Sports Shorts
Leonard, Cheney earn weekly honors
Columbus Leonard ’12 and Craig Cheney ’14 earned Player of the Week honors from the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) on Wednesday. Leonard was named the CWPA Northern Division Defensive Player of the Week while Cheney was tabbed as Rookie of the Week. The water polo team beat Connecticut College on Friday night, 16-6, and Queens College on Saturday, 15-14, before falling to St. Francis College, 16-7, bringing their record to 7-6.
Leonard had a record-breaking performance in net on Saturday against Queens College, setting a new single-game MIT record for saves in the back-and-forth shootout.
The Engineers needed every one of his 21 stops to hold off Queens, 15-14. Leonard also made 14 saves in the loss to St. Francis later in the day and held Connecticut College scoreless while playing just the first quarter of Friday night’s game.
Cheney tallied 10 goals in the three games over the weekend, including a team-high six in the win over Queens. He leads the team with 35 in his rookie campaign.
The Engineers host Harvard in their final conference match of the season before traveling to Connecticut College on Saturday for the Division III Eastern Championship.
Rifle wins smallbore and loses air rifle vs. John Jay
The rifle team split its match against John Jay College of Criminal Justice in its second home competition of the fall. All four MIT shooters performed well to outscore John Jay, 2118-2044, in smallbore. Tech lost narrowly in air rifle, 2183-2170.
Nigel C. Kojimoto 12 and Elizabeth A. Phillips 13 posted scores of 553 and 544, respectively, good for the second and third highest totals of the match. Lionel F. Sotomayor 12 (518) and Timothy R. Jenks 13 (503) also surpassed the 500-point plateau to contribute to the win.
Despite the close loss, a number of Tech shooters posted career highs in air rifle. Phillips (556), Rebecca L. Gould 11 (529) and Christian. A. Valledor 12 (502) each had the best scores of their collegiate careers in the competition. Kojimoto once again paced the team with a score of 568, including three shots of at least 96 points.
The Engineers also picked up a sweep of Hofstra University in postal results, winning 2149-1405 in smallbore and 2161-1515 in air. The team remains perfect on the season in smallbore at 3-0 and is an even 2-2 in air rifle competition.
MIT will host the U.S. Naval Academy, Wentworth Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Maritime Academy next weekend beginning Friday, October 22 at 5 p.m.