The Winning Ephect
November 10The best program around isn't the New England Patriots. It isn't UConn's women's basketball team. Nope, the best program around these days wears Purple. That's right, over in the boonies, the Williams Ephs have established themselves as the best in Div. III. And it's not just one team. It's all of them. Our NESCAC rival recently won the Director's Cup, given to the best Div. III collegiate athletic program, for the sixth straight time. Sports Illustrated concurred. But Sunday may have taken the cake. Williams grabbed NESCAC championships in volleyball, men's and women's soccer, and field hockey. For both the volleyball and men's soccer teams, it was the fourth straight league title. Remember, this school has fewer than 2,000 students. Surely there must be something going on here. Money under the table? Recruiting visits to the award-winning Williamstown strip clubs? Booster-funded dinners at Red Lobster? I decided to use my ace investigative reporting skills to get to the bottom of this. But I don't have a car. Luckily, I do have a phone. Unfortunately, I couldn't trick Williams Athletic Director Dick Quinn into admitting to improprieties or scandal. Instead, Quinn cited the coaches, kids, facilities, close-knit atmosphere, and tradition. "I'm a big believer in tradition," Eph men's soccer coach T. Michael Russo added, and he wasn't the only one. "Winning is a state of mind," Tufts cross country coach Connie Putnam said. "At Williams, the president wants to win, the provost wants to win, the deans want to win, primary givers like George Steinbrenner want to win, alumni want to win. Most organizations reflect the leadership of the organization. So somewhere in this school, up at some level, it's accepted that athletics don't matter." "Williams has always been extremely strong, and by always, I mean for 100 years," Tufts Athletic Director Bill Gehling said. "It becomes self-fulfilling; when you have that reputation you attract kids. But in the last twenty years they took it to a new level. They were one of the first to have systematically efficient way of working with admissions." Both athletic directors noted that because Williams is so strong academically (Number one liberal arts school according to U.S. News and World Report, so we can't even start a "One day you'll work for us" chant), the Ephs have the potential to steal Ivy League student-athletes. Not Big Ten athletes, which is unfortunate, because I can't decide what would be more fun, sitting next to Maurice Clarrett in math class or heckling him on the field. But still, Ivy League is Div. I. But that's not even the most amazing thing. In the latest Princeton Review, Williams was ranked seventh in the nation in "Students Pack the Stadium." That's out of all divisions. Ahead of Georgia, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Texas. Come again? "That's a little bit tainted in the sense that we're a small school," Quinn admitted. "If the question is, 'have you attended an athletic event,' well, most of the school plays varsity athletics, so they've attended an athletic event." (Williams also ranked fifth in "Everyone Plays Intramural Sports." Ask yourself, if Tufts was ranked fifth in that category, would I really have been able to win two IM tennis crowns and come within a missed lay-up - not mine - of an IM basketball title? Story coming soon.) The primary reason is probably location. "There's nothing to do there except go to the games," Putnam said. "Here in Boston you could be going to the Pops, the Bruins, the Celtics, any one of nine libraries. It's a completely different lifestyle." "Other schools use it against us in recruiting," Quinn said. "They'll say, 'what are you going to do up there?' Well, you're going to create a close bond with your team, you're going to excel at athletics, you're going to get a great education, and you're going to get the traditional college experience you might not get in a large metropolitan setting" (read: Tufts). "It's more of a rustic rural environment," Russo added. "You obviously have a lot more to do where you are. It's easier to publicize events here in a smaller community. We get good support from townspeople." Yeah, I definitely bonded with some townies at the last field hockey game. Putnam and Russo both agreed that athletes are more likely to support other athletes. And both AD's agreed that "students support teams when they excel." And it's not like Tufts is a slouch here. We were eleventh out of 424 Div. III schools in the Director's Cup. The men's cross country team finally broke through against Williams in NESCAC's last year, and topped the Ephs again this year. I hear sailing is nasty. The Zoueins are one sister short of filming The Three Musketeerettes. Women's tennis finished the year ranked eleventh nationally (Williams was third). Volleyball may have lost to the Ephs three times this year, but they pretty much rocked everyone else. And men's lacrosse has broken out in recent years. Of course, if you look at that list, the obvious problem is that many of our sports which are of a national caliber are not the sports that draw big crowds. Sure, we have our moments, as anyone who was at Cousens when Bowdoin's number one women's basketball team came to play last spring knows. Gehling says what helped mute school spirit was the NCAA ruling that changed how it accepts teams for postseason play. In 2000, the women's soccer team hosted the NCAA Final Four, drawing 3,000 people. "It was an incredible experience," Gehling said. "We finished second in the nation - and third in the conference. If that happened again we wouldn't get a bid." Just ask volleyball coach Cora Thompson, whose squad missed out despite being ranked second in New England behind You-Know-Who. "This program is on the way up," she said. "They're standing in our way of being the best team in New England." "Our challenge is to continue to try to rise to the top in an incredible conference," Gehling said. "I admire Williams. People throw rumors around, 'they accepted this kid that they shouldn't have,' but by and large I think they share the same perspective and commitment to academics and athletics as the other NESCAC schools." Now, this isn't the end of the world. It's not like choosing the wrong president or anything potentially disastrous like that. And we did have the first American football game. We think. And personally, as a student, I'm pretty happy we've got Boston. Would it be more fun if the athletic scene was a little better, or one of the big sports (football, basketball) was a year-in year-out powerhouse? Sure. But if that's what I was looking for, I would have gone to Duke. And after all the corruption that goes on in Div. I sports, if you give me a choice between too much emphasis on athletics or too little, I'm going with the latter. At least this way, when I sat next to soccer star Todd Gilbert in Antebellum and Civil War History, I knew he was earning his C+, just like me.
