Around the Water Cooler: More of the Same Stuff

In the world of Ivy League athletics, some things never change: Princeton dominates preppy women’s sports like lacrosse and field hockey; Brown manages to squander winning opportunities; and former basketball players find homes in obscure professional leagues overseas. This past week was no exception to the norm as the No. 4 Princeton field hockey team kept its undefeated streak alive, the Brown men’s soccer team won only one game despite three shutouts from its goalkeeper, and two former Columbia basketball players signed contracts to play in the English Basketball League.

Brown goalkeeper Paul Grandstrand had a week to remember. In three games and 310 minutes of play, Grandstrand did not let a single ball find the back of the net, knocking away all 13 shots he faced. Grandstrand was named Ivy League and ECAC Defensive Player of the Week for his efforts. But despite its keeper’s stingy defense, Brown managed only one victory on the week, a 1-0 win over South Carolina. In the Bears’ other matchups against Providence and Hofstra, neither team scored, resulting in two 0-0 deadlocks.

Brown could pick up a few offensive pointers from Princeton field hockey player Kathleen Sharkey. In two games last weekend, Sharkey notched a whopping seven goals and one assist. For some perspective, Sharkey’s seven tallies are more than the combined scoring total of the entire Harvard, Brown, and Cornell field hockey teams from the weekend. Sharkey got off to a hot start on Friday, finishing with six goals—a Princeton single game record—in the Tiger’s 7-1 win over Richmond. On Sunday, Sharkey recorded a goal and an assist in a 3-1 victory against Virginia Commonwealth.

The number of Ivy League graduates from the class of 2010 with professional basketball contracts reached a grand total of eight this week when former Columbia players Kevin Bulger and Niko Scott signed with English clubs. Bulger joins the Durham Wildcats while Scott joins the Reading Rockets, both members of the English Basketball League, the country’s second-tier conference. As seniors, Bulger and Scott averaged 3.8 and 9.3 points per game, respectively.

In much less usual Ivy League sporting news, the New York Times wrote Monday that a brain autopsy of Owen Thomas—a Penn football player who hanged himself in April—revealed that Thomas suffered from early stages of chronic traumatic encephalopathy—a disease has been linked to depression and impulse control in NFL players.