Recoil: Xavier club rifle team nearly repeats at National Championships
Emily Neubauer
Contributing Sportswriter
goxavier.com
Team captain junior Ashley Skeuse takes dead aim.
With a rookie shooter as a part of its four-man team, expectations for the Xavier club rifle team were modest compared to its national championship season a year ago.
Still, Xavier Rifle finished a close second to the University of San Francisco in the club division of the National Collegiate Rifle Championships, barely falling short of repeating as national champions.
“I’m still really proud of how well we did. Last year, we had four shooters who had been part of the varsity team,” said junior Alyssa Sullivan. “This year, we only had three [varsity shooters] to make up a four man team.”
Xavier competed in two events: air rifle and smallbore. In both events, each shooter is given 20 shots from each of the prone (laying down), standing and kneeling positions, for 60 shots in all, all fired at individual bullseyes.
Sullivan shot a top-score of 572 in individual air rifle shooting, but a tie-break situation put the University of Michigan’s Sara Lehman in the top spot and left Sullivan in second place.
Junior team captain Ashley Skeuse and All-American junior Dan Ault finished third and ninth in the air rifle division, respectively.
In the smallbore rifle division, Sullivan and Skeuse switched places; this time, Skeuse finished second and Sullivan finished third.
“One of our All-American shooters, Rich Gauvin, graduated last year so we had a disadvantage of having only three experienced competitors on our team instead of the usual four,” said Skeuse. “While it would have been a great honor to be the national champion again this year, we are all very happy with the outcome of the match,” she said.
“Melissa Kessell was our fourth and she just started shooting this year, so for us to get second with a completely new shooter I think was a pretty great accomplishment,” added Sullivan.
To her credit, Sullivan was also named Scholar Athlete of the Year by the Great American Rifle Conference.
The Spectator
Weekly Commentary On the World of Sports
John LaFollette
Sports Editor
For most golf fans, the first round of the Masters is akin to baseball’s Opening Day — the long awaited, much anticipated, highly inflated beginning to another season. For the Spectator, the realization that Masters week has arrived is like finding that overlooked hundred-dollar bill in the pair of shorts that has just made its spring debut: in the back of his mind he knows it’s coming, but when it finally does, the excitement is overwhelming.
As such, the Spectator didn’t miss a single minute of Masters coverage for the sixth consecutive year. For those few readers who don’t share the Spectator’s enchantment with the “tunnament,” the Masters is held every year in early April at Augusta National Golf Club, an Azalea-spotted and pristinely-manicured bastion of southern conservatism (the club long denied membership to blacks and still denies it to women).
The Masters is the same year after year, apart from occasional but moderate course changes, from the full-blooming flora, to consistently good play from the game’s best, to CBS’s nostalgia-soaked television coverage.
You can imagine the Spectator’s shock when he turned on the television late Thursday afternoon to hear that the tournament forecast called for low temperatures, fast and firm playing conditions and high scores from the world’s best players, all of which are historically unprecedented at Augusta.
ESPN.com
Four-time Masters champion Tiger Woods (right) left his A game at home all week and was unable to make much of a charge on Sunday. By contrast, awe-struck first-time champion Zach Johnson was all smiles, thanks in large part, no doubt, to his sponsors, “his Lord and his Jesus.”
This Masters was certainly different and, in the Spectator’s view, not for the better. Usually a stalwart proponent of progressive change, the Spectator is perfectly comfortable leaving the Masters as it was: the perfect golf tournament. Rich in tradition (the best rounds of golf in history were played by Ben Hogan there in 1953), set up to favor the best players in the world (since World War II, only 23 players have won at Augusta without having won another major championship) and kind of quirky (spectators are only referred to as “patrons,” hills in the fairway are “mounds” and the winners are given an ugly green jacket), the Masters was fine the way it was.
Course changes in 2006 lengthened Augusta by 500 yards, but typically soft playing conditions made it easy for players to stop long iron shots on the greens. Temperatures on Saturday remained in the low 40s and with 20-30 mph winds, the field of 60 found itself playing a down-south course in British Open conditions, and the average score skyrocketed to 77.35.
By Saturday night, no one posted a score under par for the first time in Masters’ history.
Instead of watching the cream of the golfing world rise to the top of the leaderboard at Augusta, the Spectator recoiled in horror as skim milk players like Zach Johnson and Vaughn Taylor supplanted Big Five members and Masters contenders Tiger Woods and Retief Goosen.
The Spectator concedes that golf tournaments should be open and susceptible to every type of player, but the Masters is special in that it rarely produces fluke winners. The course doesn’t lend itself to the lucky shots so prevalent at the U.S. and British Opens. Only a special type of player is capable of winning that special type of golf tournament; there is a reason the field is limited to a specially-invited 90 golfers.
Still, the leaderboard was so dense on Masters Sunday (the best Day of Rest in professional sports) that what the season’s first major lacked in quality golf, it made up for in drama. Goosen played a flawless first nine to take the lead at + 2 after a middling start by Woods, but it became Johnson’s tournament to lose after he birdied Azalea, Chinese Fir and Redbud (that’s holes 13, 14 and 16 for the uninitiated) to take the lead at even par.
He nearly did; Woods eagled the par five 13th hole and Johnson bogied the 17th soon thereafter, leaving Johnson with a two shot lead and Woods with five holes to tie him. Miscues from Tiger (also something new at the Masters) at the 15th and 17th, and a clutch chip shot by Johnson on his final hole, sealed Johnson’s win.
Johnson, the wide-eyed Cedar Rapidian, was overwhelmed by the moment, calling Augusta chairman Billy Payne “Commissioner Payne” and thanking everyone from his sponsors to “his Lord and his Jesus” after being bestowed his green jacket on Easter Sunday.
Such a reaction might be appropriate after a win at Daytona, thinks the Spectator, but should be frowned upon at the Hallowed of Golf Halloweds, Augusta National.
This does seem a fitting conclusion, however, to what one Hall of Fame sportswriter called “the worst Masters ever,” an assessment with which the Spectator wholeheartedly agrees.
Doug Tifft
Sports Editor
Track team topples five school records
The Xavier University men’s and women’s track teams competed in the Oliver Nikoloff Invitational hosted by the University of Cincinnati last Saturday. With temperatures in the 30s and gusting winds, XU was able to break five school records.
Leading the way to a fifth place finish in a field of 11 for the women was sophomore Becky Clark who set a record in the 1,500 meter race. Clark broke the previous school record of 4:45 set in 2002 by a three second clip that was good enough for first place in the event.
Along with Clark, a school record was set by freshman Kate Phillips in the 400 meter dash with a time of 1:02.
On the men’s side freshman John Shultz led the way with a strong debut in the javelin throw with a toss of 142’ 09”.
Fellow freshman Derek LeBlanc landed two school records in the 100 meter dash with a time of 11.57 seconds and the 200 meter dash with a time of 24.12 seconds.
Baseball team ties obscure hits record
The Xavier baseball team brought a seven-year-old NCAA record to its knees in the top of the third inning on Saturday against the Richmond Spiders. Cranking out 12 hits before three players were retired secured Xavier’s place in NCAA history for now.
They tied the illustrious record of recording 12 hits in the third inning of a game. Senior Matt Waskerwitz led the charge, notching two doubles in the inning, his 10th and 11th of the season.
All of the Musketeers’ hits were either singles or doubles, including 11 consecutive hits. The Musketeers conquered the Spiders in the process, winning the game 17-5.
They roped out a total of 24 hits before the day was done.
The explosion of hits on Saturday was Xavier’s response to the Spiders’ efforts last Friday. Richmond defeated Xavier 3-1, ending the Musketeers’ seven-game winning streak.
The loss also ended Xavier’s six-game conference winning streak and nullified their bid for their best A-10 start in school history.
The Musketeers appeared to continue their hot streak on Sunday. They scored three runs in the top of the first inning, including back-to-back home runs by sophomore Sean Farrell and senior Adam Lipski.
Steve Brown batted in Matt Waskerwitz during the second inning, despite grounding into a double play, to set the Musketeers up 4-0.
The Muskies allowed six unanswered runs and lost the contest 6-4.
The loss drops Xavier to 7-2, effectively in a three-way tie for second place in the A-10.
Next for Xavier is a game against Cincinnati at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 11 in Clifton.
