Spring 2000 Season in Brief

HEAVYWEIGHT CREW

Men's heavyweight crew is in the midst of its most successful season in the past 20 years. For the past several years, the Lions had been inching towards respectability; finally, this year, they made a quantum leap forward.

After cruising to easy victories in March over Coast Guard and Marist, the Lions headed west to face serious competition in the San Diego Crew Classic. Columbia finished a disappointing ninth out of 12 in San Diego, but even that meager finish exceeded expectations. The Light Blue next blew past an overmatched MIT before getting into the heart of its schedule.

In the Child's Cup race against Penn and Princeton, the Lions finished third as usual. However, they did manage to defeat a guest crew in the race, No. 8 ranked Temple. The Owls, who had been much faster than Columbia at San Diego, found themselves the first big surprise victim of the new Monsters of Morningside.

The highlight of Columbia's season came the next week in the Blackwell Cup race, where in a historic performance, the Lions defeated Yale for the first time since 1941. With another solid victory Saturday over Boston University, the Light Blue clinched its first winning record in a long time.

Only Rutgers remains on Columbia's schedule before the season-ending Eastern Sprints and national championship IRA regatta. Currently 6-3, the Lions are ranked 10th of 15 in the powerful EARC league and are No. 12 nationally. If they can continue to build boat-speed as they have all season, they may have a few more surprises left in them.

Next year should not be much of a letdown for the Lions. Six of eight oarsmen return from the varsity boat. The other two, seniors John Kriegsman and Jim Murphy, both have a legitimate chance of rowing for the United States national team.

--Dan McCarthy

LIGHTWEIGHT CREW

For most sports, the season is coming to a close and exams, not Columbia athletics, are on most people's minds. Athletes are enjoying their last practices of the year.

A sharp contrast is the lightweight crew team, which will probably be working out on the erg more than ever. The regular season is ending for the team, but the competition is far from wrapping up.

The Lions improved as the season progressed. After a couple of disappointing early losses, the Lions nearly beat the No. 1 boat in the nation, Yale, losing by only .3 seconds on April 15.

The following weeks have seen the lightweights capture opponent's T-shirts against Cornell, MIT, and Dartmouth.

Though it is still almost two weeks away, Eastern Sprints are what the whole year has been building towards.

Two weeks later, the team will compete in Nationals. Last year, the Lions placed second in the Eastern Sprints and fifth nationally. This year, Columbia was ranked eighth in the polls, a fact senior Josh Garver calls "interesting." Looking back at the season, the varsity won its first race just last week. But last year, the team didn't have a win until the fourth week and still left impressive results in both of the big races.

Though the schools the Lions will be facing are going to be no pushovers, everyone on the team has been practicing hard all year. Columbia, as well as a number of other crews, has a solid shot to aim at the top spot.

--Liza Mamtami

WOMEN'S CREW

From adverse weather conditions to the IMF/World Bank protests, it has been a challenging year for the Columbia women's crew team.

With a technically stronger, more experienced squad, the Light Blue started the season on a high note, beating Marist and Coast Guard on the Harlem River. But when faced with Ivy League competition, the young Lions didn't respond well, losing at home to Yale and Penn and falling to powerhouse Princeton the following week.

But despite these tough losses, a mid-season win over Rutgers for the first time in years, coupled with a victory over visiting crews Georgetown and UMass, boosted the Lions' confidence.

But as the season unfolded, a brutal schedule involving Top 20 competition every weekend proved too much for the Lions. Under bogus racing conditions, the Lions fell to Northeastern and Navy, and then suffered a disappointing loss to Cornell and top-ranked Brown; the women's crew, like many other Columbia athletic teams, was reminded that it is a developing program.

Yet neither the team's record nor ranking fairly reflects the power of the squad, which hopes to be surprisingly competitive as an underdog at Eastern Sprints, May 13 and 14. And with another year of experience behind them and only four graduating seniors, the young Lions look to be more than a developing program next year--Columbia women's crew hopes to be a serious competitor.

--Whitney Johnson

GOLF

For the men's golf team, the 1999-2000 season was its lowest scoring one in recent years, and it was their most consistent. But, after winning the Ivy championship title last spring and finishing fourth in the league this time around, it may have also been their most disappointing.

In seven weeks of practicing in Westchester and travelling on the road, the Lions played some of their best golf ever.

Except for its mediocre performance at Ivies, the team averaged scores in the mid- to high 70s on the course.

And, although they did not win a single tournament, coach Al Carlson's players captured two second place finishes at the Towson and Yale Invitationals, and one third place at the Metropolitan Championships.

Senior co-captain Scott Grossman had his best year with Columbia, winning in New Haven and coming close to it at the tournament hosted by Towson in Westover, Md. He averaged about 75 strokes per tournament and broke 80 only once, at the Metropolitan Championships.

Junior James Massey also played well this season. He struggled with his long game early on, but in the last few weeks he improved his drive and was the low man on the team at the Princeton Invitational and at Mets with scores just one and two strokes over par.

Sophomore Nathan Kielbasa, along with Grossman, was one of the more consistent players. In five regular tournaments and one championship, Kielbasa usually shot within the range of a few strokes under or over 77, not extremely well but not poorly either.

When it was all said and done, the season was a good one, but it will not be remembered for its low stroke averages or its near wins. This year's team wanted nothing more than to repeat at Ivies, and if not that, then to place in the top three schools. One bad weekend on the links denied them that opportunity.

--Chad Bonner

LACROSSE

Columbia women's lacrosse fell short of the elusive first Ivy League win this season, but the goose egg in the win column should not take away from a season of tremendous growth.

Although the Lions failed to clinch a league win, they were able to pull through for a fantastic 7-1 non-conference season. They established themselves as more than just a young team, but a team whose potential is building every year.

This success is most obvious in senior captain Sara Brubaker's last two games where she set and matched her single game career-high of five goals, which left her with 61 goals for her four years. She finished her career by scoring the winning goal against Bucknell with 2:33 to go, beating the Bison 9-8.

Undoubtedly, a talented crew of underclassmen and six juniors, who will lead the team next year, joins Brubaker. Seniors Antoinette Allen and Claire Miller also finished their fourth season with the Lions. Allen finished her career with 51 goals (11 short of the record set her first year by Katie Bergstrom).

Next year, the team hopes to use its depth to beat some of this past season's closest games, especially in the Ivies.

As for now, the Lions are happy with their non-conference record, which is their best record thus far. And as the young program continues to grow, next year seems bright for the team.

--Katie Grammaticas

WOMEN'S TENNIS

To say that the 2000 Columbia women's tennis season was a groundbreaking effort would be an understatement, as Columbia earned its first Ivy win in years and narrowly missed its first-ever Ivy winning season.

Starting off with a dominating Spring Break trip, Columbia continued to improve throughout the season.

The Lions came out of their first match against Cornell looking like a top team in the league. For its first Ivy win, Columbia beat Cornell 6-3, winning four singles matches and two doubles matches.

First-year No. 1 singles Tina Romic came from behind to win her match, and sophomores No. 1 doubles Joyce Chang and Ilene Weintraub sealed the historic win with an 8-3 decision.

Following the Cornell win, the Lions faltered a bit with a loss to powerhouse Harvard, 9-0. They came back the next day to defeat Dartmouth for the first time since 1996 in a thrilling manner, 5-4. Again, it took a clutch win from Weintraub and Chang.

The Harvard match was closer than it seemed, as three matches went to three sets but the Dartmouth match proved a point.

Columbia came out of the blocks super-charged the next weekend, crushing Brown 8-1, and then taking Yale to the limit in a 5-4 loss.

Led by the surging first-year No. 1 singles Laila Shetty and a solid core of underclassmen, the Light Blue split the singles matches with Yale, only to lose the Shetty and first-year Leena Krishnaswamy doubles match, 8-6. Three singles matches went to a seventh game in a set.

In the last weekend of the season, with a winning record in sight, Columbia lost to Penn 5-4 in a match during which Romic and first-year Shelly Mittal lost their doubles match 9-8 (7-5) by a final shot that missed by three inches.

Instead, Columbia settled for a record of 3-4 due to its 8-1 loss the next day to Princeton.

Though it finished with a losing Ivy record (but a record of 15-8 overall), Columbia made great strides on the League, setting the table for a title run in the coming years.

--Ian R. Rapoport

BASEBALL

A promising beginning to the baseball team's Ivy League schedule was followed by a number of substandard efforts and heartbreaking losses, resulting in a disappointing 2000 season.

After winning three out of four against Brown and Yale in the opening weekend of league action, Columbia would not win again for three weeks. In that stretch the Lions lost four straight to Princeton, falling out of the Gehrig race.

In his second year as the Lions' head coach, Mikio Aoki fielded a team that was short on experience but long on depth. Aoki had hoped that "the enthusiasm that comes with youth will turn into a huge strength."

That enthusiasm certainly helped the Lions rebound from the disappointing Spring Break trip south that opened their season. Playing against national powers like Wake Forest and James Madison, Columbia returned north with a only a 3-12 record, but also with plenty of tough-game experience.

Following the Brown-Yale weekend, the Lions moved into a short-lived tie for first atop the Gehrig Division.

The team's fortunes changed dramatically, though, once they took the road.

In a scene that would become common in this star-crossed season, the Lions battled both their opponents and the inclement weather in losing all four games to Harvard and Dartmouth.

The team returned to Morningside Heights the following weekend for a series with Princeton, in which it was swept by the New Jersey team. Reduced to just playing out the rest of the schedule, Columbia once again had to take a road trip into a spring storm and lost all four games in rainy conditions to Cornell at Ithaca.

Columbia closed out the Ivy schedule on somewhat of a high note, splitting a four-game weekend with Penn.

With another disappointing season under his belt, Aoki still tried to remain focused on the positives.

"I told the players this: If we had made 15-20 more plays, this is a team that could be sitting at 20 wins," he said.

--Jonathan Lemire