Archives: Athletics

June 25, 2008

ESPN interviews Ken Catanella '97, "NBA Stat Geek"

ESPN.com’s Henry Abbott interviews Ken Catanella ‘97 for the TrueHoop blog as the NBA draft approaches. Catanella, a described “stat geek,” is the Coordinator of Statistical Analysis for the New Jersey Nets, and has some unique qualifications:

Catanella has two things that a lot of similar experts do not: the knowledge of basketball that comes with having played as a professional, and hands-on experience doing rigorous multivariate analysis on Wall Street. Following graduation from Amherst College in 1997, Catanella analyzed arena finance for professional teams, and valued publicly traded companies.

At Amherst he was both a player and later an assistant coach, and then played professionally for the German Bundesliga’s Cologne 99ers, where he also later served as the German team’s Assistant GM.

While earning his MBA at Duke in 2004 and 2005, Catanella assisted the men’s basketball teams, developing analytical tools and systems for Coach Krzyzewski’s staff. At the same time, Catanella interned for the 76ers’ front office.

The interview gives a sense of the mind-boggling array of statistics Catanella keeps track of and analyzes as the team sorts out potential draft picks:

[Q:] Do I sense that you are not even looking at the same sets of numbers for every prospect?

[A:]It depends on the position. And it can get very detailed.

We chart, essentially, every game that every draft prospect has played on video, and we track just about every category you can imagine.

Brian Meacham '97 at 01:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 12, 2008

Williams baseball game postponed

The 149th anniversary baseball game against Williams scheduled for today (Saturday the 12th) in Pittsfield has been postponed due to weather. It will be played at Waconah Park on May 4th, where it will be the last regular season game for both teams before the NESCAC tournament. The home doubleheader with Williams scheduled for Sunday is still on.

Parker Morse '96 at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2008

Baseball going back to Pittsfield to play Williams

The Berkshire press (which is to say, the Berkshire Eagle and some New York sites) is reporting today that next weekend, the 149th annual playing of the oldest series in collegiate sports—the Amherst-Williams baseball game, believed to have been, in 1859, the first-ever intercollegiate baseball game—will return to its original site, or at least the same town.

According to the Eagle:

When Amherst College challenged rival Williams to a “friendly game of ball” in the summer of 1859, the two schools couldn’t agree on a site until the Pittsfield Base Ball Club stepped up and offered its playing grounds, a field located near the intersection of Maplewood Avenue and North Street.

Of course, as noted in this News 10 report, there is a coffee shop on that location now, so the game to be played on Saturday, April 12 will be held at Waconah Park in Pittsfield. Before the game, a representative from the College Baseball Hall of Fame will designate Pittsfield “The Birthplace of College Baseball” and a sign with that logo will be unveiled at Waconah Park.

After today’s win over Hamilton, this year’s Amherst team stands at 10-5-1; a doubleheader with Hamilton tomorrow and a Tuesday afternoon game at Keene State stand between the them and next weekend’s Williams matchup. The Pittsfield game will be followed by a doubleheader against Williams at home on Sunday the 13th.

Amherst won the 1859 game 73-32 after 25 innings. The Eagle suggests that this year’s return to Pittsfield might be a “dry run” for a more elaborate commemoration of the 150th year.

Parker Morse '96 at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2008

The First Televised Intercollegiate Quidditch Match

Well, if you can actually call it that, as actual play was halted frequently for television breaks. A fair-sized crowd including President Tony Marx and a number of children in costume turned up on the Freshman Quad this morning despite snow and chilly rain to watch Middlebury and Amherst play “muggle Quidditch.” Play heavily favored Middlebury, unsurprisingly, but from what we saw on television, the names of the town and the college were properly pronounced (that is, with the silent “h”.)

One detail which didn’t make television was the banner reading “Huck Fufflepuff”, a reference to T-shirts about Williams often seen during football season. Another sign re-defined “CBS” as “Chasers, Beaters and Seekers”.

A few more of my photos are online, but we did see Sam Masinter ‘04 from Public Affairs there, so better images are likely to be on the College website (and in the Alumni magazine).

Update: Thanks to RB, who dug up the video for us.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:14 AM | Comments (2)

March 27, 2008

"Muggle Quiddich" is coming

The College had the lead story in today’s Gazette, but the students in the photo were from Middlebury. The Vermont college has taken the lead in promoting “muggle Quiddich,” a version of the game described in the wildly popular “Harry Potter” books, and Middlebury’s experienced team is coming to Amherst on Friday to play the new “Amherst Acromantulas.” The game is being played at an odd hour—7 AM on Friday—because David Price, meteorologist for CBS’s “Early Show”, will be attending to cover the game.

“I thought it was going to be a nice, casual game,” said Amherst team captain Robyn Bahr. “This is pretty big for Amherst.”

According to Katherine Duke ‘05 of the Public Affairs office, the game is organized by the “Intercollegiate Quidditch Association” which was founded at Middlebury, and the match will be held on the freshman quad. There will be another “demonstration game” between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, an hour at which college students are significantly more likely to be awake. Middlebury is on spring break this week, and the Amherst stop is part of its “first-ever spring break Quidditch tour”. An MTV camera crew accompanied the Middlebury team for the early part of its tour.

According to the Gazette,

The fast-paced, multiple-ball game will be played between two teams of red- and purple-caped students running around with brooms between their legs. Bahr … describes Quiddich as a blend of dodge ball, tag and European hand ball.

Bahr described the game as it’s played by “muggles” in more detail in the Student earlier this year.

Middlebury hosted a “Quiddich World Cup Fall Festival” in 2006 and 2007. The University of Pennsylvania, Bard, Princeton, Columbia, Vassar, Wesleyan and Dartmouth all claim teams, but Friday’s game will be a first for Amherst.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2008

Basketball falls in national title game

This afternoon, the Amherst men’s basketball team, looking for their second consecutive national title, ran into an absolute buzzsaw in the Division III national title game in Salem, Va.

Washington University (St. Louis) shot 60% from the floor (including 46% from three point range) to record a 90-68 win. Amherst was also shooting at or over 50% for most of the game, and had closed the gap to six early in the second half, but had no answer for Wash U.’s offense led by Troy Ruths, who scored 33 points. Amherst did not play their best game (shooting 5-20 from 3 point range), but Wash U. deserves all the credit for a nearly flawless performance.

Although a disappointing finish to a season in which Amherst was ranked #1for the majority of the winter, this game was the last for a group of seniors who provided four remarkable seasons, losing a total of 12 games over four years. Congratulations to Coach Dave Hixon, the players and all their supporters on another deep playoff run and their national runners-up finish.

Dave Nardolillo '98 at 05:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 26, 2008

"All-Academic team of the year"

Before the basketball playoff season gets seriously underway with both Amherst teams seeded first in the NESCAC, I want to gloat for a few more sentences about the national champion women’s cross country squad.

Today I got a press release from the US Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (with the tongue-tripping abbreviation USTFCCCA) announcing that the Lady Jeffs are the USTFCCCA All-Academic Team of the Year.

Amherst also won the New England Regional cross country title and the New England Small College Athletic Conference cross country title. The regional and national titles were the first for the program. Off the track, the Lord Jeffs maintained a team cumulative 3.64 GPA.

“This award represents everything that running and being at Amherst is about for us,” head coach Erik Nedeau said. “Our kids are extremely dedicated in the classroom and they carry that mindset onto the course each and every day. We are extremely proud of our runners for the way they perform on race day, and this award is equally as important and impressive.”

This GPA probably makes little sense to those of us remembering the 16-point GPA system, but USTFCCCA provides a comparison: the highest GPA in Division III came from Hamline University, whose team had a 3.74 average. All but two of the 32 teams in the national championship race last November were Academic All-American teams, and the two exceptions are more likely to have not supplied complete data than to have had lousy GPAs.

Parker Morse '96 at 08:26 PM | Comments (1)

January 09, 2008

Amherst basketball starts 12-0 . . .

…normally not a surprising headline, but this time we are talking about the women’s team. The 12-game streak, punctuated by last night’s 50-point victory over Southern Vermont matches a streak set in the 1985-86 season. The Jeffs go for the school record Saturday at 2pm vs. Williams at LeFrak.

The men’s team, in case you are wondering, is 8-2 and and ranked third in the latest D3hoops.com national poll. The defending national champions will also host WIlliams, ranked number four and currently undefeated, on Saturday after the women’s contest.

UPDATE 1/20/08: The women defeated Williams and continue to roll after wins over Bates and Tufts lifted their record to an unprecedented 16-0. The win over Tufts was particularly notable as the Jumbos were undefeated and ranked 14th in the D3hoops.com national poll heading into the contest. The Amherst women can expect their national ranking of 22 to improve after this weekend’s results.

The men’s team stands at 10-2 and ranked 3rd nationally having defeated Williams and Bates in the last week.

Dave Nardolillo '98 at 08:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 02, 2007

Former football coach John McLaughry, 1917-2007

The Union College sports information department reports the passing of John McLaughry, coach at Union for the 1947-1949 seasons and at Amherst from 1950 to 1958, preceding James “the Darp” Ostendarp.

After leaving Amherst, McLaughry finished his career at Brown University, his alma mater, coaching there for seven years and working in athletics administration for a further 13.

Parker Morse '96 at 05:27 PM | Comments (1)

November 28, 2007

Photo with the trophy

We promised photos of the women’s cross-country team winning the NCAA Division 3 title earlier this month at St. Olaf’s College in Northfield, Minnesota. There’s an extensive gallery of photos of the meet, some of them taken by the author of this post, now online at eliterunning.com, a site run by cross-country assistant coach Alison Wade. There’s also another gallery with all the Amherst shots (plus more pre-race and post-race photos.)

We’ll stick with this one, though this pre-race shot gives an idea what the day was like for the Jeffs. From left to right: Sophie Galleher ‘10, Kim Partee ‘08, Heather Wilson ‘08, Coach Erik Nedeau, Meg Ray ‘08, (Nicole Anderson ‘09 and Caitlin McDermott-Murphy ‘09, obscured), and Elise Tropiano ‘09.

Parker Morse '96 at 08:53 AM

November 18, 2007

Three Amherst runners and a bear

This image may only make sense to alumni who have run against Williams’ cross-country and track teams, but as promised, a photo from Saturday’s Nationals in Northfield, Minnesota. From left to right, Anne McNamara ‘04, John Stanton-Geddes ‘04, and Laurel Kilgour ‘03. The bear has an Amherst “A” sewn to the back of its head, if I recall correctly.

More photos, perhaps including a trophy, to come.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:09 PM

November 17, 2007

National champions!

The Amherst women’s cross country team won their first-ever national title this morning at St. Olaf’s College in Northfield, Minnesota.

The Amherst women, ranked #1 nationally throughout the season, scored 120 points; Plattsburgh State, the runner-up, scored 159. (Cross country team scores are the sum of the places of a team’s first five runners; low score wins.) Washington University (194) and Calvin College (199) challenged as well. Plattsburgh, who placed their top two in 6th and 7th, led through three runners, with Heather Wilson ‘08, Elise Tropiano ‘09 and Kim Partee ‘08 leading Amherst. but Caitlin McDermott-Murphy ‘09 and Sophia Galleher ‘10, running 4th and 5th for Amherst, closed the door on the competition (in 54th and 64th overall, before non-scoring individuals were removed for team scoring), both of them finishing before any other teams’ fourth runners. Nicole Anderson ‘09 and Meg Ray ‘08, as non-scoring “displacement” runners, pushed Plattsburgh back still more, as they also finished before most teams’ fourth and fifth scorers.

For Amherst, the win was a relief after a narrow 1-point loss to Middlebury in 2006. Sarah Zerzan of Willamette was the individual champion, defending her title with a whopping 23-second margin on the fast course.

Amherst’s men, making their second-ever appearance as a team at Nationals, had their best-ever finish as well, matching their pre-meet ranking by finishing twelfth. After winning a closely-matched New England regional by one point over Williams, the Jeffs were the second New England team at Nationals, with Williams 10th. The gap was only four points, with Williams scoring 399 and Amherst 403; Wisconsin-Platteville, in between, scored 402. NYU scored 128 to take the team title over Haverford (150) and Platteville’s Tyler Sigl won the individual title.

Full results, for those like me who like reading the fine print, are available from St. Olaf. We will have photos, hopefully, later today, certainly by the middle of next week. I had lunch with a group of other alumni who were out to see the meet, and I have been promised a photo of three Amherst alums with the Williams Bear.

Parker Morse '96 at 04:57 PM

November 16, 2007

The post season

Though football is over and the Sports Information page lists lots of winter teams in the upcoming games box, three teams of fall-sport Jeffs are still active, expecting to wrap up their seasons this weekend.

Volleyball wrapped up last night, losing their NCAA quarterfinal game to Illinois’ Juniata College but finishing their season with the best record in program history.

The NCAA sectionals in men’s soccer will be the easiest to reach from the Amherst area; they will play York College of Pennsylvania at 1:30 PM on Saturday at Middlebury. Should they win, they will play the winner of the Williams-Middlebury game at 1 PM on Sunday. If the Jeffs win both games, they will head to Florida next weekend for the four-team national tournament.

AD Suzanne Coffey will be at the Division III Cross Country Nationals, hosted by St. Olaf’s College in Northfield, Minnesota, and so will we. Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams qualified for nationals, for the first time since 2003, with the men beating Williams by one point in last weekend’s New England championships to earn their spot. The Amherst women were second by one point to Middlebury in 2006, and with five of last year’s seven returning, are heavily favored to win their first national title tomorrow. Captain Heather Wilson ‘08, a three-time NESCAC runner of the week, is considered a possible individual challenger, but defending champion Heather Zerzan of Willamette University is the defending champion and is running well so far in 2007. The women’s race will be at 11 AM; the men at 12 noon.

Parker Morse '96 at 05:23 AM

November 12, 2007

One more look

Despite the outcome, it was certainly fun to see the biggest little game in the big-time spotlight. I never thought I’d see Amherst v. Williams (previewed) in high-def:

Brian Meacham '97 at 11:07 PM | TrackBack

November 06, 2007

ESPN's "College GameDay" crew to broadcast from Amherst/Williams game

We’re a little late noticing this, but the story is out: ESPN’s College GameDay program will broadcast live from a post near Williams’ Weston Field. GameDay is ESPN’s weekly Saturday morning college football preview show. In recent years, the show switched from the studio format to a travelling roadshow where the broadcast set is erected in the midst of gleeful tailgaters at the various stadiums. This is the first time a Division III locale has been chosen. ESPN will not televise the actual game; that duty again belongs to NESN, which has broadcast the game since 1996.

The last time that ESPN visited Williamstown and the Amherst/Williams game was in 1995, when the game was televised live on ESPN2, (The kickoff was at 10AM in order not to interfere with ESPN’s normal slate of Division I games). That fall, record amounts of rainfall pelted Western Massachusetts. Weston Field did not have a crown on it to facilitate drainage and, as a result, was virtually unplayable by the end of the season. Knowing the result now, one wonders why Williams did not suggest that the game be played elsewhere. The Ephs were 7-0 going into the game and had coasted through their schedule. We were 5-2 and had just gotten pounded the week before by Trinity, who Williams had easily dispatched earlier in the season. Additionally, we were a little banged up; several key players on our team were out with injuries. Williams was the obvious favorite to win.

When we ran onto Weston Field for the pre-game warmup, the field was in even worse shape than had been reported. Some of the heaviest rainfall occurred during home games and the field was ripped to shreds, Large patches of the playing surface were covered with some mixture of sawdust, Quik-Dry and kitty-litter (or so it seemed). It was like trying to run on a beach with boots on. The “home field advantage” actually hurt Williams that day by neutralizing their potent offense. Neither team could mount much of a scoring threat for most of the game and the poor field conditions ruined our only field goal attempt. Late in the fourth quarter, Williams put together a drive and moved inside our five yard line. Our defense came up with a stop on fourth down after Williams decided not to attempt a game-winning field goal due to the field conditions. The game ended in a 0-0 tie, but the different reactions on the opposing sidelines after the game suggested an Amherst win and a Williams loss.

Other than the tie in 1995, Weston Field has been a house of horrors for Amherst; the Jeffs have not won on that field since 1985. Of course, this year is also the 10th anniversary of one of the more excruciating losses: the 48-46 game in 1997, often mentioned as the most entertaining contest in the rivalry. I played in that game also. We trailed by two touchdowns with less than 5 minutes to play. After rallying to score two touchdowns (thanks to two of Rich Willard’s (‘98) five touchdown passes sandwiched around a critical three-and-out provided by our defense) we faked the extra point on the second and made the two point conversion to go ahead 46-45 (as you may remember, overtime was available in college football in 1997) with less than two minutes to play. Williams then moved quickly down the field on their last possession, including a conversion on a fourth and six. A Williams freshman booted a 27 yard field goal with two seconds left for the win.

This year Amherst is 4-3, with the usual solid defense that is the hallmark of an EJ Mills coached team, but has suffered two consecutive losses in which the offense has struggled, albeit against two strong teams. Williams has won five consecutive games after losses to Bowdoin and Trinity to open the season. Both Amherst and Williams have defeated Wesleyan, so the winner of this game takes the Little Three title outright.

Best of luck to the Amherst players, Coach Mills and the rest of the coaching staff.

Beat Williams.

Dave Nardolillo '98 at 11:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 25, 2007

Another Amherst GM

The Nashua, NH Telegraph is reporting that Neal Huntington ‘91 “could be named general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates” today. The Telegraph cites “printed reports out of Pittsburgh,” (perhaps like this MLB.com report) and hedges some in light of some mixed messages from the Pirates, so naturally the news will not be confirmed until a press conference later today (Tuesday). Update: Dave tells us the news is now official.

According to the Telegraph,

The Pirates fired Dave Littlefield earlier this month with the team suffering through its 15th straight losing season and sixth since Littlefield was hired in July 2001.

The 37-year-old Huntington, who has worked in the front office of the Montreal Expos and currently the Cleveland Indians, surfaced as the front runner for the job late last week.

Huntington, like Boston Red Sox director of player development Ben Cherington ‘96, got his start in baseball management working for former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette ‘80, in Huntington’s case while Duquette was GM of the Montreal Expos in the mid-90s.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:04 AM | Comments (2)

August 20, 2007

NCSA ''Power Rankings'' place Amherst second among all colleges and universities

The National Collegiate Scouting Association, an organization that seeks to connect high school students interested in intercollegiate athletic competition with schools that most appropriately meet their individual goals has announced its 2007 “Power Rankings” which order colleges based on an average of their U.S. Sports Academy Directors’ Cup ranking, their U.S. News & World Report ranking (from the 2007 issue and not the one just released) and their NCAA student-athlete graduation rate.

For the second straight year, Amherst placed second among all colleges and universities across all NCAA athletic divisions. Parker first highlighted this ranking last year. Williams placed first again after adding another first place finish in the Director’s Cup to its success in the US News rankings.

The top ten overall schools were:

Williams College

Amherst College

Duke University

University of California-San Diego

University of Notre Dame

Stanford University

Northwestern University

Harvard University

Princeton University

Middlebury College

Dave Nardolillo '98 at 11:45 PM | TrackBack

July 25, 2007

ESPN on Amherst - Williams sports rivalry

In an ongoing series of articles on “great, under-the-radar college sports rivalries,” ESPN.com rightly examines the more than century-old rivalry between the Lord Jeffs and the Ephs. In “Sibling rivalry: Williams-Amherst remains heated,” writer Lauren Reynolds takes a look at the history of the relationship between the two schools and interviews Amherst men’s basketball coach Dave Hixon as well as football coach E. J. Mills, who explains

One of the things that really fuels the fire is the professional world. That’s where it really becomes heated — when you’re sitting across from a guy, or your boss is a Williams guy or the guy underneath you is an Amherst guy, and there’s little wagers or whatever… It’s an amazing thing. It’s a small school, but it seems to have veins everywhere in the country, and the post-grad stuff is really what keeps the flame burning.

Brian Meacham '97 at 12:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 12, 2007

Report: Amherst fourth in final Directors' Cup standings

Although, at the time of this entry, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) has not yet formally released the final results of the Directors’ Cup, which is awarded to the college with the best intercollegiate athletic department (based on a scoring system that awards points based on a school’s performance in NCAA Division III tournament competition), Williams College, via its sports information department, announced that it has won the Directors’ Cup for the ninth consecutive year.

Also contained in the press release (scroll down to the bottom) is a list of top 10 finishers. Amherst placed fourth on the list. Middlebury was second and SUNY Cortland was third.

This would be the highest finish ever for Amherst in the history of the award. Once the NACDA posts the official list, I’ll have a couple more comments. In the meantime, congratulations to the athletes, coaches and all their supporters for a great year!

UPDATE (5:18 CST): It’s official, Amherst has placed fourth in the Directors’ Cup.

Although Brian highlighted the national championship won by the Amherst men’s basketball team, we fell behind in discussing some other special athletic accomplishments from the winter and spring which added points to Amherst’s Directors’ Cup score. Here they are in no particular order.

Women’s swimming and diving finished second at nationals, behind Kenyon College, but ahead of defending champion Emory University and NESCAC champion Williams. Brittany Sasser ‘08 was named Swimmer of the Meet and Head Coach Nick Nichols took home Coach of the Meet.

Women’s ice hockey qualified for the Division III Frozen Four, after a breakout season which featured its first NESCAC Championship, earned after stunning national runner-up Middlebury in triple overtime. Goaltender Krystyn Elek ‘10, who was outstanding all season, stopped 65 of 66 shots on goal in that contest alone.

2007 marked another outstanding year for Coach Jackie Bagwell and the women’s tennis team which also finished second in the national tournament, falling to Washington and Lee University in the final. In the individual tournament, Alicia Menezes ‘08 and Brittany Berckes ‘10 won the national doubles title, the first such win in Amherst history . Women’s tennis has advanced to at least the quarterfinal round of the national tournament every year since 1998.

Women’s track and field took fourth place at the NCAA Championships. Shauneen Garrahan ‘07 capped off an outstanding career by winning three individual championships in the three day meet.

Did we overlook any special team or individual performances? Please let us know in the comments.

Again, congratulations to all!

Dave Nardolillo '98 at 12:11 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 17, 2007

National Champions: Amherst men's basketball

In Salem, Virginia this evening, the Amherst men’s basketball team defeated defending national champions Virginia-Wesleyan College 80-67 to take home their first ever NCAA championship. Congratulations to the Lord Jeffs, coach Dave Hixon ‘75, and all of their supporters on their phenomenally successful season.

Brian Meacham '97 at 09:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 05, 2007

Basketball goes to 23-0, Olson '08 named Cousy finalist

Continuing the most impressive run in their history and moving to one win away from an undefeated regular season, the Amherst men’s basketball team defetaed Wesleyan Saturday night in Amherst.

Junior Andrew Olson has been named a finalist, one of only two from all of Division III, for the annual Bob Cousy Award, given to the nation’s premier point guard. More on the award here; fans can help Olson out by voting for him online at cousyaward.com, where the top fan vote-getter will be given one additional vote in the final balloting.

Brian Meacham '97 at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 24, 2006

Multiple rankings

It’s that time of year when the college rankings are out, and once again the College is in the second row of U.S. News’s annual rankings, with some cow college in the Berkshires taking the lead spot. Congratulations to Williams for their title defense, particularly on the heels of last year’s “triple double” (for three consecutive years, Williams led both the U.S. News rankings and the Sears Director’s Cup standings.) The College did well in graduation numbers and the percentage of faculty who are full-time, but lagged behind Williams in class size, faculty resources, and financial resources. (We’re proud to point out that we had a higher alumni giving rate, but clearly the three areas where we’re lacking can be best addressed by, you guessed it, more money.)

Still, the U.S. News rankings are coming under attack from many directions, and it’s useful to note that they aren’t the only show in town. Once again, the Jeffs trounced Williams in the Washington Monthly college rankings, moving up to fifth while Williams was eighth. The Washington Monthly rankings are a deliberately contrarian set based on asking “not what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country.”

And the sports information office tells us that both Amherst and Williams are in the top five of the 2006 NCSA Power Rankings:

The National Collegiate Scouting Association takes a comprehensive approach to determining which schools are tops in the country. Using an average of three different national rankings, including the U.S. News & World Reports rankings (academics), the U.S. Sports Academy Director’s Cup ranks (athletics), and the NCAA Student-Athlete graduation rates, NCSA is able to provide the public with a more broad view of which schools top the charts.

Amherst College placed second in the Division III rankings in addition to the overall rankings, with Duke University and Stanford University joining the trio of NESCAC powerhouses in the overall top five.

Amherst placing second in both the overall ranking and the Division III ranking allows those who took Logic to make some deductions about where in the top 5 Williams placed, particularly considering the triple double mentioned above, but the Athletics office delicately does not mention a number. Considering that graduation rates are considered in the U.S. News rankings, it would seem that those are double-counted in the NCSA report, but what do we know about college rankings? After all, we went to the #1 ranked college, which wasn’t Williams in those days, and yet we don’t think the two institutions have changed that much in the last ten years.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:52 AM | Comments (1)

July 21, 2006

"Howdy" Groskloss '30, 1906-2006

In April we celebrated the 100th birthday of Dr. Howard “Howdy” Groskloss ‘30, then the oldest living major leaguer. Groskloss passed away last Saturday, the 15th. Retrospectives in the Treasure Coast Palm and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cover both Groskloss’s brief post-College career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but also his medical career; Groskloss taught medicine at universities in Pittsburgh, Southern California, Minnesota, and Miami.

While Groskloss’s statistics with the Pirates aren’t particularly impressive, the Palm notes that Groskloss “is believed to have been the first ‘bonus baby’ in major league history. Bonus babies were amateurs who were given a bonus to sign with a team. Groskloss used the $10,000 signing bonus to pay off his mother’s house.”

Parker Morse '96 at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2006

Oldest living major leaguer, Groskloss '30 turns 100

Today is the 100th birthday of Dr. Howard Hoffman “Howdy” Groskloss ‘30, the oldest living person to have played in baseball’s Major Leagues. Groskloss was featured in a Sunday article in Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette, recapping the Pittsburgh native’s three years with the Pirates, as well as his medical career; the story has also been picked up by the Austin American Statesman.

Groskloss played 72 games for the Pirates, largely at second base, after a successful athletic career at the College.

Mr. [Barney] Dreyfuss, who owned the Pirates from 1900 until his death in 1932, thought so much of Howdy’s baseball aptitude that he offered to pay him not to play football and risk injury in college. Howdy declined that offer, which was great news to the athletic department at Amherst College, his first stop in a lifetime of groundbreaking academic and medical accomplishment.

Mary goes to a shelf and takes down the hardware, a large silver double-handled trophy known as the Mossman Cup, given annually to the top student-athlete at Amherst. It was presented to Howdy by Amherst alum and, even then, former president Calvin Coolidge.

Howdy played baseball, football (tailback), basketball (point guard), tennis, joined the swim team and ran track at Amherst, and Mr. Dreyfuss still signed him to a $10,000 bonus in 1930. This was decades before he took up golf and starting winning tournaments all over South Florida and the Bahamas.

The Statesman expands on Groskloss’s student-athlete honors, suggesting that the cup was for being “the most outstanding Amherst athlete of the half-century” and that Coolidge’s son was Groskloss’s roommate. The Mossman Cup, however, is still given annually to “the senior who brought the greatest honor to the college through athletics.”

Less mentioned is Groskloss’s medical career, where he taught gynecology, obstetrics, and endocrinology for over 50 years, and is credited with introducing ultrasound technology to those and other medical disciplines.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:26 AM | Comments (1)

December 27, 2005

Jeffs on ice at Pond Hockey Championships

Among the 90 teams entered (so far) in the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships, an event being held in January on the frozen surface of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, is an Amherst alumni team, from the classes of 2000 and 2001. Chris Orszulak ‘01, the team captain of the “Mass Holes,” was interviewed by the Boston Globe about his team, and the story was picked up by the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

“We were all roommates at Amherst, and every year we try to get together,” Orszulak said. “A couple of the guys are from Minnesota, and I think it was Darce who spotted it. Just seemed like the perfect thing for us to do.”

Both articles were impressed with the grand prize of the tournament:

The teams will vie for the Golden Shovel, 12 feet top to bottom with a scoop 3 feet wide. Why play for a shovel? If you’re asking, you just don’t get it.

The event has a 96-team cap, and in addition to the Jeffs, a team from NESCAC rivals Middlebury is entered.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:41 PM

December 24, 2005

Dean Parker on athletics, slots, and transparency

The Sports section of Sunday’s New York Times includes a lengthy story on athletic recruiting in Division III, extensively quoting Dean of Admissions Tom Parker. The article compares the practice of filling athletic “slots” (called “athletic factors,” in the NESCAC) and sticking to a limited number of such slots, with colleges which do not admit a fixed number of athletes. Parker points to both the NESCAC’s agreed-upon formula for a numbering slots as well as the lower limit observed by the Little Three, and notes,

“The real danger was in not acknowledging that we give preferential treatment to athletes,” Parker said. “It engendered a corrosive cynicism. When it was on the table exactly what we do, it wasn’t as bad as some faculty thought.”

Parker also describes how the slots are filled, and notes that before this system was in place, “as recently as the late 1990’s, Amherst was admitting 96 athletes.”

The article also notes that football presents the biggest problem to admissions at nearly every Division III program, though it doesn’t mention the drastic step taken by Swarthmore when they dropped football several years ago.

“You just need so many football players to have a competitive team,” said Les Poolman, athletic director at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., [which faces Swarthmore in the competitive Centennial Conference.] “And some of them you want to be 260 pounds with good grades and high test scores. It’s often a lot easier to get distance runners.”

Parker Morse '96 at 07:54 PM

December 16, 2005

Coach Ostendarp passes away at 82

Emeritus football coach Jim Ostendarp passed away yesterday at the age of 82. Quoting from the official college In Memoriam page,

James Ostendarp, football coach and professor of physical education at Amherst College for 32 years until his retirement in 1992, died on Thursday, Dec., 15 at his home in Sunderland, Mass. He was 82 years old.

Funeral arrangements are pending

For more information on Ostendarp’s athletic achievements at Bucknell, visit the Bucknell Athletics Hall of Fame page.

Our thoughts are with Coach Ostendarp’s family and friends.

UPDATE: The Springfield Republican has posted their obituary for “The Darp.”

Brian Meacham '97 at 05:54 PM

December 13, 2005

Cherington '96 named Red Sox co-General Manager

In a unique move, the Boston Red Sox announced today that Ben Cherington ‘96 and Jed Hoyer will be co-general managers of the Red Sox, The Boston Globe reports. Cherington, who began as an intern at the club and most recently held the post of Director of Player Development, becomes the second Amherst graduate to become GM of the team, after former GM Dan Duquette ‘80, who hired Cherington in 1998.

Cherington and Hoyer (Wesleyan ‘96) become the 12th and 13th GMs in the club’s 105 year history, replacing wunderkind Theo Epstein, who left this fall after a promising but surprisingly short stay with the team.

The Globe article fails to mention that Cherington graduated from Amherst, but a New York Times article makes note of his alma mater, yet misses the Duquette connection. I’m sure there are some other current Jeff/Sox connections out there; let us know if you know of any.

Brian Meacham '97 at 09:58 PM

November 09, 2005

Quarterbacks Kehoe '07 and Kehoe '70

The Springfield Republican features an article today on Nick Kehoe ‘07, quarterback for the Lord Jeffs, as they look toward Saturday’s showdown against WIlliams.

Kehoe, who is also a starting pitcher for the Amherst baseball team, is the son of John Kehoe ‘70, who quarterbacked the Lord Jeffs from 1967 to 1969.

On the field, Nick’s pocket style differs from that of John, a rollout passer who says he probably had stronger legs than Nick, but a much weaker arm - though his scrambling skills bought John enough time to set the Amherst record in career passing yardage (3,796), which stood for 28 years.

“We’re exact opposites,” said Nick, who does wear John’s old number 11. “He was a big runner. I’m not much of a runner.”

Best of luck to Kehoe and all of his teammates this weekend; be sure to tune in on NESN or WAMH to follow the game if you’re not in the area. Both teams are 5-2 going into the final game of the season, so it’s a matter of pride (and third place in the NESCAC standings).

Brian Meacham '97 at 10:27 PM

September 25, 2005

Weekend puzzle

An article in this Sunday’s Boston Globe tells the story of a Hopkinton couple, Francis Cady and Helen Fair, due to be inducted in the Hopkinton High School Hall of Fame. The article includes this puzzling anecdote (emphasis ours):

“The coach of the girls’ basketball team, Marion Harris, lived on a farm in Leominster,” said Helen, “and she invited the team there, and we had quite a feed. I can still picture her prying open that big barn door. She graduated from Amherst College and took us there, too, and we were so good that we beat the Amherst women’s team.”

This is puzzling because Cady and Fair graduated from Hopkinton High School in 1937 and 1938, respectively, and the anecdote implies that not only did Marion Harris graduate from Amherst College before then (pre-dating coeducation by nearly fifty years,) but that the College had a women’s basketball team.

It seems most likely that the reporter was the victim of yet another mix-up between the College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and this is only notable because the confusion usually goes the other way. If anyone can provide evidence for a more interesting explanation, we’d love to hear it.

Parker Morse '96 at 09:05 PM

While we're talking about football

Not long after Jean Fugett ‘72 “resurfaced”, we heard of another Jeff in the NFL, Fugett’s teammate Freddy Scott ‘74. Scott, who is in the College Football Hall of Fame, is featured (improbably enough) in a story in Michigan’s Oakland Press about advances in prostate cancer treatment.

Parker Morse '96 at 08:58 PM

September 21, 2005

Fugett '72 "re-emerges" in Baltimore

When we mentioned Jeffs in the NFL back in January, we had no idea it would turn out to be a footnote to another story months later. An article on the Black Athlete Sports Network recaps the recent history of Jean Fugett ‘72, once the NFL’s youngest player, at the opening of a museum named for his half-brother:

Not the least of the buzz at the gala June opening of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture came from the reappearance of Jean S. Fugett Jr., former NFL tight end, former CEO of TLC Beatrice, half-brother of Reg Lewis and once one of Baltimore’s most prominent sons.

“Where have you been?” everybody asked, as Fugett cruised through the atrium in a tux. “Yeah, Jean, I thought you were in Paris. I didn’t know you were back in Baltimore. … What HAVE you been doing?”

…But mainly Fugett wants to talk about launching a product that might be even more unorthodox than sports-highlights voice mail: non-sleazy money advice for professional athletes that will have them invest responsibly and plan for the future instead of letting them blow paychecks on Porsches and hookers.

(Full text.)

Parker Morse '96 at 08:58 PM

September 08, 2005

Amherst response

College campuses around the country are contributing to the relief effort following the Hurricane Katrina disaster on the Gulf Coast. Efforts from the College, as noted at the end of this television report, include the departure of lacrosse coach Tom Carmean for the area with a truckload (“care-avan”) of contributions.

Student athletes at the school are helping Carmean load a rental truck with canned goods, water, baby products and other items.

Sam Masinter ‘04 has posted two galleries (update: three) documenting the collection and loading of the truck.

Unrelated to Katrina, the Boulder Daily Camera recently ran an article about Educate!, the non-profit launched by neuroscience major Eric Glustrom (‘07?). From the organization’s website:

Started in 2004, the Amherst College club has really jumpstarted Educate! expansion. The club has raised over $4,000 through two benefit concerts, a dodgeball tournament, and letter writing. The dodgeball tournament turned out to be a tremendous success, with nearly 200 students participating and nearly as many buying t-shirts.

Parker Morse '96 at 10:14 AM

May 27, 2005

Two!

With two events remaining, Amherst’s women’s track team has already had its most successful NCAA meet ever, with two national champions.

On Thursday night, Carter Hamill ‘05 demolished the field in the 10,000m, winning by over a minute in 34:00.43, a new College record and just 0.43 seconds away from earning Hamill a spot on the line at next month’s open national championships. Hamill’s fifth national title gives her the most wins of any Amherst runner (ahead of Rob Mitchell ‘99, with four.)

Still, Hamill was expected to win, after her Penn Relays championship last month. Less expected was Shauneen Garrahan ‘07’s Friday night victory in the 3000m steeplechase, but Garrahan didn’t even need to run her best to pull out the win, finishing in 10:33.21, four seconds slower than her College record.

After Friday night, Amherst stands in fourth place in team scoring, only seven points off the lead. However, there are a lot of points to be awarded on Saturday, and the Lady Jeffs can, at best, only score 28 more. Garrahan will race finals at both 1500m and 5000m; Hamill will also contest the 5000m.

(We apologize if we appear over-focused on the performance of the track team, but writing about track is something we do professionally.)

Parker Morse '96 at 09:21 PM | Comments (1)

May 26, 2005

Hamill '05 to defend NCAA title

It is not often that we get to write about Amherst alumni contending for national championships. Due to a quirk of the calendar, Carter Hamill ‘05 will be running her last races for the College at the Division III track and field championships starting tonight, four days after Commencement.

Hamill, who was profiled by her hometown paper, the Richmond Times Dispatch, today, has had more success at the national level than any other Amherst College runner, male or female, winning four NCAA individual titles and sixteen All-American citations in eleven seasons. She has a chance to raise that total to five and seventeen tonight, at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, when she defends the 10,000m title she won last year. Hamill’s 34-minute clocking from the Penn Relays makes her the top seed and prohibitive favorite with nearly a minute advantage over the second seed.

Hamill will be joined by teammate Margaret Davis ‘06 in the 10,000m. When Hamill doubles back to the 5000m, on Saturday, she will face Wartburg’s defending champion Missy Buttry as well as her own teammate, Shauneen Garrahan ‘07, who nicked Hamill’s school record earlier this year. Garrahan is “tripling” in Iowa, running the 5000m, 1500m, and 3000m steeplechase. Results from the meet will be posted online “as they become available.”

Parker Morse '96 at 11:44 AM | Comments (1)

May 06, 2005

Dunbar '44 dies

The College website has a brief “In Memoriam” posted for Professor Emeritus Henry Dunbar ‘44, who died yesterday (May 5th). If I’m making the right connection, this is “Hank” Dunbar, coach of the swim team through his retirement in 1993. Dunbar was also once coach of the crew, and that team has had at least one boat named in his honor.

The current sparse page on the College website indicates that it will be expanded if more information is made available to them.

Parker Morse '96 at 03:25 PM | Comments (1)

April 29, 2005

Hamill '05 is Penn Relays champion

It’s not our plan to provide regular updates on the sports seasons, but two performances by Amherst women last night at the Penn Relays are sufficiently remarkable in the track world as to warrant further comment.

The sports information press release says Carter Hamill ‘05 was second in the 10,000m race, but that’s not quite the case. On “distance night,” the Relays sometimes combine heats, and in the case of the women’s 10,000m, the collegiate championship race was combined with the open “Olympic Development” race. Hamill, a four-time NCAA champion and easily the greatest female runner Amherst has seen over four years, was the first collegian, bested only by Californian Erika Aklufi, a developing athlete who has already represented the USA internationally.

While Hamill lowered her own school record at 10,000m, she lost out on the day, because Shauneen Garrahan ‘06 took away her 5,000m school record two hours earlier while finishing second (ahead of many Division 1 scholarship athletes) in that collegiate race. Garrahan now holds the school records in every event from 800m to 5,000m (barring the flat 3,000m, which is still held by Amanda Weiss ‘97,) and stands to overshadow even Hamill’s legacy in her fourth year of competition next year.

While Garrahan and Hamill now top the Division 3 lists for both events at next month’s national championship, whether they can be considered “favorites” to win individual titles will depend on the entry status of Wartburg College’s senior Missy Buttry, an Olympic Trials finalist last summer, who is considered one of the best women ever to run in Division 3. (For more on Buttry, see my interview with her for the Runner’s World website this spring.)

Parker Morse '96 at 01:24 PM

March 06, 2005

Men's basketball team profiled

Fresh off a win over Springfield College that sends them to the Division III sectionals next week, the Amherst men’s basketball team is the subject of a Springfield Republican profile in today’s edition. “At Amherst College, just when it seems like it can’t possibly get any better for the men’s basketball program, it does,” the article begins, and it continues on to tell the story of the Jeffs’ season so far, including a 25-1 record and recognition for Coach Dave Hixon ‘75 as NESCAC Coach of the Year.

Brian Meacham '97 at 01:40 PM

February 28, 2005

Men's basketball take NESCAC crown

The Amherst men’s basketball team continued their stellar season with a 65-57 victory over visiting Bates College to take their third NESCAC title in five years. The Lord Jeffs’ eighteenth consecutive victory in this 25-1 season means an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, which they will likely enter as the number one seed.

Brian Meacham '97 at 12:45 AM

February 22, 2005

Profile of Hutchinson '93

The Roanoke Times published a story this week on Adam Hutchinson ‘93, now the head men’s basketball coach at Washington & Lee University. Hutchinson, who was known as Adam Findley while at Amherst, spent two years as the college’s assistant basketball coach after graduating in 1993.

Brian Meacham '97 at 03:47 PM

February 20, 2005

Men's track goes back in time

Apparently I’m not the only one fascinated by the collection of team photos of past Lord Jeff teams which line the walls of Alumni Gym. Coach Erik Nedeau’s track team recently staged a recreation of one of the turn-of-the-(previous)-century photos, including hand-lettered shirts, period hairstyles, a bicycle (!), and their modern spikes, which, while anachronistic, fit in quite well.

The best photo graces the front page of the current track team page, with a link to more photos from the shoot.

Parker Morse '96 at 04:17 PM

January 12, 2005

Lord Jeffs in the NFL

In covering the upcoming Patriots-Colts playoff matchup, sportswriter Bob George mentions former Lord Jeff and Baltimore Colt Freddie Scott ‘74 in his daily column asking “Quick, how many guys from Amherst College make it in the NFL?”

Well, let’s let the College Archives and Special Collections tackle that one for you, Bob: the answer is five: Doug Swift ’70, Jean Fugett ’72, Freddie Scott ’74, Sean Clancy ’78, and Alex Bernstein ’97.

Brian Meacham '97 at 09:05 AM

January 09, 2005

Jeffs take down Purple Cows in Williamstown

The Amherst men’s basketball team handed Williams their second consecutive loss last night at the Chandler Athletic Center in Williamstown. Amherst led 44-30 at the half, and ended up with a 88-78 victory, bringing their record this year to 8-1. It was the Amherst men’s first victory at Williams in nearly four years. The Springfield Republican reports on the game as well.