In recent years, Amherst's storied men's basketball program has deservedly received the attention of the Lord Jeff faithful, routinely drawing capacity crowds to LeFrak Gym during the team's annual treks deep into the NCAA Tournament.
The squad has shown no letdown this season, as the Jeffs reached the Div. III Final Four for the third time in four years Saturday night, with an 81-69 victory over Rhode Island College in the sectional finals.
But for perhaps the first time in recent memory, the men's basketball program is hardly the only Jeffs team grabbing headlines in the school's winter sports season, as the women's hockey and swimming and diving teams have grabbed the spotlight with program-best runs in their respective national tournaments.
Amherst's women's hockey team is arguably one of the greatest underdog stories in the recent history of the NESCAC, keeping its improbable run alive Saturday night after a 2-1 victory over the Rochester Institute of Technology in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament.
Once again, a strong effort from freshman goalie Krystyn Elek propelled the squad, as she extended her unbeaten streak to seven games after stopping 14 Tiger shots and yielding just one goal. In her last 185 minutes of hockey, a run dating back to the third period of Amherst's NESCAC semifinal victory over Bowdoin on March 3, Elek, the conference's Rookie of the Year, has surrendered just two goals.
"She dies to keep the puck out of the net," Amherst women's hockey coach Jim Plumer said. "It's her personal challenge to keep every puck out of the net. When you think about some of the old coaching clich?©s, like, 'You practice as you play,' or 'You play as you practice,' I think it really applies to her. She's got a habit of making it her sole goal to keep goals from being scored."
In the span of three weeks, the Jeffs have completely rewritten their program's record books, earning their first victory in a NESCAC Tournament game, their first NESCAC title, and their first NCAA Frozen Four appearance. The women's hockey team is the first Amherst squad in any winter sport other than men's basketball ever to reach the Final Four of a national tournament.
And the Amherst community has taken notice.
"All of a sudden, professors start noticing," Plumer said. "Kids have told me that their professors at the beginning of class will be reading an article from the local newspaper about our team mentioning some of our kids. All of a sudden, the president of the college e-mails the whole team. People on campus do take a lot of notice. It makes the experience that much more special. All of a sudden, you walk down the hallway and everybody's giving you a thumbs up."
Meanwhile, the school's women's swimming and diving team has also exceeded all expectations this season. Three weeks after posting a second-place finish at the NESCAC Tournament, where they won the most events of any participant and captured a conference-best 37 All-NESCAC honors, the Jeffs stunned the field at last weekend's NCAA Championships, swimming to a second-place showing that placed them ahead of two-time defending champion Emory, national powerhouse Calvin, and seven-time NESCAC champion Williams.
"I haven't seen a team swim like this, maybe ever," coach Nick Nichols said. "After about two events, when we were in second, kids were taking pictures of the scoreboard because [they] knew we were going to be out of second in a heartbeat. There were more pictures of the scoreboard probably than of people on the podium at that point. Then we were hanging in there, but we thought we'd fall to fourth, maybe fifth. It's so far beyond satisfaction because we had no expectation to even be in the ballpark."
Keying the team's second-place run was junior Brittany Sasser, who took Swimmer of the Meet honors after breaking her own national records in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke events and contributed to four other top-five relay finishes.
"Genetically, she's got it all," Nichols said. "She's put together the way a swimmer needs to be put together. But it's a lot more than that. Brittany is a very rare combination of an extraordinary talent, someone who's incredibly motivated, incredibly determined, and an incredible hard worker."
While the women's swimming and diving season has concluded, the men's basketball and women's hockey programs will both resume their quests for national titles on Friday, when each will make appearances in the national semifinals of their respective NCAA Tournaments. While no Amherst winter sports team has ever won a national championship, this season may see two Jeffs squads take home the gold.
"Our seniors will go to the Final Four for the third time," Amherst men's basketball coach David Hixon said. "So the national championship's the goal, and that's what we've been shooting for all year long. We won 23 in a row during the year, which was the school mark, but we never really thought about that. Our focus has been on a more final goal."
But regardless of where the Jeffs finish in the NCAA Tournament, their success will only benefit the NESCAC as a whole.
"We're not just proud of how Amherst has done," Hixon, also the school's Associate Athletic Director, said. "It speaks toward the strength of our conference. Naturally we've had a good year. We're proud to carry the banner in a couple of sports right now for the NESCAC. But it helps our league when the rest of the country perceives that we have this strength."
