Gymnastics wins!
The MIT Gymnastics teams competed at the National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastics Clubs (NAIGC) championships last weekend in Richmond, Va. The women’s team took first place overall in the team competition. The men’s team did not have enough entrants to enter the team competition but still performed well.
Women’s lacrosse wins against Wellesley College
Holding a one-goal advantage midway through the second half, MIT’s Stephanie C. Leger ’11 won the first of four straight draw controls, helping spark a 5-1 run that secured an 18-13 victory over Wellesley College in a NEWMAC women’s lacrosse game on Tuesday afternoon. Leger finished with a game-high 11 draw controls, just one shy of tying the Institute record, and also posed two of her three goals during the late spurt.
Women’s hoops is boring?
For some people, watching women’s basketball is about as exciting as watching stalactites grow and as unpredictable as Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. For the past few years, it has been easy to see why. After all, Stanford and Connecticut have made it to the Final Four for each of the past four seasons, and Connecticut has won six titles since 2000. This year, nobody expected anything but a matchup of those teams — both number one seeds — in what would have been a rematch of last year’s title game. However, Notre Dame’s upset of Connecticut and Texas A&M’s upset of Stanford in the national semifinals set up a final with no number one seeds for just the second time in women’s tournament history, and resulted in Texas A&M’s first NCAA championship — for either the men or the women — in the school’s history.
Tennis sweeps Bates for sixth straight win
The MIT Women’s Tennis team swept Bates on Saturday to bring their overall season record to 11-4.
Sport Taekwondo dominates in West Point Tournament
The MIT Sport Taekwondo Club recently competed in the Eastern Collegiate Taekwondo Conference (ECTC) West Point Tournament. Despite the 3 a.m. bus trip down to Princeton, N.J., the Engineers — coached by Dan Chuang and led by captains Jason J. Uh ’10 and Erika Lee ’12 — achieved a landslide victory. MIT is currently leading the conference with 1589 points — 164 points over the second-place Cornell and several hundred points ahead of 28 other universities.
Sports Shorts
The Men’s Volleyball team finished up their postseason run this past weekend, advancing to the quarterfinals of the North East Collegiate Volleyball Association (NECVA) Championship tournament and collecting many awards along the way. Seeded No. 5 in the tournament, MIT swept No. 12 Stevenson University (25-18, 25-17, 25-19) but lost to No. 4 Philadelphia Biblical University (17-25, 19-25, 26-24, 25-17, 15-6). Timothy R. Lee ’11 and David R. Thomas ’12 represented the nationally-ranked No. 10 Engineers (29-7) on the NECVA All-Tournament Team.
Cinderella makes it to the ball, but then trips...
This year’s Division I NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship game featured the third-seeded University of Connecticut Huskies against the eighth-seeded Butler Bulldogs. Despite possessing the lead after a brutal, defense-dominated first half, the Butler team completely fell apart in the second half, losing their second NCAA Championship game in a row in what will no doubt be considered one of the least memorable finals in the history of the tournament.
Baseball takes two out of three against Coast Guard
MIT’s offense, rendered dormant by WPI pitching last week, erupted for 22 runs in two games as the Engineers took two of three games from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy this past weekend, improving their overall record to 14-6.
BETH STAVELY ‘11 Flying, soaring, and winning
Elizabeth L. “Beth” Stavely ’11, who was named an All-American diver this year at the NCAA Division III championship, enjoys falling from great heights. Before coming to MIT, Beth completed a skydiving course and earned her “A” license, which allows her to jump from an airplane alone. She has also been honing her daredevil skills by taking classes at a trapeze school in Reading, Mass., since the summer. This love for falling and soaring through the air may have begun in her early years when she started gymnastics at age 4. A competitive gymnast since elementary school, Beth continued with the sport here at MIT.
Women’s Tennis plays in Wellesley Invitational
This past weekend MIT Women’s Tennis played in the Wellesley Invitational. In the first match they played SUNY New Paltz. The doubles matches went quickly. The number one team of Lauren C. Quisenberry ’14 and Candace L. Wu ’14 and the number two team of Julia C. Hsu ’14 and Bianca M. Dumitrascu ’13 both defeated their opponents with a decisive score of 8-1. At number three Melissa A. Diskin ’11 and Katharine A. O’Neal ’14 defeated their opponents 8-3. During the doubles matches, Jenny C. Dohlman ’11 played an exhibition match at seven singles and completed her match quickly, defeating her opponent 8-0, hardly losing a point. Overall, MIT went into the singles matches ahead 3-0.
SPORTS SHORTS
The MIT Women’s Openweight Crew team competed this past weekend against Boston College in the Inaugural Cup. This was the first race of the season.
After Tour de Troy, Cycling boasts 300 pt. division lead
MIT Cycling returned from yet another weekend race with a victory. The Engineers are having one of their best road cycling seasons in recent years: four weeks into an eight-week season, MIT has a commanding division lead of nearly 300 points over Bucknell University, as well as the overall lead by 50 points.
Baseball improves to 12-4 with WPI walk-off win
Holding onto a 1-0 lead in the top of the third, starter Chrisopher L. Vaughan ’12 found himself in a bases-loaded jam, pitching on a frigid Tuesday afternoon against Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This is the type of situation when dugout chatter tends to pick up. Dugout chatter is a rhythmic composition of the digits of the player’s numbers (2 and 8, in the case of Vaughan), a disyllabic nickname (Vaughanie), and exhortations like “here we go” or “battle.” The presence and intensity of the chatter matters far more than the content. As such, heads turn when someone from the dugout artfully weaves in the suggestion that Vaughan should actually “have fun” and that, in fact, “baseball is fun.”
The Tech’s sports staff weigh in as Final Four compete for NCAA Championship
From an original field of 68 teams in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, four teams — VCU, Butler, Connecticut, and Kentucky — are left, their hopes for a national title still alive. Both VCU and Butler, seeded eleventh and eighth, respectively, reached the Final Four by way of a string of upsets; Kentucky and Connecticut had close calls of their own, with the Wildcats upsetting Ohio State on their final possession and the Huskies edging Arizona by two points to reach the Final Four.
Men’s Swim takes 4th
The MIT Men’s Swimming team competed at Division III Nationals last weekend. Five swimmers, as well as five relay teams, earned All-American finishes, as the Engineers took fourth overall, the best finish in program history.