Forward Callie Godfrey ’24 led the women’s basketball team (2–0; 0–0 NESCAC) with 17 points and seven rebounds in last Saturday’s 73–46 win against Springfield College (2–1). Godfrey and her team are looking toward an exciting season that has started off with a bang.
The women’s basketball team started off its season 2–0 (0–0 NESCAC) with victories against Springfield College (2–1) and Maine Maritime Academy (2–1) this week. Last Saturday, Bowdoin defeated Springfield 73–46 in its home opener. The Polar Bears went on to win 57–47 against Maine Maritime on Tuesday night.
AIN’T NO LIE, BYE BYE BYE
The men’s squash team (5–8; 2–8 NESCAC), ranked 25th in the nation, is set to compete in the Conroy Division at the College Squash National Championships this weekend. Bowdoin enters the tournament as the top-seed in the D-Division and earned a bye for the first round.
Tomorrow, the eighth-seeded women’s basketball team (15–9; 4–6 NESCAC) will travel to Medford, Mass. to take on the first seed in the NESCAC Championship tournament, the Tufts University Jumbos (18-6, 9-1 NESCAC).
This game has huge implications for the Polar Bears, as their season will most likely come to a close if they lose on Saturday.
HOOP! THERE IT IS
The women’s basketball team (14–8; 3–5 NESCAC) completed its season sweep of Bates College (11–10; 3–5 NESCAC) last Friday night before falling to Tufts University (16–6; 7–1 NESCAC) on Saturday. In the 71–63 victory against Bates, the Polar Bears started the third quarter with a 10–0 run and held a lead throughout the rest of the game.
Guard Sydney Jones ’25 led the women’s basketball team (13–7; 2–4 NESCAC) with 16 points and ten rebounds in last Friday’s 60-56 loss to Connecticut College (7–12; 1–5 NESCAC). She was named NESCAC Women’s Basketball Player of the Week earlier this year and leads the team in points this season.
The women’s basketball team (13-6; 2-3 NESCAC) defeated Colby College (7–10; 2–3 NESCAC) 52–43 on Saturday. The game was close throughout the first half, but Bowdoin took over in the third quarter and went on a 12–0 run.
The women’s basketball team (2–0; 0–0 NESCAC) returned to Brunswick as champions of the LaFrance Hospitality Tournament hosted by UMass Dartmouth this past weekend. The team’s two victories marked its first wins under new Head Coach Megan Phelps ’15.
When Megan Phelps ’15 dislocated her ankle in a walkthrough during her senior year at Bowdoin, she easily could have left basketball behind. Instead, she parlayed the injury into an unofficial assistant coaching role for the rest of the 2014-15 season.
On Wednesday morning the Athletic Department announced that Sacha Santimano would not continue as the women’s basketball head coach. Santimano, who led the Polar Bears to a 16-9 record (5-5 NESCAC), will not return after leaving for family health reasons.
The women’s basketball team suffered a harsh defeat in their last regular-season game in Morrell Gymnasium on Sunday. Bowdoin’s 0-5 shooting cold streak to start the game opened the door for Wesleyan to go on an early 11-0 run.
SPEED. I AM SPEED.
The Bowdoin Men’s Track and Field team finished second in the Maine State Meet held in Waterville this past Sunday. Over the course of the competition, numerous Bowdoin athletes produced impressive performances, with Ajay Olson ’23 and Cheng Xing ’23 honored as MVPs of the meet.
Emily Dobson, Bowdoin women’s basketball assistant coach, stepped down from the team this past week after holding the position for just seven months. During her stint with the team, Dobson helped lead the Polar Bears to a 14-3 record (4-1 NESCAC).
SPLASH SISTERS
The women’s basketball team, led by impressive three-point shooting performances from Sela Kay ’23 and Annie Boasberg ’22, improved to a record of 14-3 (4-1 NESCAC) following a commanding four-game winning streak. Over the course of the streak, Kay averaged nearly three made three-pointers per game and Boasberg boasted an impressive 46% from beyond the arc to propel their team to the top of the NESCAC standings.
At the beginning of winter break, the College barred all those outside of the College’s COVID-19 testing program from attending indoor sporting events for the break’s duration. Whereas the new policy has led to a loss of a community for players, it has provided some surprise positives as well.
In the official preseason rankings that were recently released by D3hoops.com, the women’s basketball team was ranked 13th overall in Division III and second in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), behind only Tufts University.
To quote Thin Lizzy’s hit song, the [Bears] are back in town. The successes of the College’s women’s basketball team are formidable: the team has posted a winning overall record since the 1990s, leads the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) in championship victories and has been in the finals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III championship in the last two completed tournaments.
Over the course of her 13-year career at Bowdoin, women’s basketball Head Coach Adrienne Shibles has impacted the lives of each of her athletes and brought the program to unprecedented heights. Under her leadership, the team appeared at the NCAA tournament 11 times and won two NESCAC championships, solidifying Shibles’ spot as Bowdoin’s winningest women’s basketball coach of all time.
Adrienne Shibles, Head Coach of the women’s basketball team, has accepted an offer to become head coach of the Dartmouth College women’s basketball team. Over 12 seasons, the Polar Bears’ record was 281-65, making the NCAA tournament 11 times.
Editor’s note 05/02/2021 at 10:28 a.m.: A previous version of this article stated that the NESCAC formed in 1999. This article has been updated to reflect the fact that this was when Bowdoin joined the NESCAC, not when the NESCAC formed.
On March 17, USA Basketball announced that Adrienne Shibles, head coach of Bowdoin women’s basketball, will serve as the 2021 head coach of the U16 National Team. Shibles will be responsible for developing the team throughout the year and will take a month off from Bowdoin women’s basketball to lead the national team in a tournament run by the Federal International Basketball Association (FIBA).
Graduating in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic meant many changes to post-grad plans for the Class of 2020. However, for former women’s basketball team captain and Division III (DIII) standout Maddie Hasson ’20, basketball has managed to stay a constant in her transition to life after Bowdoin.
The Bowdoin Hall of Honor, founded in 2002, biannually inducts classes of five to six outstanding members of Bowdoin’s athletic community. Candidates are usually nominated by other alumni, and the finalists are chosen by a committee of seven former Bowdoin athletes.
TIME FOR A BREAK
Fall break is almost here, and the athletic department has worked hard to make sure that students on campus can sweat out all their anxieties in the athletics facilities over the weekend.
Unfazed and determined despite having to watch their fellow athletes at other NESCACs returning to campus to practice and play together while they remain physically separated, the Bowdoin women’s basketball team has been training, adapting and staying connected since the summer months, hoping for a traditional season come winter.
On March 19, Maddie Hasson ’20 was named the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) NCAA Division III Player of the Year, the most prestigious individual honor in DIII women’s basketball. Hasson is only the third Bowdoin athlete to win the award, following in the footsteps of Eileen Flaherty ’07 and Kate Kerrigan ’18.
On Thursday, the NCAA announced that it would cancel all remaining championship events for the winter and spring athletic seasons due to the threat of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). This decision will immediately impact the Bowdoin women’s basketball team, whose playoff run was cut short and whose season ended with the decision.
Due to the developing threat of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the College today announced its decision to hold the three women’s basketball NCAA sectional games that will be hosted at Bowdoin this weekend without allowing any spectators into the arena.
The Bowdoin women’s basketball team today won its first NESCAC championship since 2009, toppling undefeated No. 1 seed Tufts, 70-60.
The victory gave Bowdoin its ninth NESCAC crown, setting a conference record.
Bowdoin started out hot, opening the road game on a 13-2 run, and held an eight-point lead at halftime.
Last Friday, the women’s basketball team hit the first road bump in an otherwise spectacular season that has become the norm for the Polar Bears in recent years. In front of a crowd of 1,400 in Morrell Gym, the venue’s max capacity, the Jumbos pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 97-88 win after both teams traded the lead for most of the game.
With its record standing at a perfect 17-0 after two resounding wins against rivals Middlebury and Williams last weekend, the Bowdoin women’s basketball team is on the verge of entering the most challenging stretch of its schedule, where it will face six NESCAC opponents starting Saturday.
For the past two years, the women’s basketball team made it to the NCAA Division III championship game. The fact that both appearances resulted in losses should not overshadow the magnitude of what the team has accomplished: to be one of two teams standing after 424 others have fallen is itself a historic achievement.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Or, in the case of Bowdoin women’s basketball, of exceptional.
It’s difficult to look back on a 31-2 season and feel somehow disappointed. But it’s not impossible. In a sense, we, the fans, are spoiled.
The women’s basketball team fell 81-67 to Thomas More (33-0) in the NCAA DIII championship game in Salem, Virginia, Saturday night. It is the second straight year Bowdoin has fallen just short of the title, after the Polar Bears lost to Amherst in the championship game last year.
Strange things happen when you’re very high up. You lose perspective. Things get a little blurry. Vertigo sets in. And if this past week of women’s basketball has been one thing, it has been vertiginous.
After walking all over Middlebury in Saturday’s semifinal, the Polar Bears suffered their first loss of the season, falling to third-ranked Tufts, 69–75, in the finals of the NESCAC tournament on Sunday.
Women’s basketball suffered its first loss of the season on Sunday, falling to the Tufts Jumbos 69–75 in the finals of the NESCAC tournament. Tufts, coming off a last-minute upset of second-ranked Amherst in yesterday afternoon’s semifinal, claimed its third NESACAC title in program history, its second since 2015, and secured an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.
The top-seeded women’s basketball team (26-0, 11-0 NESCAC) finished off fifth-seeded Middlebury (16-7, 5-6 NESCAC) in the semifinals of the NESCAC tournament on Saturday afternoon to advance to tomorrow’s final game. The Polar Bears have not advanced to the NESCAC final since 2015, when they fell to Tufts, and have not won the tournament since 2009, Head Coach Adrienne Shibles’s first year at the program.
The women’s basketball team secured its 25th consecutive win with a 96-75 defeat of Connecticut College in the NESCAC quarterfinals last Saturday. Now the team will face No. 5-seed Middlebury. The game promises to be a tight matchup given that the Polar Bears’ closest game of the season was their four-point win over the Panthers on February 1.
Textbook. Flawless. Ideal. Unrivaled. Masterly. Exemplary. Superlative. Pick your adjective. But one descriptor will attach itself to Bowdoin women’s basketball regular season regardless of what thesaurus you pick up: perfect.
The final weekend of the women’s basketball season was a one-two-punch that dispelled any doubt—if there was any still hanging around—about the Polar Bears’ on-court dominance.
For Bowdoin women’s basketball (20-0, NESCAC 6-0), the story of Saturday’s 65-56 victory over the Amherst Mammoths (17-2, NESCAC 4-1) began 315 days earlier in Rochester, Minnesota. It was there, in the Mayo Civic Center, that the undefeated Mammoths finished off the Polar Bears, 65-45, to earn their second consecutive Division III National Championship title.
If you noticed something different at the Bowdoin-Colby hockey game last weekend, it was probably a live rendition of “Sweet Caroline” or “The Middle” between periods, provided by the new Bowdoin Pep Band.
The Pep Band was officially charted by Student Activities last fall, but it is not altogether new to Bowdoin sports culture.
Last weekend in a matchup against Colby in Morrell Gymnasium, Abby Kelly ’19 became the 15th person in Bowdoin women’s basketball history to reach 1,000 career points. The team celebrated this milestone along with its 72-59 win over the Mules for the program’s 17th consecutive win to begin the season.
Ever since last year’s momentous NCAA tournament run ended in a second place finish, the Bowdoin women’s basketball team has been looking towards the start of its season as the beginning of its journey to avenge its loss against Amherst in the national championship game.
In a packed stadium in Rochester, Minn., the women’s basketball team (29-3, NESCAC 9-1) faced defending champion Amherst (33-0, NESCAC 10-0) in the NCAA Division III championship. While the first three quarters remained close, the Mammoths pulled away from the Polar Bears in the final quarter, winning 65-45.
After posting an incredible 9-1 regular season record and 24-1 overall record, the women’s basketball team was upset by Tufts (24-2, NESCAC 8-2) 60-48 in the NESCAC Semifinals in its first double-digit loss of the season.
The women’s basketball team (21-1, NESCAC 7-1) is continuing its strong play and has now won over 20 games for its fourth year in a row after beating Middlebury 70-52 on Friday. This is the ninth time the Polar Bears have reached this plateau in the 10 years Head Coach Adrienne Shibles has been leading the program.
This past weekend, the women’s basketball team displayed another stellar performance, beating Hamilton College 87-54 and extending its undefeated streak to 19 games. The streak, however, was broken on Saturday in a nail-biting 49-45 loss against Amherst, the top-ranked team in the nation.
This Wednesday, the women’s basketball team dominated University of Maine-Farmington 109-24, extending its undefeated record to 8-0.
The team scored 60 points in just the first half of the game, setting a new program record for points in a single half.
Many athletes at Bowdoin become close with their teammates and other athletes, but for basketball players Lydia Caputi ’18 and Blake Gordon ’18, their friendship began far before Bowdoin.
Gordon and Caputi have been next door neighbors since the time they were four and five years old, respectively.
After suffering an incredibly close 49-44 loss to Tufts last Saturday, the women’s basketball team secured an at-large bid to the NCAA Division III tournament to keep its season alive. This will be Bowdoin’s 17th NCAA tournament appearance, and despite the team’s shortcomings in NESCAC playoffs, the team is hopeful about its prospects against SUNY New Paltz this weekend.