Weekly sports update: Results from November 14th to November 21st

by Geoff Hassard - Sports Information Director

newspeak staff photo / steve brockway

The Men's basketball team started the season off this past Saturday against Nichols College. The final score was not available at press time. After playing Salve Regina tonight at 7:30 (away), they will be home again to face off against MIT this coming Saturday at 2:00pm.

Football (2-8)

The 1996 football season came to an end last Saturday the 16th at Plymouth State. WPI was defeated by the Panthers 31-3 in a game in which turnovers again hurt the WPI attack. The score was 10-3 at the half, but in the second half, Plymouth scored 21 unanswered points to win going away.

The Freedom Football Conference All-Star team was announced and WPI had four players named to the team. First Team selections were senior Brian Learned (Clinton, MA) and junior Adam Abrams (E. Bridgewater, MA) who made the team as safeties. Named to the second team were senior Pat Blais (Derby Line, VT) on the offensive line and sophomore Matt Surette (Spencer, MA) as a tight end.

Wrestling (0-0)

The wrestling team opened their season on the 16th when they participated in the annual Hawk Tournament at Roger Williams University. In this tournament format no team scores are kept, so there was no team champion just individual placewinners at each weight. Junior Aaron Becker (Coventry, RI) just barely missed his third Hawk title and finished second at 126 lbs. Sophomore Kris Babic (E. Barre, VT) placed fourth at 118 lbs.. Freshman Matt McCarthy debuted with a fifth place finish at 158 lbs., and junior Lance Baden (Framingham, MA) took third place at 177 lbs.

Men's And Women's Swimming Men (1-1); Women (0-2)

The men's and women's swim teams opened their seasons on the 16th with tri-meets against Babson and Wheaton at the latter. The men ended up splitting with a 116-105 win over the host and a 156-56 loss to Babson. The women were beaten in their meet, losing 106-78 to Wheaton and 171-49 to Babson. The women had no individual event winners, while the men had a couple. Junior John Lambie (Conroe, TX) took first in both the 50 and 100-yard freestyle versus Wheaton. Senior co-captain Jason Wening swam a career best 11:34 in winning the 1,000-yard freestyle against Wheaton. Also against Wheaton, our 200-yard freestyle relay team of freshman Stephen Sacovitch (Worcester, MA), sophomore R.K. Marsland and juniors Jamie Murdock (Woodinville, WA) and Adam Terio (Reston, VA) took a first.