In front of a packed Homecoming crowd at Pratt Field, the Lord Jeffs finished their season with a victory over archrival Williams this past Saturday. Led by a solid performance from sophomore quarterback Max Lippe, Amherst mounted a thrilling fourth quarter comeback to squeeze out the 23-20 win and send alumni home happy. Amherst has now won three of the last four contests against their archrivals, though the overall head-to-head record still lies in favors of the Ephs, 71-51-3.
Bolstered by stingy defense and a relentless, high-tempo style on offense, the men’s soccer team captured its second consecutive NESCAC championship last weekend, beating Williams 2-0 in the final to secure the trophy.
“Winning a NESCAC title against Williams is something that every Amherst soccer player dreams of doing,” co-captain James Mooney ’13E said.
The undefeated Jeffs (15-0-2, 8-0-2 NESCAC) earned back-to-back league titles for the first time in school history. Amherst has now won three of the past five NESCAC championships.
By the time the NBA season rolls around every October, I’ve had way too much time to tout all the potential it represents. Fortunately, winning basketball games is a moving target, so there are surprises when rubber finally does meet road for NBA teams. For example, high-profile teams that sputter out of the gate (hello, Lakers!) are derided as being talented only on paper — which is to say that the expectations fueled by previous performance fail to materialize in the new season. So how do we make sense of that gap between performance and expectations?
Men
Led by third through fifth place finishes by Dillon Buckley ’13, Gus Greenstein ’14 and Romey Sklar ’15, respectively, the men’s cross country team took first place at the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship, held at Williams last weekend. The victory marked the first team win for the men’s cross country team this season, and the first ECAC victory in program history.
The women’s soccer team may have lost the battle, but they have yet to lose the war. The Jeffs fell to Bowdoin in a penalty shootout after two overtime periods failed to separate the teams.
The Jeffs felt confident going into the game. They had just defeated Colby 1-0 in a game that was not as close as the score line indicated. Earlier in the season, they had handled the Polar Bears 4-1. The stage seemed set for an Amherst at Williams NESCAC Final, but Bowdoin played the role of spoiler.
The Firedogs saw their season come to an abrupt end after suffering a sweep at the hands of their archrivals in the first round of the NESCAC Playoffs.
The Ephs took the match in convincing fashion, winning the first two sets by scores of 25-19 and 25-15. The Jeffs would battle back and make the third set close, but the Ephs took that one, too, 25-22.
Field hockey’s season came to an end in heartbreaking fashion on Saturday, as the Lord Jeffs pushed first-ranked Middlebury to the brink before falling in overtime of the NESCAC semifinals, 3-2.
The 12th-ranked Lord Jeffs were then passed over for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, officially ending the season at 11-5 (6-4 NESCAC).
