Erin Silva '15

Athlete of the Week: Helen Newton '14

Women's Swimming

Helen Newton ’14 is the fastest breaststroke swimmer in Bowdoin history, at least according to the record books, where her name sits atop lists for the 50, 100 and 200-meter races. Each record fell at the women’s NESCAC Championship last weekend, Newton’s last collegiate race. She had broken them unofficially as part of the 400-meter medley and 200 medley relay teams, which also broke school records, but had to wait to replicate her finishes in the individual events. When she did, she held the records by a couple of seconds and had beaten her personal best by nearly three seconds in her main event, the 100m.
Newton began swimming around age three and remembers learning the frog kick technique even at that point. She specialized in the breaststroke all through high school and spent most of her offseason time on lacrosse. The prospect of playing lacrosse brought her to Bowdoin, where she met current teammate and breaststroke swimmer, Maeve O’Leary ’14, who convinced her to consider joining Bowdoin swimming. Left without a major commitment until lacrosse started practicing, Newton ultimately found her way to the pool, though she did not introduce herself to Head Coach Brad Burnham until late October that year.
“She had a good pull and a good kick,” he said. “It seemed that she was lacking experience more than anything.”

Athlete of the Week: Jordan Smith '14

Women's Lacrosse

After two years on the bench recovering from an injury, lacrosse attacker Jordan Smith ’14 went on to score 44 goals in her junior year, finishing the season with just five fewer than Carolyn Gorajek ’13, Bowdoin’s all-time goal, assist and points leader. With Gorajek’s graduation, Smith is well on her way to taking over as the team’s leading scorer. In the first six games, she has scored 17 goals and handed out seven assists.
Smith’s father introduced her to the game at an early age when he brought home a few lacrosse sticks from a yard sale. In second grade, she joined her town’s fledgling program and had made the decision to play in college by her freshman year of high school. Twenty-eight school visits and hours of game tape later, the New Jersey native settled on Bowdoin after an overnight visit, which she said “felt like home.”
Smith only played the attack position occasionally in high school, but came to Bowdoin expecting a change from her position as midfielder. She earned a starting position her junior year and is now the center of the team’s attack. The Polar Bears’ offense starts at the top of the offensive zone and prioritizes mid-field drives, leaving the low attackers to buzz around the crease looking for feeds. Smith has proven to excel at backdoor cuts and catches in traffic.
“She’s probably the one attacker I hate to cover,” defender Erica Nangeroni ’14 said of their practice scrimmages. “She has the quickest feet and she’s the hardest cutter to cover, which on defense is annoying but on offense is exactly what you need.”
Statistics also suggest that she gets a lot of goals by converting on close. She has scored 17 goals on 29 shots—a 58.6 shooting percentage that ranks second in the NESCAC among the top 50 scorers. Her incredible shot on goal record of 90 percent proves that she can beat the goalie when she gets the ball near the net.
She currently averages more goals per game than anyone else in the NESCAC, tied with teammate and midfielder Betsy Sachs ’14.
She also recorded a competitive five turnovers at this point in the season, lowest on the team and proof of her reputation among teammates for holding on to the ball.
“Personally, I feel really comfortable with Jordan on the field,” Nangeroni said. “I’m never worried about her losing the ball. I trust her decisions on the field.”
“She’s a great person to play with,” Sachs said. “I know I can throw a pass to her and she’ll catch it. She’s good about freeing herself up.”
Fellow attacker Molly Popolizio ’14, responsible for eight assists and a goal so far this season, also agreed.
“She will catch almost everything in the middle,” she said. “She makes other players look better.”
Popolizio also attributes Smith’s success to her ability to shoot as soon as she catches a pass. Many players need to separate from the defense to catch passes cleanly, and often give up a shooting lane to do so.
“She doesn’t need that extra space from a defender,” Popolizio said. “She always cuts at a good angle to shoot.”
The team has gotten so used to her precise cuts that they are able to anticipate her moves on the field. This has made it particularly difficult for opposing defenses, considering that her own defense, which knows how she plays, struggles to contain her attacks.
As an environmental studies and sociology double major, she has also taken on captain responsibilities this year. Her fellow captains appreciate her approach to the job. Nangeroni acknowledged her ability to appeal to different personalities on the team and Sachs noted that some of the team’s current pregame rituals are of Smith’s design.
Smith has a well-known attacking move where she gets the ball from behind the goal and tiptoes along the crease before putting her stick behind the goalie, depositing the ball directly into the net. If her scoring rate persists, it’s a move that spectators on all sides will likely see a few more times.
The sports editor of the Orient chooses the Athlete of the Week based on exemplary performance.

Athlete of the Week

Track & Field

Alex Vasile

Orient Staff

February 28, 2014

Erin Silva ’15 has transformed years of honed gymnastic ability into consistent success in the pole vault event.

Last weekend at the New England Division III Indoor Championships, Silva vaulted for a new personal best of 3.75 meters—or 12.3 feet—raising the bar on the Bowdoin record she originally set as a first year and has broken many times since.

Currently ranked No. 7 nationally, Silva will likely qualify for nationals for the third year in a row. Maintaining her current rank would also earn her a second All-American distinction.

Silva began vaulting as a sophomore in high school—convinced by a friend and vaulter—when she grew too tall for gymnastics, a sport that she had been competing in since first grade. She also sprinted in that first year of competing, and her speed on the 100-foot runway eased her transition to vaulting.

Her gymnastics background has helped her to gracefully execute the turn during the swing-up phase of the vault. During this phase, the vaulter quickly inverts her body before swinging over the bar.

Head Coach Peter Slovenski, a former vaulter himself, said that speed and grace are two of the most difficult things to teach, and the notion that they can be learned at all is up for debate.

“Erin is very talented at all three phases of vaulting,” said Slovenski. “She’s one of the five fastest sprinters on our team. She has terrific jumping ability, and she has strong arms and gymnastic ability for the swing-up phase.”

The jumping phase involves converting forward momentum into upward momentum once the runner plants the pole in the metal box at the end of the runway. The fiberglass pole then bends dramatically to lift the vaulter up and forward, at which point she must execute the “swing-up” phase.

“Field event athletes have to be able to make adjustments in their technique, and this is a great strength of Erin’s,” Slovenski said. “There are a hundred things to coordinate, and she’s got a gift for coordinating all of them in the space of about three seconds.”

Silva said she made the decision to vault in college because she felt she had not yet hit her potential after only vaulting for three years.

“It’s been a long process,” she said. “It’s impossible to do a perfect vault, I would say. There’s always something you can do better.”

Silva’s success has been consistent since her arrival. Teammates expect her to win most of the meets she competes in, particularly the smaller regular season meets.

“I think she feels some pressure because, during some of the smaller meets or home meets, we kind of expect her to win and get her 10 points,” said captain Emily Clark ’15.

For reference, the Polar Bears scored 51 points in last week’s meet, so Silva’s second place finish—and the eight points it earned for the team—accounted for more than 15 percent of the team’s total.

Silva and the meet’s champion, Jenna Adams of Williams College, actually jumped the same height, but Silva lost the tiebreaker because she cleared the mark on her third attempt. Adams made the jump on her first attempt. Neither vaulter could clear 3.90 meters on their three given attempts.

Silva acknowledged that she feels more pressure when she attempts something she has already accomplished, and said she appreciates the constant challenge of improving her own performances, which is less stressful for her. She also said she felt motivated coming back from Spain, where she had been abroad for the fall semester.

Slovenski and vaulter Emily Lambdin ’16 said they noticed that Silva returned at a slight disadvantage having been away from vaulting, though Slovenski said she overcame it about six weeks into the season.

“At the beginning of the season, she was vaulting a lot lower than she usually does,” Lambdin said. “She jumped 11.1 [feet] a lot, which is still amazing, but low for her.”

To compare, the qualifying height for women at the NESCAC Championship meet is 7.6 feet.
Slovenski believes that about 13 feet—4 meters—is a realistic goal for Silva before she graduates. He noted that somewhere between 13 feet and 13.4 feet is usually good enough to win nationals.

“The pole vault is so complex that there are still things to improve, even for an All-American,” he said. “Erin does dozens of things at a high technical level, but there will always be more things to learn.”

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

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