Football Team (1-4) will look for relief at home against Wesleyan (3-2) on Saturday.

At the close of a somewhat disappointing season, the Bowdoin Men's Rugby Team is still proud of its improvement.

The Bowdoin Men's Rugby Team hopes to make up for a disappointing season and beat hated rival Colby for the second time this year on Saturday.

Returning home after two tough losses on the road, the Bowdoin Football Team will look to improve to .500 on the season when it takes the field in a Homecoming clash against Hamilton College tomorrow.

The Bowdoin Men's Rugby Team will look for a big win against one of the top teams in New England on Saturday. The team will host a University of New Hampshire team that is 3-1 on the season and currently sits at the fourth spot in the table.

After two disappointing losses to start its season, the Bowdoin Men's Rugby Team is in dire straits. However, all would be forgotten with a win against arch-rival Colby on Saturday.

After winning the final two games of its 2006 campaign, the Bowdoin Football Team hopes to continue its success this season.

After suffering a devestating loss, the men's rugby team will look to put their season back on track this Sunday against a tough University of Maine-Farmington squad.

The Bowdoin Men's Lacrosse Team's season came to end in a loss over the weekend, but the Bears still felt positive about their season.

The men's lacrosse team heads into its meeting with league-leading Tufts with momentum and a winning mentality on Saturday. The Polar Bears ripped off two wins this week and shook off a three-game losing streak.

Although this weekend is officially the final weekend of regular season games for NESCAC Women's Basketball, one might call this weekend's games the start of the playoffs, as Bowdoin jockeys for the top seed in the NESCAC playoffs. The Polar Bears return home today after six straight road games for two of their toughest matches of the regular season.

Senior tri-captain Eileen Flaherty scored 13 points against Bates on Tuesday night and became the Polar Bears' new all-time leading scorer. Going into the game, all she needed was seven points to pass previous record-holder Laura Schultz '96, who finished with 1,670 career points. Flaherty now has 1,679 points in her illustrious career and still has three more regular season games left.

Winter Break offered no rest for the Bowdoin Women's Basketball Team. Instead, the Polar Bears faced some of its most difficult competition to date. The big news from January was the team's home loss to Maine Maritime Academy on January 17, 51-49. That's right, it's no typo?the Bowdoin Women's Basketball Team lost at home.

The men and women of Bowdoin rugby proved their worth both on and off the field this season, according to the referees. The Bowdoin rugby teams have been honored by the New England Rugby Referees Society, winning the John Hayes Award. The award is given annually to teams for their sportsmanship, fair play, and the treatment of their match referees.

The women's basketball team is No. 1?at least according to the latest Division III poll on D3hoops.com. The team has shown itself to be worthy of the spot with a 7-0 record, its most recent win coming against a previously undefeated Colby-Sawyer (now 6-1) on Thursday night in New Hampshire.

The Bowdoin Men's Rugby Team fell to 1-4 on the season on Saturday, losing at Colby in a 9-3 match. Colby scored nine unanswered points on three penalty kicks in the second half to beat the Bowdoin squad.

Women's basketball Head Coach Stefanie Pemper doesn't want to be remembered for her team's accomplishments on the court, and that's precisely what makes her great.