Meghan O’Donnell ’15

You may not have known this, but we at Brown actually have some varsity sports teams. A whole bunch of varsity sports teams, as it happens. And, as an innocent, misguided freshman, I will attempt to attend one game played by each of these 37 varsity teams. There will be drama, there will be action, there will be crushing boredom excitement. Welcome to Sixth Man.

So, what sport should we visit first? Field hockey, naturally. Saturday morning, I headed half-asleep to the field hockey field (note–it’s no longer located on the roof of the OMAC, major letdown) for Brown’s clash with Harvard in weather that was roughly 20 degrees colder than what I was prepared for. I arrived to find the game already underway and the stands fairly full of parents rabid fans. An additional positive–the seats were only 75% filled with water from Friday night’s monsoon.

As it turns out, field hockey is a bit like the great American sport of soccer. There is a lot of passing around the middle of the field, periodic scoring opportunities that almost never turn into goals, and a lot of the ball going out of bounds. In fact, in the first half, Brown’s strategy appeared to be to pass the ball out of bounds as much as possible, which was a slightly better strategy than Harvard’s, which was to pass the ball to Brown as much as possible. To my highly trained eye, we appeared to be winning at halftime, as evidenced by the fact that our zero goals were way more stylish than their zero goals, and also because screw Harvard.

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As the semester progresses at the speed of light, the senior class is beginning to make peace with that fateful day in May: Commencement. Until the Class of 2012 up and leaves us, BlogDH wants to highlight all the interesting things the class has been up to. To this end, we are (re)starting a series, Last Call, featuring seniors reflecting on their experiences at Brown. Each featured senior will tag another senior for the next installment. Find this year’s other “Last Call” chain here.

Then + Now

People might know me as…A field hockey captain and someone who wears a lot of backwards hats.

What will you remember most about your experience on the field hockey team? Definitely the camaraderie of the team: the dynamic that we’ve developed of being friends off the field and how that transfers to what we do on the field.

So how do you as a captain foster that camaraderie? There were three captains this fall and we did a really good job of including everyone from all four years — so, making a big effort to incorporate the freshmen into whatever we were doing as a team. We guided them and made sure that everyone was on the same page both in terms of field hockey and in academics and their social lives. We had the full picture in mind.

What is the best way to get your team pumped up before a game? We do a lot of, kind of, channeling aggression. We bang our sticks and do cheers before the game. But I think the main thing is making sure that everyone knows that they’re playing for Brown and that there’s school spirit and a team. That’s why you’re on the field.

On a Friday night, you might find yourself…At the GCB.  [Read more →]

Co-captain quarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero '11.5 and the rest of the football squad will look to end Penn's 18-game Ivy win streak Saturday.

Some of you may have noticed there was no cheering going on last week on this blog. Some of you may even have missed this informative post. We’re sorry. We sincerely hope it won’t happen again.

Saturday is officially Take On Penn Day at Brown. For those of you who think sports are violent and send the wrong message, please tell this to Penn. They’re Quakers. Isn’t it a bit hypocritical of them to be undefeated so long in a sport where the objective is for hulky men to tackle each other repeatedly? Why don’t they just forfeit? Oh, yeah — because that wouldn’t be any fun! Here’s what you have to cheer for tomorrow:  [Read more →]

Lots of winners this week. Why? I can think of three possible reasons: as an apology for taking several weeks off (I blame midterms), because I’m a nice guy, or, just maybe, because a lot of teams did well. I say it’s all three.

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Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry always breaks even? Yeah, this was that week for Brown sports. See for yourself below if you don’t believe me. Hence, there are no Winners and no Bad News Bears this week. There is only a vague sliding scale of quality that exists only in my head. Deal with it.

Continued after the jump.

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I feel I must respond to Kevin A. Seaman’s comment on our post about match-ups and the football team.

First of all, don’t knock the blog. We led our first post with a possibly ill-considered joke, and suddenly we show “a lack of appreciation for the commitment of Brown’s student-athletes”? No one is more aware than us how good our sports teams often are. You’re going to be in trouble if you can’t handle a little sarcasm, because snarkiness is pretty much my only rhetorical tool.

More importantly, Mr. Seaman raises the age-old argument that “what is needed is more support from the student body at its athetic [sic] events; school spirit needs to be elevated.”

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It was a busy weekend for Bruno as the competition kicked into full swing in the past week for several teams. Here’s the quick rundown of results.
THE WINNERS

Men’s soccer: 2-0-1 overall. The Bears tied Lehigh in their first game and beat SMU and Adelphi at home over the weekend.

Men’s water polo: 5-2 overall. The Princeton Invitational was a big success for Bruno, with Ws in three out of four games.

Field hockey: 2-2 overall. The team started off with two losses but swept this weekend against Monmouth and Bryant.

After the jump, this weekend’s Bad News Bears. [Read more →]