Going into the spring seasons, Carleton women ranked 3rd in the 12 college Conference (“MIAC”) All Sports Competition, and the men ranked 6th, square in the middle of the 11 schools with men’s sports.
Two performances stand out this winter: Kate Alexander, frosh from Tigard, Oregon, fresh from being names Swimmer of the Meet in the MIAC Championship, was 8th in the 200 breast stroke and 12th in the 100 breast stroke at the Div III NCAA Championship. Ted Marschall, soph from Burnsville, Minnesota, was 4th in both the 200 and 400 Individual Medley and 11th in the 200 breast stroke. Both are NCAA Div III All-Americans.
Carleton women were 3rd in the MIAC in basketball, indoor track, and swimming. Men placed 4th in swimming and 5th in basketball and indoor track. With every team in the first division of the Conference, this has to be considered another good season and confirmation of Carleton’s place in one of the better leagues in NCAA Div III.
In addition, women’s synch swimming finished in a tie for 10th in their national meet. That remains hard to assess, with limited varsity status among the participating schools, and indeed an interesting mix of major universities (presumably clubs) and unfamiliar colleges.
Once again, I encourage those who can to keep current with Carleton sports on the College website – www.carleton.edu/athletics/.
The 2007 nominations for the Hall of Fame were not only the most numerous in memory (40 individuals and teams from reunion classes), but also the strongest. There were many qualified options and more than a dozen outstanding ones; the second and third quartets of “finalists” also were clearly worthy. To be cited on June 16th are:
Doug Sauter ’82 – Tennis
Katherine Frewing Shallenbarger ’92 – Basketball and Volleyball
Scott Klein ’97 – Football
Dan Virnig ’97 – Track and Cross Country
As more female athletes graduate, I hope we can get more women to be nominated. The nominations we get are excellent, but it would be nice to have more confidence that no good ones have been passed over because they weren’t nominated.
A last observation (and this is about Carleton athletics in general, NOT the Hall of Fame)… I recently talked with a retired, successful, and respected high school coach from the St. Paul suburbs who had been a good football player and sprinter at Gustavus in the 1950s. He made a comment worthy of passing on: “When we were in college, if you were a half-way decent high school athlete, you could reasonably expect to play in the MIAC; now virtually everyone on the field was all-conference, all-region, or better.”
It’s true. Essentially the same number of schools is offering the same number of sports to an ever-larger population, of which ever-more are attending college. Couple that with expanded pre-college athletic experience, better coaching and better training and the quality of play we see here is no mystery.