Williams has been good at a lot of things. Its teams have routinely captured NESCAC titles in men's soccer, field hockey, cross country, swimming, track and field, tennis and softball.
But for the first time in five years, the Williams Ephs are positioned to capture a NESCAC football championship.
The Ephs head into the season's final weekend with an unblemished record of 7-0, fresh off of a 51-21 thrashing of the Wesleyan Cardinals, the first 50-point performance by any offense in the 2006 season.
Trinity was the last team to churn out that many points when the Bantams finished their 2005 season with a 63-7 blowout of the hapless Cardinals on Nov. 12.
Last year's Bantams were one of the most dominant teams in NESCAC football history, easily running the table to go 8-0 and outscoring their eight opponents by a total of 276-36. Their narrowest victory occurred against the Jumbos, when the Bantams came to a rain-soaked Medford on Oct. 15 and struggled to preserve an early 7-0 lead.
This time around, however, it is the Ephs making headlines. And for the rest of the NESCAC, it's about time the Bantams met their match. Trinity has won the title outright every year since 2002, and that season they were co-champions alongside Williams. The year before that, the Ephs won their last outright title. Evidently, a two-team reign of terror has developed in 21st-century NESCAC football.
"I think Trinity-Williams has been a great rivalry for quite some time now," Bantams coach Jeff Devanney said. "When I played in the early nineties, we considered the Williams game the game of the year. That has typically been the case the past 18 years or so."
Both teams have illustrious histories that make for a stiff rivalry between the two programs. In one corner is Williams, a perennial powerhouse in every sport and 10-time winner of the Directors' Cup, awarded annually to the nation's best Div. III athletics program. And in the other corner is Trinity, whose signature sport is football, racking up four titles and the nation's best winning streak. That streak lasted 31 games and spanned five seasons, sandwiched between two losses to Williams.
"Williams and Trinity have a very competitive history which dates back to the late 1980s," Ephs coach Mike Whalen said. "Trinity ended two different 23-game unbeaten streaks which Williams had going, and this year, of course, we returned the favor. Both programs have very proud football traditions, and whenever we play them we know it's going to be a very competitive football game."
This year was no exception, as the two teams battled in Williamstown, Mass., on Sept. 30. The Ephs got on the board first, led by junior Pat Lucey, the league's most accurate quarterback with a 65.1 percent completion rate. Lucey hit senior receiver Brendan Fulmer with a touchdown pass early on, and after a Trinity field goal, sophomore tailback Brian Morrissey ran for a TD to give the Ephs a 14-3 lead.
"I remember that it was a very physical football game," Whalen said. "We jumped on them early in the first quarter, and they came right back to close the gap right before halftime."
At Trinity's helm was another of the league's top quarterbacks, sophomore Eric McGrath, who leads the NESCAC in passing TDs with 13. He threw two against Williams, one to senior quad-captain Chris Olenoski in the second quarter and one to sophomore Casey Savage in the third, but it wasn't enough. The Ephs rattled off 20 unanswered points and dismantled Trinity 41-16.
"It was a very good football game until it all fell apart for us early in the fourth quarter," Devanney said. "Williams outplayed us on the day, but the final score was not indicative of the type of game it really was."
With the Ephs now 7-0 and the Bantams 6-1, it all comes down to the final weekend. The Ephs can lock up a conference title with a win over Amherst on Saturday, but such a feat won't be easy. Williams will play on enemy territory against a Lord Jeff team that has allowed just 53 points all season, the lowest total in the NESCAC.
Meanwhile the Bantams will lock horns with Wesleyan. The Cardinals stand at 3-4 and have struggled perennially against Trinity. If the Bantams win and the 5-2 Jeffs pick up an upset over Williams, the NESCAC will crown co-champions. The Ephs may be 7-0, but so far all they've clinched is a tie.
"The NESCAC only acknowledges head-to-head victories to determine NCAA bids," Whalen said. "In football, if two teams tie, then they are considered co-champs. So we know that if we want to win the championship outright, we're going to have to go on the road and beat a very good Amherst football team this Saturday."
Win or lose, the Ephs will be considered one of the NESCAC's top two teams once the dust has settled Saturday. And for that, they've already earned plenty of respect. The Ephs have come a long way since 2005 when they were blown out by the Bantams early in the season, 34-6.
"Our game last year against [Williams] wasn't close, but that's just a one day snapshot," Devanney said. "They weren't a bad team last year - they just had a bad start. They have good players and are well-coached. And all their key players are seniors, and seniors usually play with a lot of confidence."
And if that confidence can translate into one more win, the NESCAC will have a new champion.
