There was a lot of action in the Wesleyan club sports world this weekend. Water polo hosted the New England Championships, soccer played a round robin tourney at Connecticut College and hockey had its first game of the season. Let’s begin with water polo’s busy weekend.
After finishing the regular season third in its division behind nationally ranked Yale and Williams, the squad was looking to finish up second to none. The team began Saturday by dismantling Amherst 12-3. Then, that night they took on their bitter rivals, Williams. With the stands full and enthused, the third match of the season between these two teams got under way. After falling behind 2-0 early in the first quarter, the team settled down and battled their way to a 4-3 half-time lead.
Marred by another slow start to the half, they fell behind 5-4 but again managed to claw back to a 5-5 tie by the end of the third quarter. With the crowd going bananas, Williams scored a couple of goals off of turnovers, taking a 7-5 advantage into the final minutes.
At that point, according to Ben Byers ’07, “we knew we had to execute to perfection to have a chance to win.”
Quite a few opportunities presented themselves in the final moments but the ball kept finding the post instead of the back of the net. The Cards managed to cut the deficit to 1 with a 4 meter (a penalty shot) with 12 seconds left. But a last minute steal didn’t present itself and they fell to Williams by oh-so-slim of a margin.
Although they still had a chance to reach the final with a win over Yale Sunday morning, the team was pretty deflated from Saturday night’s close call. Despite playing solid defense throughout the game, they just couldn’t get it going and lost pretty handily.
That afternoon the team played a third place match against Tufts, and again they weren’t exactly themselves. The fourth quarter began with the two teams knotted at 5, and despite another slow start the team squeaked out a 7-5 win thanks to goals from John Haley ’07 and Byers.
This weekend the Cards will be playing in the Division III club championships in Rochester and will be looking to hold onto their DIII national title.
Club soccer also had a busy Saturday, playing Conn. College and Brown. With goals from Jeremy Finch ’09, Jon Gillick ’09, and Steve Pristin ’06, the team cruised to a 3-1 victory. Then, only 15 minutes after the conclusion of their first game, they went right back on the field to play Brown. They played a solid game but fell to Brown by a 2-1 margin. Although 4-5 usual starters weren’t at the games, they still managed an impressive showing and capped a fairly short fall season. They’ll practice probably for another week or so and then pick things back up in the spring.
While soccer played its last game of the season, the club hockey season got underway last Friday at Babson. Many obstacles faced us as we played a late game and only had 8 skaters. Despite being outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1, we managed to head to the locker room after one period with a 0-0 tie thanks to the heroics of goalie and co-captain Luke Basta ’06.
Things didn’t go quite as well in the second period. Only having 8 guys out there began to catch up to us as we fell down by five goals by the end of the period. We also got knocked around a little bit as the Babson team played a fairly dirty brand of hockey, going for the big hit instead of the puck. Towards the end of the period we lost Scott Quarrier ’06 to a knee injury, which left us with only 7 very tired skaters. Despite this, we managed to play the opposition pretty tight in the third period, but unfortunately we didn’t manage to score in the game. So after one game, my “got decked” count is three, and I have to tell you that it could have been a lot worse as I evaded many a hit.
This fine parent’s weekend we, club hockey, have a home game on Saturday at six o’ clock against Sacred Heart so you should all definitely come down to Freeman and check us out. We’ll be at full strength this time around so bring yourselves, your folks, and whomever else you’d like.
So that’s my walk of the beat for this first week of November. Be sure to have a good one, and I’ll see ya next time.
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