Wed 11 Jun 2008
Williams has won the Directors Cup (pdf). Look at how strong the NESCAC conference was this year (out of almost 300 listed D3 schools):
1) Williams 1120.5
2) Wash U. 899
3) New Jersey 825.25
4) Amherst 815
5) Middlebury 813.50
Our women’s tennis and rowing teams were national champions this spring - but I’ll leave the details for someone else as I’m rushing to get this posted and get to a meeting.
Go Ephs!
UPDATE (DK): I put the pdf link in-line above. Still no official announcement from the College. Dick Quin is, presumably, writing something now. Could one of our sports experts provide some more commentary on where these points come from? For example, I see that we earned 53 points in mens lacrosse. First, how was it determined that we we’re the 9th best team in DIV III? Second, what is the breakdown in points by finish? I had thought that the drop-off from 1st to 9th was much steeper. Also, how do the points breakdown between mens and womens teams? It almost seems like Williams women, alone, could have won the cup.
Surely there is a member of the EphBlog community who is, or would be willing to become, an expert on the Directors’ Cup. Start here.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Noticed when I checked the print-out that they scored the rowing differently this year. The last time (2006) that Williams was second in the Grand Final but won the regatta/championship on points because of strong performances in the GF by both the first and second varsity boats, Williams got 50 Directors Cup points for being second in the Grand Final and Ithaca (whose first varsity boat was first in the Grand Final) got 100 points. This time, Trinity got 90 points for winning the Grand Final and Williams (whose boats were second and third in the Grand Final and won the championship on points) was given 100 Directors Cup points. I have no idea if this is a mistake. I once looked, unsuccessfully, for the cup’s scoring rules.
Even if that’s a mistake and gets recalculated, Williams still has enough points to retain the cup.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Some bloggers from D3football.com, who are critical of NESCAC, have pointed, and would point, out that scores like this notwithstanding, NESCAC and Williams are not athletically what they appear either in letter or spirit.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Frank, that depends on whether you define “athletic” solely by high profile men’s sports as those critics must do (and even so, NESCAC does pretty damn well — see national championships in baseball and soccer from Trinity and Midd this year, and recent championships in basketball (Williams / Amherst) and hockey and lacrosse (Middlebury)) or by ALL sports, both high and low profile, across genders.
Congrats to Williams on an AMAZING spring season — the spring point total alone would have placed Williams in the top 25 of all D-III schools, which is incredible. Williams dominated the Sears Cup yet again, and it is hard to imagine anything will change soon. Just look at the spring sports: women’s crew is now a perennial power who will probably always finish in the top 3, women’s tennis returns almost the entire line-up and will be a prohibitive favorite to repeat, men’s lacrosse is on the rise and returns many key players including the conference ROY and star goalie, track and field are always strong contenders and always reload, men’s and women’s golf were both dominated by underclassmen and both should only improve, and men’s tennis is a perennial national contender.
I believe this is the fifth straight year Williams has ranked first in both US News and the Sears Cup. While both are admittedly far from perfect measuring sticks, that is still a pretty damn impressive balance of athletic and academic excellence — kudos to all the Eph student athletes on an insanely good year both on (two national titles and Sears Cup) and off (Will Bruce and other prestigious scholar-athlete / service awards) the playing field.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
They are not at all precise about their definition - but weighted 80% football, 12% men’s basketball, 8% baseball, 0% the rest might not be an unreasonable stab at it - and that does not address the NESCAC “hypocrisy” as some of them put it.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Well three heaping servings of milk punch out of the Title IX Cup, with a heaping jar of bitters thrown in, to each of those guys!
And resounding applause to the Ephwomen and Ephmen for their accomplishments, across the board. I was just looking at the commencement program and noticing a lot of Ephs I recognized from the Sports website listed as having taken their degrees with Latin honors and won awards (including a good smattering of Phi Beta Kappas and Sigma Xis). The killer was the ones who earned honors or highest honors for their theses. Writing a thesis on top of being a varsity athlete - not at all shabby.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Someone also might point out that for instance, Williams competes in 15 men’s and 15 women’s sports, while Wash U competes only in 7 men’s sports and 7 women’s sports. In fact, since it seems the Director’s Cup counts points from 9m/9w sports, many DIII schools could never come close to finishing first. Doesn’t really detract from the Williams accomplishment, but I’d really be embarrassed to be Amherst or Middlebury. Perhaps someone smarter and with more time than I can find out the number of DIII schools with 29-30 NCAA sports and correlate those results with the Directors Cup. Dave?
June 11th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Larry,
Thanks so much for posting this. What fun! I got a lot of kudos at being the bearer of news that my frosh was yet to hear. Wonderful accomplishments…or as Jeff put it…an “insanely good year”!
Congratulations, and thank you, to all the talented Ephs who worked so hard for this. It is so appreciated!
June 11th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
If you want to see which Williams teams earned points this year but, like me, have trouble reading the spreadsheets online, here are the teams, with their rankings and the points those rankings produced:
Fall
Women’s Volleyball 5th 73 points
Men’s Soccer 9th 64 points
Women’s Soccer 9th 64 points
Men’s X-Country 10th 60 points
Women’s X-Country 14th 48 points
Winter
Skiing 14th 48 points
Men’s Swimming 5th 75 points
Women’s Swimming 5th 75 points
Men’s T&F 33rd 40 points
Women’s T&F 9th 68.25 points
Men’s Wrestling 47th 25 points
Spring
Men’s Golf 24th 49.5 points
Women’s Golf 8th 66 points
Men’s Lacrosse 9th 53 points
Women’s Rowing 1st 100 points
Men’s Tennis 5th 73 points
Women’s Tennis 1st 100 points
Men’s T&F 13th 61.5 points
Women’s T&F 67th X*
*[I’m not sure what the “X” is for. Another team that was ranked 67th received 5 points. It wasn’t crucial this year, in any event.]
Please remember that football still cannot compete in post-season play under NESCAC rules and that men’s rowing is not an NCAA sport, so neither can contribute to the points total under current rules. Also, I don’t think the men’s or women’s squash teams can contribute to the totals. I was glad to see skiing in there – I had thought the four ski teams’ performances didn’t count in the Division III totals, but it looks as though men’s and women’s alpine and Nordic are somehow combined and included (this isn’t a mistake, as Midd got points for skiing, too).
At first I thought that getting to know how the Directors Cup scoring works would be a great thing. I don’t think so anymore, as I think that, as soon as we do things like that and think we own it (and who’d study the rules absent an expectation of winning again?), we’ll lose it.
As to gender, because the skiing seems to be lumped together, we can’t tell the exact breakdown, but it looks as though the two groups are within 100 points of each other this year (and, as I remember, men’s skiing ranked higher than women’s because of Christianson, which would cut the difference even further).
June 12th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Hello there, FM -
My pleasure. Williams still hasn’t announced it on the website, but there should be a story Thursday. The cups (except the D1 one, which has to wait for the collegiate baseball world championship results, if those would make a difference as to whether perennial Stanford gets it) are announced and handed over at a banquet of athletic directors. It was about 5 PM East Coast time before that happened and the final scores were released (hence the lack of an official Williams press release). I knew that the announcement should come out of the directors’ association this afternoon, so I kept checking their tally sheets, and my instincts were right. I love a scoop!
When I was checking the Sports page, I learned that the rowing coaches’ association has just named head Williams women’s rowing coach Justin Moore its DIII National Coach of the year. This is a great honor to him and the College for three years in a row: he won it three years ago; last year, while he was on sabbatical, a young Bates coach he had coached while she — herself a champion — was rowing for Williams, won it; and this year he won it again. We’ve acknowledged and celebrated the athletes and now I acknowledge and celebrate the coaches, many of whom could have had top level DI jobs.
One coach particularly deserves a shout out in this, her inaugural year coaching at Williams. Alison Swain, who coached the women’s tennis team to a national championship this year also pulled off quite a rare feat: she is only the second athlete in any division to have have won a national championship in a sport as both an athlete and the coach.
Go Ephs!
June 12th, 2008 at 1:45 am
John Wooden, Bobby Knight, Bud Wilkinson and Jimmy Johnson are four others, who spring quickly to mind.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Frank–
You’re amazing. Just beat me to it, and I also didn’t have Bud Wilkinson. Kudos!
June 12th, 2008 at 1:54 am
Also Al Renfrew:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Renfrew
June 12th, 2008 at 5:58 am
But Jimmy Johnson, John Wooden, Bud Wilkinson, and Bobby Knight did not coach their alma maters to national championships as far as I know. Could Williams be the first school to have that happen?
June 12th, 2008 at 6:50 am
My guess is that Larry may have meant, as an athlete and a coach for the same team, just a guess …
June 12th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Yes, that’s what I took it to mean. I was using the College’s wording (from the press release and Swain’s bio). I still can’t get over her pulling off that championship in her first year coaching the team (and she’s so young), against an undefeated national champion team.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:34 am
The College release limits the claim to DIII women’s.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Just to clarify, Justin Moore’s sabbatical replacement last year was Pat Tynan, a guy who used to be the asst. coach at Colby. His asst. last year was Heather Barney, a Williams alumna.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:19 am
From the Berkshire Eagle, here’s the latest version of the claim about Swain (the College keeps scaling it back): “Swain, a member of the Ephs 2001 NCAA championship team, became just the second coach in women’s NCAA Division III play to have also won an NCAA title as a player.”
Michael is right about the rowing coaches. My point about the Coach of the Year award was that, in the last three years, it has been won by either Moore himself or by a former Williams rower he had coached at Williams (at the time she won, Anne Lewis was coaching at Bates). Tynan and Barney pulled off an amazing feat last year with the Williams team, winning both the 1V and the regatta points championships at NCAAs while Moore was on sabbatical.