Volleyball wraps up season at Conference TournamentShannon Arendt, Melissa Batog, and Jenny Burris finished out their college careers this past weekend at the Midwest Conference Tournament held at St. Norbert.
In a rematch of a game played Nov. 1, Lawrence came up against Carroll College. The Pioneers had defeated Lawrence 3-1 on Nov. 1 and repeated their victory with a resounding 3-0 win in the first round of the tournament.
Carroll went on to play Lake Forest in the championship game, despite going 2-7 in conference play in the regular season and being placed as the seventh seed.
Hopes of a similar upset for the Vikings against number three Monmouth were intensified when they won the first game 30-28. Monmouth was not about to experience an upset, however, and went on to win the next three games to come out victorious and end the season for the Vikings.
The loss of the influential seniors will have an impact on the team next year, but provided others step into their shoes and a good batch of freshmen come in, Lawrence volleyball should see themselves returning to the heights they commanded only two years ago.
Hockey splits Northland games
The Lawrence University hockey team, playing in the fourth game of the season and first conference game, was defeated by a margin of three goals to four.
Lawrence hadn’t lost to Northland since Nov. 2, 2001, a span that covered eight games and eights straight wins for the Vikings.
A bright point emerging from this game was that Jay Schofield scored his first collegiate goal. He was not the only Viking to register his first goal last weekend, though, as Lawrence, responding to the slap in the face by Northland, scored four goals in the first period to produce a 5-1 drubbing and begin a new winning streak.
In this game, junior Gharrity McNett and freshman Nick Anton were the newbies, with Anton scoring the first goal of the game and McNett scoring the second to each record their first collegiate goal. Anton would also add an assist and McNett would lay claim to two assists.
The two new scorers to the team were not the only stars. At the opposite end was freshman netminder Andrew Isaac, in place of Daniel Ljung, who stopped 40 shots en route to his first collegiate victory-hopefully the start of many more to come.
The Vikings play Minnesota-Crookston on Friday and Saturday, but those games are in Minnesota. They return to the Appleton Family Ice Center next weekend for two games against St. John’s University.
Swimming performs well in first meet
The first meet of the season for the swim team was the St. Norbert College Sprint Meet, oddly held at Lawrence. The men placed second out of six teams with 391 points, while UW Whitewater emerged champions, by a large margin, with 431.5 points.
The women also fared well, placing third out of seven teams by claiming 360 points, only 20.5 points behind champions St. Norbert.
For the men, sophomore Adam Kolb led the team by taking first in the 50 freestyle and second in the 100 freestyle, for which he was named one of two Vikings of the Week.
Steve Vander Naalt and David Dannenhower both claimed second place finishes, with Dannenhower also landing a third place finish to round out the individual top three finishes.
The relay teams also collected a lot of points for the team by taking first in the 100 medley and the 500 freestyle crescendo, second in the 200 medley, and third in the 100 free.
The women were paced by the 100 freestyle relay team and Meggin Brittain, who claimed first in the 50 backstroke and the 100 IM, setting a meet record in the 100 IM in the process.
Also finishing top three places were Mandy Burgess (second in the 100 free), Jodie Primus (third in the 50 breast), Heather Prochnow (second in the 50 butterfly), and Tiffany Pannier (third in the 100 IM).
The 200 medley relay took second, while the 500 free and 500 free crescendo both nabbed third place.
The team has two away meets before returning home for the Gene Davis Invitational on Dec. 5 and 6.
The extra points kill again; Football lose to Ripon
Think back quite awhile to when the Dodgers were from Brooklyn. Their biggest rival was the New York Yankees. The Bears and the Packers are another big rivalry; Manchester United and Liverpool.
No matter what else happens in a season, you can assume that it will be thrown out the window when Lawrence and Ripon play their annual football game.
The rivalry dates back to 1893, 110 years, and the results are almost split down the middle, with the Red Hawks holding a slight edge of 49-46-7.
Dominance has been hard to come by for either team, with the longest winning streak consisting of only five games by Ripon from 1962 to 1966. Up until last weekend’s game, only three games had been decided by one point, with the most recent, in 1962, won by Ripon 15-14.
As has been the case this whole season (only one game left!), the offense has provided the touchdowns, but the extra points seem to be the hardest thing to come by. They don’t seem like a big deal-after all, it’s only one point-but had the Vikings been able to add the negligible one point consistently, they could have tied both Ripon and nationally ranked St. Norbert.
But this area of improvement has been hit on consistently throughout the season and really needs no further explaining.
Either way, the Vikings were hopeful of revenge for last season, which saw the highest combined score between the two teams in their history, Ripon winning 58-35 for 93 points.
This year’s version of the derby only featured four touchdowns. Ripon had taken the lead in the first quarter, only for Justin Berrens of Lawrence to respond in the second quarter with a touchdown of his own (both extra points were good).
The third quarter was devoid of scoring but Ripon gobbled up five minutes of the fourth quarter en route to their second touchdown, which put the score at 7-14.
Lawrence was not about to throw in the towel, though, and with only 35 seconds left in the game, Eric Aspensen took the ball and carried it over the goal line to put the Vikings within one point.
While kicker Kevin Fitzsimmons was able to put the first one through the uprights, his attempt at the game-tying point was no good. To the dejection of the seniors, the chance of going out on top over Ripon was gone.
With one last game, albeit an away game, the seniors can look back on a season and career that was full of amazing accomplishments-such as Zach Michael, a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame-and bitter disappointments.
Good luck in your last game of the season, Vikes!