The Age of Steroids is upon us.
Today, doping allegations seem to be at the forefront of every sport. From the Olympics to the Tour de France. From the NFL to the PGA tour. The question of athletes “juicing” has become unavoidable and, seemingly, universal in the world of sports.
Still, no sport has received the scrutiny that baseball has. And for good reason.
In the past decade, many of the sport’s best players have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs: Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez. The list goes on.
The men’s basketball team, riding a wave of momentum into the NCAA Tournament after winning the NESCAC Championship, continued to dominate LeFrak Gymnasium this weekend in their first national tournament game. With men’s ice hockey beating Williams before the basketball game, the atmosphere was electric in the Amherst student section, which competed against a full contingent from visiting New York Univ. The Violets brought fans and cheerleaders to LeFrak, hoping to catch some energy and pull off an upset of the heavily favored Jeffs.
This weekend, Amherst College students, student-athletes and coaches rallied around the 17th annual “Big Brothers Big Sisters Bowl for Kids’ Sake Bowl-a-Thon,” the organization’s biggest annual fundraiser. Two athletic teams — women’s soccer and men’s track — were represented at the bowl-a-thon, which raised over $65,000 this year (exceeding its fundraising goal).
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Women
The women’s indoor track team won two events en route to their second-place finish at the ECAC Championships. MIT (56.33) claimed the top spot among the 57 teams that scored points. The Jeffs ended the day with 46 points.
Junior Lauren Almeida earned one of the Jeffs’ two victories, finishing first in the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:59.19, 0.5 seconds ahead of the runner-up. Amy Dao ’14 scored points in fifth place with a personal best time of 3:03.43.
Leading by just two points at halftime, the women’s basketball team used a second half burst Saturday night to defeat Babson College, 61-48, in the second round of the NCAA tournament. On Friday night, the Jeffs dominated on the court with 11 different players scoring in the 84-30 victory over St. Joseph’s in the first round.
This weekend, Amherst fell to Middlebury in a heartbreaking 1-0 overtime loss in the NESCAC Championship game. The Jeffs’ post-season continues, however, as they secured an at-large NCAA bid on Monday morning.
Starting on Friday night, Amherst faced Bowdoin in the NESCAC semi-final game and shut them out 1-0, earning their sixth-straight NESCAC championship appearance.
Bolstered by clutch goaltending and tenacious forechecking, the men’s hockey team battled its way to a NESCAC championship this weekend, grinding out victories over Williams (2-1) and Middlebury (4-3) to capture the program’s first conference title in three years.
