Athletes aren’t dumb. Really, they just don’t know the definition of summer vacation.
While the rest of the Northeastern community left the winter and spring behind last month, Husky athletes haven’t lost a step toward their dreams of glory in their respective sports.
In fact, for the baseball team, things are just starting to heat up.
The group won the America East Regular Season crown last week, and will hold the top seed when the conference tourney begins Thursday in Orono, Maine.
And at 28-18, 14-6 conference, they look like a strong contender to repeat as AE champs and earn a consecutive NCAA tournament bid for the first time in program history.
“At the end we ended up where we hoped to end up, and we feel as good as we could possibly feel,” said NU coach Neil McPhee. “We’re playing well. The pitching is a bit inconsistent but it is very strong.”
Senior Jordan Thomson, a native of Ottawa, Ontario, will take the hill in NU’s tourney opener against fourth-seed Stony Brook Thursday. After that, the preliminary rotation has 6-3, 205-pound senior Justin Hedrick second and junior Devin Monds, also of Ottawa, in the third slot.
Of the three, Thomson saw the most regular season work, hurling a team-high 82.2 innings of work. Thomson allotted teams a paunch 1.31 runs per game, and held opponents to just a .194 average. Thomson only walked 12 batters during the season.
Hedrick piled up a team-best 83 strikeouts in his 79 innings of work, but has the worst record of the three starters at 5-4.
Monds holds a record of 5-3, despite having a worse ERA (4.14 to 3.42) than Hedrick, and half as many strikeouts. Still, Monds is coming off an impressive win over third-seed Albany in the regular season finale. The junior struck out 10, allowed only six hits and one run over eight innings of work.
McPhee sees pitching as the key to the entire tourney, which invites the top four teams from the eight-team league.
“It’s the strength of the three other teams in it,” he said. “To me, it really is going to boil down to who pitches best in the tournament and who scratches out a few runs.”
Although Northeastern has never missed the AE postseason, it has never taken back-to-back trophies. After last year’s run to the NCAA tournament and near upset over baseball power Louisiana State University, McPhee would like to see his players build upon past NCAA experience.
“The anxiety the team feels going to a regional for the first time is not going to be there,” he said. “There is going to be a much greater level of confidence. All the pitching is going to return that was there last year and pretty much the whole lineup. We played pretty well down in Louisiana last year. We think we can compete this year better than we did last year.”
MEN’S CREW
The No. 5 nationally ranked Huskies finished fourth in the Eastern Sprints May 16, finishing just behind Princeton University and the Naval Academy. Harvard University won the sprints by nearly a second, ahead of a group of four boats all within three seconds of each other – quite an improvement from the annual Smith Cup on May 1, when Harvard downed NU by 14 seconds.
Next up for the Huskies is the IRA national championship on Cooper River in New Jersey in June.
MEN’S TRACK
So much for the shadow of Vinny Tortorella.
Junior thrower Derek Anderson dispatched any sense of missing the former All-American over break when he became the first Husky athlete to win two events at the prestigious IC4A Championship at Yale University.
Anderson took first in the discus (176-10) and the shot put (59-11.75).
Northeastern finished ninth in the meet with 29 points, 20 of which came from Anderson’s arm.
Anderson also won the same events at the New England Championship meet May 7-8, with the team finishing a commendable second. The team also squeaked out the America East conference outdoor title on May 2, winning by two-and-a-half points over Albany.
WOMEN’S TRACK
Another day, another record for Ahndraea Allen.
The junior broke her own school mark in the 400 last week at the ECAC championship meet, where Northeastern finished ninth. Allen ran a time of 53.02 in New Haven, Conn., besting her mark of 53.14 set last year.
Freshman Aquilla Williams-Judge broke a five-year record in the 110-hurdles, running a time of 13.77 in the preliminaries. Nikiya Reid set the old record of 13.96 in 1999.
The women’s track team also finished fourth at the New England meet and cruised to its third America East outdoor title in a row at NU’s Solomon Track in Dedham in the past month.
FOOTBALL
Two former Northeastern gridiron athletes signed professional contracts over break. NU running back Tim Gale signed a free-agent contract with the NFL’s Houston Texans, while former defensive end Steve Anzalone will suit up for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League in the fall.
Both players were key cogs in Northeastern’s first ever Atlantic-10 Conference Championship in 2002, a season that put the Huskies in the NCAA Division 1-AA tournament for the first time in school history.
Gale ended his career as the all-time school leader in touchdowns (27) and second in rushing yards (1,799).
Anzalone was tabbed as an All-American after his senior season, and is second on Northeastern’s career list of sacks with 26.
WOMEN’S HOCKEY
Northeastern women’s hockey goalie Chanda Gunn received a pair of awards over break.
Most recently, she was awarded the Honda Inspiration Award by the College Women Sports Awards. Gunn never let her epilepsy get in the way of her stellar hockey career on Huntington Avenue. She was a three-time finalist for the Patty Kazmaier award, given each year to the top women’s hockey player in America. She was the 16th person to receive the HIA honor.
Gunn also received the 2004 Humanitarian award at Faneuil Hall on April 9. The award is given annually to positive role models in the college hockey world, both male and female.
WOMEN’S CREW
The women’s crew team finished last in the Eastern Sprints over break, coming across the line in 6:40.3. Princeton won the race with a time of 6:16.1.
Northeastern qualified for the Grand Final by placing second in the morning heat, behind Brown University and ahead of Cornell University, Navy, Rutgers and M.I.T.
