The women’s cross country team began its season on Saturday with a dominant victory at the Bowdoin Invitational, hosted by Bowdoin College. Although there were only four other schools in the race, the Jumbos took 21 of the top 23 spots to score an impressive victory over NESCAC-rival Bowdoin.The five ...
The men’s cross country team traveled to Maine on Saturday to compete in the Bowdoin Men’s Cross Country Invitational, finishing second overall behind NESCAC rival Bowdoin.The highlight of the meet for the Jumbos came in the form of first place finisher, sophomore Luke O’Connor, who beat the ...
Although it did not come as readily as any of its previous three wins, the men’s soccer team’s 1-0 victory at Colby last Saturday may turn out to be one of the decisive moments in a pivotal season for Tufts.Unlike in previous contests where the Jumbos have had the luxury of numerous open looks ...
The men's cross country team enters the 2014 season in pursuit of its fourth straight trip to the NCAA Championship meet. If all goes according to plan, the Jumbo runners will send a squad to Mason, Ohio on Nov. 24 to once again stake Tufts' claim as a competitive cross country program on the national level.
In 2012, the Tufts women's soccer team scored just 14 goals all season long. This year, the Jumbos have nearly equaled that total in just two games after a 6-0 thrashing of the Bates Bobcats on Saturday and a 4-0 routing of the MIT Engineers on Wednesday.
In June the sailing team affirmed to the rest of the nation that it was one of the top co-ed squads in the country, placing fifth at the Gill Co-ed Dinghy National Championship, held at St. Mary's College in Maryland. The Jumbos, with a final line of 98-163-261, were only one point behind Stanford, ...
Few teams ever have the fortune to play on the biggest stage in their sport, and even fewer come away with a trophy to show for it. An even smaller percentage of elite teams have the chance to retain that trophy, and with a 6-0 win over Salisbury on May 27, the Tufts softball team joined the upper echelon ...
The 2014 men's lacrosse team made its home debut against Stevens Institute of Technology in front of 350 loyal Tufts fans on March 11. At that time few people outside Medford could have imagined that less than two months later this team would be playing for the Div. III title in a Baltimore stadium ...
The 2014 season saw Tufts baseball tie a school record for victories with a 34-9 final record and earn a fifth NCAA Div. III berth. The Jumbos also pushed eventual NESCAC Champions Wesleyan to the final game of the conference Championship, emerging as the runners-up.After a disappointing 2013 season ...
The Jumbos are back to a winning conference record after a 1-0 victory on the road against the Continentals on Saturday. Freshman Brooke Fortin netted the goal for the Jumbos in the second half to give the team their fifth NESCAC win of the season.
Three years ago, the eighth-seeded Bates Bobcats shocked the top-seeded Jumbos in a NESCAC quarterfinals penalty shootout after 110 minutes of scoreless play. Bates ended Tufts' playoff run in a 3-2 shootout that has fueled a rivalry between the two schools ever since.
A late-game corner kick sealed the deal for Tufts as the women's soccer team walked away with a 2-0 win over Connecticut College on Saturday. Junior Carla Kruyff netted both goals for Tufts in a game that brought the team back to a winning record in the conference.
Tufts Water Polo club finished on top of the North Atlantic division, improving on their third place division finish last year, and will finish their season in the upcoming National Championships this weekend.
The co-ed and women's sailing teams competed in five different regattas this past weekend. Seven Tufts sailors participated at the main co-ed event, the 73rd Annual Professor Schell Trophy at MIT, while six others raced at the women's event, the Victorian Coffee Urn at Harvard. Nine sailors were at the secondary co-ed event, the Dave Perry Trophy at Yale, and 18 freshmen sailors stayed in Medford for the Nickerson Trophy, hosted by Tufts. Finally, the third co-ed event, the Providence College Invite #2, featured four Jumbo sailors.
The Tufts Student Athletic Advisory Committee (SAAC) hosted a talk on Nov. 5 led by former Washington Wizards interim head coach and long-time NBA executive Ed Tapscott (LA '75). The talk, which was moderated by sophomore women's soccer player Allie Weiller, is one of the first steps that SAAC has taken in advancing its organizational goals.Originally, a few years ago, when [SAAC] was really starting to pick up, [the goal] was simply to bring fans to sporting events, which Tufts kind of had an issue doing," Weiller said. "I think now, with Fan The Fire, that is not an issue anymore, and it's more of a routine. I think the next biggest thing we're working on is bringing athletes and non-athletes together." According to Weiller, talks led by individuals like Tapscott will be vital because they appeal to a wide range of students and can serve to bridge the gap between athletes and non-athletes. "Since we are branching out past Fan the Fire this year, I thought the best way of doing that was bringing in someone that could talk to the Tufts community about how their experiences helped them get to such a vibrant and amazing career that they have today," Weiller said. For Weiller and SAAC, Tapscott was an obvious choice. Life at TuftsTapscott, who graduated from Tufts with a degree in political science and a job coaching the Tufts freshman basketball team, believes his time at Tufts was extremely influential to his life - one of the reasons he agreed to speak at the university last week."I really believe that my athletic experience, as well as my academic experience [at Tufts], has really shaped who I became," Tapscott said. "I think that my experience here was certainly part of what helped launch me to things I ended up wanting to do and was able to do."One of the values Tapscott took out of his time at Tufts - and stressed during his talk - was leading a balanced lifestyle."I work in an athletic environment, and I see guys who have certainly emphasized their athletic development throughout their lives," he said. "As a result of that ... they have turned that into lucrative professional careers. However, the one thing they can't stop is aging, and at some point, the muscles that you use in your body will stiffen and slow, but the one muscle you can continue to develop is the brain. I left [Tufts] with a fairly good appreciation of how to use both."Tapscott, however, was not all brains and no brawn. During his Tufts athletic career, he was a captain of the basketball team for his junior and senior seasons and ended up eighth all time on the career assists list for the school. Tapscott used the unique atmosphere that Tufts provided to propel himself through life, and eventually, into a job in the NBA. From athlete to coach, and everything in betweenDespite his impressive post-graduate professional resume in athletics, Tapscott originally came to Tufts with the intention of becoming a lawyer. He went on to graduate from American University with a Juris Doctorate in 1980 and only began to get truly involved in athletics when he was promoted to head coach of American's men's basketball team in 1982. Tapscott finally left Washington, D.C. after eight successful seasons, leaving behind a legacy as the coach with the second highest winning percentage in school history. However, Tapscott, who preached the value of competitiveness during his talk, did not end his professional climb at American."I really tried to diversify my portfolio," he said. "I didn't want to be stuck doing one thing. When I left college coaching, before I even went into the NBA, I was an attorney agent. All of a sudden, I was out of coaching and in the business contract side of it. Then when I joined the Knicks, I was in the administrative side of things."Tapscott continued to build his resume, working in television and then for several pro teams in different capacities, before he got his big break with the Charlotte Bobcats. "I never seemed to specialize in any one thing," he said. "I was a jack of all trades, and that seemed to serve me extremely well."Tapscott was rewarded for his hard work when he was the first employee hired to run the Charlotte Bobcats as the executive vice president and chief operating officer. After he left the Bobcats, he joined the Wizards in an administrative role and was named the team's interim head coach in 2008. Tapscott explained that although he had experience coaching in college, the transition to the NBA required a different type of thinking."Coaching in college is an exercise in authority, and coaching in the NBA is an exercise in creativity," he said. "You have to create things that focus interest and attention, and do so in a manner that [the players] will embrace. It makes it interestingly challenging."Tapscott, who returned to the front office of the Wizards after the year, believes that his roles as both coach and administrator naturally play off of each other."Coaching and administration [have] so many parallels," he said. "It's about managing egos
For the Tufts rugby teams, it has been a season of contrasts. The women's team is undefeated for the first time in 11 years through five matches and is on its way to a conference championship match. On the other hand, the men's team sits at the bottom of the New England Collegiate Rugby Conference's standings at 1-4, facing a must-win match this Saturday against the Coast Guard to keep its playoff dreams alive. With one regular season match remaining for each team, the rugby program is once again showing that it is home to more than typical club teams.
Although many Div. III tennis teams across the country have already completed several matches to kick off the spring season, Tufts men's tennis will begin over spring break at Claremont Colleges in Claremont, Calif., where they will take on Denison, Sewanee, Pomona, Occidental and Trinity. It will be a quick jump into team play, especially compared to the more singles-oriented fall season the team had last semester.
After a long cross-country trip, a small contingent from the men's track and field team arrived in Lincoln, Neb. on March 13 to compete in the Div. III National Championships. The next day - Friday, March 14 - marked the first of two days of competition, which saw the Jumbos get out to a fast and successful start.
