As promised in Tuesday’s Maroon, the MSR is bringing you in-depth, comprehensive coverage of the 2007–2008 All-Maroons selections, the-year-that-was, and maybe some other thoughts, all just a few days after we said we would have them. Better late than never.
Best Coach: track coach Chris Hall took this one, ending a string of wins by soccer coaches Amy Reifert and Scott Wiercinski. Hall won by about ten votes, thanks to a impressive closing-moments turn out by track team members (and it’s worth mentioning that because Hall coaches cross country and track and field for both men and women, he coaches a much larger pool of athletes/potential-voters than any other UChicago coach).
But no matter what put Hall over the top in our polls, there’s no doubt that his teams had outstanding years. Five All-Americans for women’s outdoor track, one for women’s indoor, several other Nationals participants, and of course, UAA Championships for both men and women at the indoors meet. For the women, that meant breaking Wash U’s decade-long streak of indoor titles, and any coach that had a hand in that can have my vote.
And on the topic of raining on the Bears’ parade, Aaron Roussell, our runner-up for coach of the year, helped the women’s basketball team to its first-ever outright UAA title and broke a streak of 20 conference championships for Wash U in the process. If we had chosen a “Best Day for UChicago Sports This Year,” the day of that championship would have taken it. The male and female Bears rolled into town having never failed to get a piece of the women’s title, having beaten the men’s basketball team 76-50 earlier in the season, and with a cheering section full of obnoxious fans who all thought the UAA commish might as well have called the games and handed them the trophy. (To be fair, I don’t know if they actually thought that, and the most obnoxious thing about them was probably that they were cheering against my team. Whatever. This is a partisan blog, and they bugged me.) And I was awfully worried that their fans were right.
But then our teams crushed them. The women won by 23, hands down, walking away, by a country mile. That was awesome, and then the men’s team won a thriller, thanks in large part to brain-exploding last minute three by Nate Hainje that was just…. There are no words. It was like Hainje was born to hit that shot. As soon as the ball was in his hands, everyone at Ratner knew he was shooting, and everyone knew it was going in, good for the Maroons’ second UAA basketball championship of the afternoon.
Hainje’s shot was a thing of beauty for sure, but it didn’t even get play of the year. It was narrowly edged out of that honor by Brooke Bontz’s two goals in the soccer team’s final regular season game of the year. Once again, we were playing Wash U at home, and this time the Bears had already wrapped up the Association title (and some Wash U fan brought a banner and cake to the game to celebrate). While the Bears were busy licking the icing off their fingers, the Maroons were worrying about game, which they needed to win to ensure a playoff berth.
It looked grim in the early going. Wash U scored in the first half, and although we were getting some good looks, the Maroons just couldn’t score. Half time came and went, and then we were ten, twenty, thirty minutes into the second half, still down one, and those of us on the GoMaroons! broadcast balcony were starting to sweat.
It was around that time that Brooke Bontz got the ball at the south end of the field–the Bears’ half–outside the eighteen and to the left of the goal. A couple quick touches got her away from a defender and gave her a little room to take a look at goal, and she fired.
You know how on Sportscenter’s Top Ten Plays, they only show the most phenomenal soccer goals, the ones that even Americans (who are used to watching proper football, the type with padding and sweet hits) can appreciate? Bontz’s goal was like one of those. The match report called it a 20-yard shot, which would be impressive enough, but it went across the box and into the side netting, so it must have been 25 yards, at least. And the beautiful thing about it was that the goalie could see it the whole way and had all the time in the world to react–it just didn’t matter. The ball was so perfectly struck that it swung in slightly around the keeper’s outstretched arms and into the mouth of the goal. One of the two or three best goals I’ve ever seen in person. It sent Emerald Gao and Tim Froh, who were on the call with Sean Ahmed, into a chorus of GOALAZZOAZZOAZZOs that was, sadly, lost to computer problems but which I’m told sounded fantastic (if not particularly professional) on the radio.
Bontz got a second goal before regulation was up, and thanks to her late efforts, Chicago prevailed 2-1 and lived to play another day. Two more days, in fact, and there ought to have been others–here at the Sports Report, we’re still sore about losing to UW-Stevens Point in a shoot out. Let ‘em play!
What else… Tim Reynolds just edged out John Cartwright and Molly Hackney for defensive MVP, some well-deserved recognition for a player who never got his due on the stat sheet or in the recaps. That’s how it goes for defensive specialists, usually: nobody thinks much of them until they screw up, and then there’s no end to the complaining. It’s telling, though, that Reynolds got picked as an All-UAA honorable mention, even though he didn’t have eye-catching stats. The people who get to vote for those awards, the ones who are really in touch with basketball and our league, understood what Reynolds had contributed.
For offense, we had co-MVPs. Matt Corning was the leading scorer on a team that included an All-American who wasn’t him. (And Hainje wasn’t any slouch at scoring.) Corning has size and a genuine inside-outside game, something you don’t see much in the UAA. Plus, he had a play that has as much claim (probably more, really) to Play of the Year honors as either Bontz’s or Hainje’s: at home against Case, he stole a pass on defense, ran down the court and threw it down with absolutely no regard for human life–a moment that was preserved for Maroon posterity by our intrepid sports photographer/photo editor Drew Westfahl. We’ve run the photo before, but it really can’t get old:
You feel sort of bad for that Case guy–it was a hustle play to get back, and he just gets posterized.
Jen Jacobson got the other half of Offensive MVP. She hit .517 this spring and is (still) in the midst of a 25 game hit streak that she can extend next year. Softball plays about 35 games a season, which means she may well pass DiMaggio’s mark of 56 and even put a little space between them. We’ll keep you posted.
Ellie Elgamal got Best Rookie, and by more than 20 votes. It’s exciting to see athletes like her: she’s already one of the top swimmers in our program’s history, our first woman in a decade to make NCAAs in swimming, and she’s got three more years to work at it. To date, she’s got UChicago records in the 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard butterfly, 200-yard butterfly, and 200-yard individual medley, and she helped set a school record in the 400-yard medley relay. She’s getting a short blurb today, but a lot more Maroon ink/blog space will be devoted to Elgamal before her time is up.
That does it for the All-Maroons and the runners-up, but it only begins to cover all that our sports programs have done this year. I couldn’t do them justice here, so I’ll just end with a few links that might have a chance:
Seasonal All-Maroons: fall, spring (not sure what happened to the winter article)
Senior Features: Nate Hainje, Vanessa Pineros, John Cartwright, Hannah Moots, Nofi Mojidi, Amanda Catalano, Maroon columnist Ryan McCarl, Koryn Kendall, Dominik Meyer, Zach Rodgers, Bharath Sithian, Maroon staffer Appie Hirve
—
2007-2008 was great, but the wonderful thing about sports is that there’s always more. Men’s soccer opens their fall campaign August 29 in Wheaton, IL, against perennial power Messiah. The cross country teams have their first meet in Elmhurst that same day, women’s soccer plays at UW-LaCrosse the following day, and football gets going two weeks later, at home against Kenyon September 13. Today was the last day of classes for spring quarter, the sun is out, the birds are singing, students are fretting over papers and finals, summer is just around the corner, and we’re already excited about seeing the Maroons back out on the field. See you there.