The Jumbos kicked off their 2007 Homecoming festivities on Friday night, honoring nine members of the Tufts athletic community at its annual Athletics Awards Ceremony.
The track and field program was well represented, taking three of the six student-athlete awards. For the second straight year, Fred Jones (LA '07) took home the Clarence "Pop" Houston Award for best male athlete, after a 2007 campaign in which he earned All-American honors in the indoor long and triple jumps as well as the outdoor triple jump. Jones graduated as the most decorated track athlete in Tufts history, earning seven consecutive trips to Nationals and garnering 10 All-American honors.
Seniors Cat Beck and Kendall Swett tied in the voting for the Hester L. Sargent Award, given to the best female athlete. Beck helped the cross country team to a program-best fifth-place showing at the 2006 Div. III Championships, while also posting two All-American performances in outdoor track. During the indoor season, Beck ran the anchor leg of a distance medley relay (DMR) squad that finished second at the NCAA Championships and obliterated the field at the Open New England Championships.
Swett, who transferred from Lake Forest College before the start of the 2005-06 year, broke every Tufts diving record last season. She ran away from the competition at the NESCAC Championships, setting a conference record in the 1-meter dive and winning the 3-meter dive by more than 40 points. Swett followed with top-10 finishes in both events at Nationals.
2007 graduates Sarah Crispin and Chris Decembrele won the Fobert Award, given to the best multi-sport athletes. Crispin captained the cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track teams last season, joining Beck on the Jumbos' record-setting DMR team. Individually, Crispin finished first in the Div. III New England Regional Championships for the second straight year and ran at the NCAA Div. III Cross Country Championships. Despite missing five weeks of the spring season with an injury, Crispin still qualified for the NCAA Div. III Championships in the 1,500 meters.
Decembrele, meanwhile, made his mark in football and baseball. Last season, as a quad-captain and defensive end for the football team, he led the team in tackles for the third-consecutive season and picked up an All-NESCAC selection. Splitting time at catcher and center field for the baseball team, Decembrele was an important senior leader for the Jumbos, while ranking in the top five on the team in home runs, runs batted in, runs scored, triples and stolen bases.
Field hockey's Kathleen Martin and soccer's Aaron Nass, both 2007 graduates, won the W. Murray Kenney Award for their perseverance and dedication to athletics. Martin overcame compartment syndrome as well as a knee injury to start every game for the Jumbos in 2006. Nass, meanwhile, suffered a near-fatal pulmonary embolism before coming back to start 13 games in his senior year.
Thirty-three-year coaching veteran Don Megerle, who retired from the helm of the men's swimming team in 2004, won the Distinguished Achievement Award. Currently the director of the Tufts Marathon Challenge, Megerle won NESCAC Coach of the Year honors seven times as the swimming coach, guiding 92 swimmers to All-American performances.
Junior Evans Clinchy, the Executive Sports Editor for the Daily, rounded out the award recipients, taking home the Timothy J. Horgan award for sportswriting. Clinchy served as a beat writer for the football, men's basketball and baseball teams his sophomore year, in addition to publishing a weekly column.
-by Sapna Bansil
