Women’s lacrosse faces Gordon, loses
On Tuesday night, host Gordon College beat the MIT Women’s Lacrosse team 16-13 in both teams’ first game of the season. Senior Katie M. Kauffman led the Engineers with five points on three goals and two assists while picking up three ground balls.
MIT Cycling dominates at season’s first invitational
19 MIT riders competed at the “Frozen Toed Season Opener” hosted by Rutgers University on March 3 and 4, the opening race weekend of the 2012 Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) road-cycling season. Led by captains Adam P. Bry G and Katie J. Quinn G, who emerged from their victorious weekends as conference individual points leaders, MIT took an early lead in the overall team standings with the most dominant performance by any team in recent ECCC memory.
LA Galaxy to keep Beckham
This past January, professional soccer player David Beckham ended doubts about leaving the MLS after he re-signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy for an additional two years. As the end of Beckham’s five year contract drew near in the late months of 2011, it was unclear whether he would stay with the American club or move to French club, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). Earlier in 2011, PSG made serious attempts to sign Beckham to their squad, promising to more than match any offers by the Galaxy. Although Beckham deferred his decision until after the MLS Cup Championship, he finally announced that he would stay with the Galaxy. This decision marks a renewed commitment to the Galaxy, the MLS, and soccer in America.
Basketball makes history, advances to Sweet 16
The MIT’s Men’s Basketball team made program history last weekend, advancing to the nation’s Sweet 16 for the first time in Institute history, beating Skidmore and Farmingdale State. As a team, MIT picked up five double-doubles this weekend en route to the team’s hope of a national championship.
SPORTS SHORT
MIT’s Men’s Tennis defeated Bentley on Friday and served the Falcons their first loss of the season. MIT beat Bentley 7-2, walking away with a 3-2 record and a national overall rank of 25th while the Falcons’ record declined to 6-1.
Men’s fencing team wins third at Vassar
With a record of 62-24, the MIT Men’s Fencing team finished third out of 11 teams at the New England Championship hosted by Vassar College on Saturday. Sophomore Ehsan Izadmehr registered the best individual outing for the Engineers as he placed fifth overall in the sabre competition. He compiled a 7-3 ledger in the A pool and went 4-1 in semifinal action before posting a 2-3 mark in the final round.
MIT Volleyball victorious
The nationally-ranked No. 5 MIT Men’s Volleyball team won the Baruch College Invitational this past weekend with a 3-1 record. On Saturday, the Engineers defeated the No. 12 Bearcats (25-20, 25-20, 25-27, 25-21) but fell to Kean University (26-24, 22-25, 29-27, 25-20). The next day, MIT earned hard-fought victories over No. 15 Emmanuel College (25-17, 23-25, 25-18, 32-30) and No. 7 Stevens Institute of Technology (25-19, 26-24, 18-25, 11-25, 17-15).
Men’s basketball wins NEWMAC championships
The MIT’s Men’s Basketball team had reason to celebrate last weekend, winning two games to earn the title of NEWMAC champions.
SPORTS SHORT
This past weekend our rifle team defeated Penn State in the Air Rifle competition of the MAC Championships. The Engineers finished the championships with 2249 points, a resounding 20 points ahead of Penn State. The Engineers’ sweet success may have come as a shock to the tough competition at Penn State, but the Engineers were hardly surprised. According to team captain Elizabeth A. Phillips ’13, the Engineers’ exceptional performance was a testament to the huge work that each member of the team put in over the last few months of the season. The team exhibited its admirable drive and unity as many shooters shot 4–13 points higher than their regular season averages for air rifle. Although the Engineers were disappointed to not qualify as a team for the smallbore side of the competition, they dominated this event individually. In fact, the sum of their individual smallbore scores would have put them ahead of Penn State as well as the Virginia Military Institute to win the division. The Engineers’ victory at the MAC Championships was a tremendous result and a great conclusion to the season.
Men’s Ice Hockey makes dramatic win in overtime
This past weekend, the MIT Men’s Ice Hockey team captured its second consecutive Northeast Collegiate Hockey Association (NECHA) Championship in the American Conference Finals, capping off a storybook season with a heart-pounding overtime win. The Engineers successfully defended their 2010-2011 NECHA Cup victory, the first since MIT last won it in 2001.
Where has Jeremy Lin been hiding?
For the past few weeks, “Linsanity” has been sweeping the nation. For those unfamiliar with this phenomenon, it is the buzz centered around 23-year-old Harvard graduate and New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Shu-How Lin. Since earning a starting position on the team in early February, Lin has averaged 24.6 points, 9.2 assists, and 2.4 steals per game, scoring more total points in his first five starts than any player since the merger of the ABA and the NBA in 1977. However, Jeremy Lin’s story is not one of “how did he get so good so quickly?” but rather “how did he go unnoticed for so long?”
STEVE CHO ‘15: Prince of Squash
Sung Won (Steve) Cho ’15 is a freshman on the MIT Varsity Squash Team. After starting to play squash a couple of months before moving to the United States from South Korea in eighth grade, Steve went on to play for the Division I Groton High School Varsity Squash Team. He has excelled in some of the premiere squash competitions including the Massachusetts Junior Open and the New England Interscholastic Squash Association (NEISA) Individual Championships. Steve will most likely declare Course 7 (Biology) or Course 20 (Biological Engineering) by the end of this semester. The Tech sat down with Steve’s to discuss life as a student-athlete on the MIT Varsity Squash Team.
Engineers fall to Clark, 61-50
Pink balloons lined Rockwell Cage Saturday afternoon while fans dressed in pink packed the bleachers. Not only was it Senior Day for the MIT Women’s Basketball team’s final home game, but it was also the “Play4Kay” initiative. This fundraiser by the Kay Row Cancer Fund, in collaboration with the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, aimed to raise funds for breast cancer research and generate awareness on the courts and in communities.
Swimming and Diving takes NEWMAC title
Our Engineers got off to a decisive start at this year’s NEWMAC swimming and diving finals this weekend. The men’s and women’s teams opened the meet winning a combined 8 of 13 events. By the end of the first evening, the men’s team led with an impressive 323 points to second place United States Coast Guard Academy with 220 points. The women’s team held a strong lead with 323 points over Springfield College’s 256.
SPORTS SHORTS
Over the weekend, the MIT Figure Skating Club hosted the Eastern Sectional Intercollegiate Team Skating Competition. The USFSA-sanctioned competition included skaters from 20 universities on the East Coast. The Engineers last hosted this event two years ago, when they finished sixth overall out of 13 schools; this time, they finished seventh with 28 points. The University of Delaware, Dartmouth, and Boston University took the top three spots with 125, 100, and 88 points, respectively.