Connor Quinn ’15

Athlete of the Week: Hunter Miller '16

Men's Soccer

In the 96th minute of the men’s soccer team’s NCAA Division III Tournament first-round match against Brockport State, Hunter Miller ’16 corralled a turnover around midfield and—with no teammates nearby for support—turned upfield with six defenders and a goalkeeper between him and the net.
After speeding away from the two players chasing him and regaining the ball through traffic in front of the net, Miller poked the ball into the lower right-hand corner of the net to send the Polar Bears to a round-of-32 match against Brandeis. It was the outside midfielder’s first goal of the season.
Miller’s account was a little more understated.
“I was in the right place at the right time to steal the ball,” he said. “No one stepped to me so I kept going. When they finally did, I pulled a move and went around them.”
Head Coach Scott Wiercinski said that a run of that length only rarely produces a goal. However, Miller’s speed left the tired defense in the dust. According to Wiercinski’s expectations for his midfielders, Miller would have held the ball to allow his offense to move forward before starting a passing chain through the midfield. But the game ending goal negated any doubts Wiercinski had about Miller’s aggressive run.
“When he started off on the run, I was hoping that he would slow down so that we could get more numbers forward,” said captain Tom Henshall ’15. “After he ran away from the second player, I was just praying that he would score.”
Miller might have been less inclined to attempt a run of that magnitude, but the nature of the turnover left him without a teammate to pass to. Both teams seemed sluggish chasing Miller, with half of the Brockport defenders on that side of the field failing to get in position to block Miller’s run and with none of the Polar Bear forwards far enough up the field to offer help.“Brockport was very organized defensively and always had numbers behind the ball, so a counterattack was always going to be our best opportunity to score,” Henshall said. “It seemed to me that they were playing to tie the game and go into penalty kicks.”
Miller has held a starting spot in midfield since the middle of his sophomore season. As his goal highlighted, Miller plays with speed and aggression and enjoys taking players on in isolation.
Wiercinski characterizes Miller as an “attacker” at the midfield position despite the team’s primarily defensive mindset.
“He’s creative and a little bit unorthodox,” said Wiercinski. “There’s always that unexpectedness. On the dribble, with his passing choices, his touches—it’s that unpredictable nature that you want to have when you’re attacking. “
Henshall said that Miller’s speed and control allowed him to get around midfielders without the need for flashy moves.
Wiercinski also noted that Miller’s lack of goals during the regular season was more a product of poor luck rather than poor play.
“He’s been very dangerous in a lot of games,” he said. “That it was his first goal of the year was ironic in a lot of ways, but we appreciate the day he chose to score it.”
“I was very proud and very happy for Hunter that he scored that goal,” Wiercinski continued. “Attacking players in any sport derive confidence from scoring. Even though he wasn’t scoring and we had a stretch of games where we weren’t winning, he didn’t get discouraged. If he had been discouraged earlier in the year, he might not have had the confidence to do what he did.”Miller was one of three players to start every game this season.

Athlete of the Week: Chris Genco '15

Track and Field

In high school, Chris Genco ’15 acknowledged that he passed on the long jump simply because he did not like sand in his shoes. In college, after winning the event at last weekend’s Bowdoin invitatoinal, he is more open-minded, calling it the next logical progression for someone who can “run fast and jump high.”
When he arrived at Bowdoin, Genco anticipated competing in the high jump and as a sprinter. But what propelled his leading score for the men’s tream at the Bowdoin Invitational on January 17 was in fact his performing the long jump. Genco also finished in third place in the high jump, raising his score to 15. The team gained 95 points in total. His first-place finish was Bowdoin’s only top finish of the Invitational. Genco’s winning long jump occurred in the first set of jumps, allowing him to sit out the final heat when no one could match his best jump.
Genco competed in the long jump only once during his first year at Bowdoin and performed poorly. At the time his jump approached only 4.27 meters (His winning jump at the Bowdoin Invitational last weekend was 6.66 meters). Having never jumped in that event competitively before, he felt discouraged, even though Head Coach Peter Slovenski believed the jump correlated perfectly with his natural athletic abilities.
“I would have thought he would have picked up the long jump in high school,” Slovenski said. “Long jumpers benefit from having a lot of speed. As a high school sprinter, he picked it up quickly.”
Slovenski observed that Genco shares physical similarities with most long jumpers, compared to being shorter than some high jumpers. He particularly praised Genco’s “intuition for jumping” and his “technical IQ,” which he believes pervades most track and field events.“He can make most adjustments to his technique and understand them better than most athletes in any sport,” Slovenski said. “If someone gets ahead of him, he knows what he has to do to catch up.”
By his sophomore year, he was practicing the long jump consistently. However, he retained the high jump, a strange pairing given their wildly different and sometimes conflicting techniques. Genco called it “counterintuitive.”
“I struggled at the high jump after I started the long jump,” he said. “My approach got faster.”In addition to the long jump’s faster approach, the two jumps have very different penultimate steps. The long jump emphasizes lowering the hips in preparation for the outward jump while the high jumpers tend to keep their hips higher.
“A lot of track events have a natural simplicity,” Slovenski said. “They look natural. But there’s a lot of complex things to bring together—to accelerate on the runway, get a good takeoff, and then get a good jump. One of the ways he makes it look easy is that he has a good sense of how to bring it all together.”
Slovenski noted the improvement in Genco’s performance in the long jump. Genco said that it has been his primary focus this season.
“His sophomore year he was very competitive at the state level,” Slovenski said. “His junior year he became very competitive at the New England level.”
The hope is that Genco can be competitive at the national level in his final year. Having never qualified for Nationals, this is the goal he set for himself.
More than anything, Slovenski praised Genco’s contributions as a teammate and captain.“What really stands out about Chris is not how he continues to place first. It’s what a great teammate he is.”
The sports editor of the Orient chooses the Athlete of the Week based on exemplary performance.

Athlete of the Week

Men's Hockey

Alex Vasile

Orient Staff

December 5, 2014

Connor Quinn ’15 has scored at least one goal in each game so far this season and sits second in the NESCAC in scoring with eight goals and five assists. Quinn scored a hat trick in Bowdoin’s 6-3 win over Colby before Thanksgiving and tied the season opener against Williams with 52 seconds remaining to keep the team undefeated.

In the last two weeks, he grabbed a goal against Wentworth Institute of Technology and recorded two assists against Salve Regina University. He has scored in both power play and short-handed situations this season, using his speed to create breakaway opportunities even with only four Polar Bears are on the ice.

With linemates John McGinnis ’15 and Matt Lison ’18 ranking first and fourth in scoring, Bowdoin’s front three players have been more productive than entire NESCAC teams.
Quinn started skating at age two and said he fell in love from the beginning.

“Practicing was a lot more fun than in other sports,” he said. “You think on your feet; there’s not as much set-up play. The physicality is nice too. You get to throw your body around a little bit.”

Quinn started as a defender but his high school coach moved him to forward against his wishes because he was “an offensive defenseman.” Quinn went so far as to call himself a “liability” in the position. However, his speed and willingness to fight for the puck down low made for a seamless transition to offense.

“One of the things that stands out is his puck protection in the corner,” said captain Danny Palumbo ’15. “He’s good at escaping. He likes to play in the dirty areas and he’s always in front of the net on powerplays.”

Head Coach Terry Meagher calls the ability to escape a key to being a great player and spoke highly of Quinn.

Quinn’s desire to freelance matched well with Meagher’s position-less style of hockey, and Quinn credits the system as one of the main factors that led him to Bowdoin. Meagher calls Quinn a left wing in name only because “where he lines up is not where he ends up.”

“He’s reminiscent of a few great players that have a unique style of play,” said Meagher. “You have to let them go and protect around them because they are so gifted athletically and so creative. He’s arguably one of the most exciting athletes in our league and really the East.”

Meagher noted that despite Quinn’s speed—Palumbo said he believes he could be the fastest player in the conference—many of his goals have come in situations that require reacting in front of the net or in scrums. His speed also has a tremendous impact on penalty kills. The Polar Bears play an aggressive style of penalty killing that allows Quinn to attack if he intercepts the puck in the opponent’s defensive end.

“Sometimes it can hurt, and I can get caught out of position, but I like to think my speed helps me make up for that,” Quinn said. “I’ve always been fast. I went to a few skating camps, but they say it’s not something you can coach. I guess I got lucky.”

Despite his early scoring run, Quinn acknowledges that he has not been a prolific scorer in the past. He is more than halfway to his scoring totals from last year with only a quarter of the season’s games played.

“Coming into the season, I wanted to be a goal scorer. I haven’t really been a goal scorer in the past,” he said. “Playing with [McGinnis], who’s a playmaker, makes my job a lot easier.”

Quinn also returned to playing rugby when he arrived at Bowdoin, which he had played through high school but given up temporarily to go to prep school for hockey. It is almost unprecedented for a varsity athlete to take on a club sport, particularly one that meets regularly and involves significant contact.

Quinn has been a consistent contributor to Bowdoin Men’s Rugby during his time at Bowdoin, and Meagher said he has always embraced the contributions that rugby has brought to his style of play in hockey.

“It’s not common throughout the game to have a player with such a unique style,” Meagher said. “Most players pass the eye test, they’re just a little better, a little stronger, a little faster, but conventionally. His is an unpredictability, in a good way.”

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