Now that the sports year is over, it’s time for our annual look back at some of its highs and lows, at both the great achievements and the disappointing moments for Brown athletes of 2003–04.

» BEST DAY, PART I

On an October afternoon at Boston’s Franklin Park, cross-country runner Pat Tarpy ’05 won the individual title at the New England Intercollegiate Championships, covering the 8,000-meter course in 23:57. Not only was the showing a Brown record; it was the first time a Brown runner had broken twenty-four minutes on an 8,000-meter course. Tarpy was also the first American to win the race since 1989.

» BEST DAY, PART II

On a November afternoon at the Yale Bowl, receiver Lonnie Hill ’06 had a game for the ages when he snared thirteen passes for 183 yards and tied an Ivy record by scoring four touchdowns. The catch of the day was a spectacular, seventeen-yard game-winner with twenty-six seconds left in the game; Hill reached over Yale defensive back James Beck and made a one-handed grab in the left corner of the end zone, clinching a roller coaster 55–44 win for the Bears.

» WORST

HOMECOMING

The Homecoming football game against Princeton was also a game for the ages—the Dark Ages. The teams were penalized a combined eighteen times for 168 yards, and each fumbled four times. The Bears surrendered an Ivy-record, ninety-nine-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter and then twenty-one unanswered points in the fourth quarter as part of the 34–14 loss to the previously winless Tigers. To top it all off, cheerleader Vanessa Reese ’06 fell backward off a male cheerleader’s shoulders and fractured a scapula.

» BEST STAT DOUBLE

Men’s basketball point guard Jason Forte ’05, the third Ivy Player of the Year in Brown hoop history, became the first player in league history to lead the Ancient Eight in both scoring (21.4 per game) and assists (5.79 per game).

» MOST DISAPPOINTING DEFEAT

One of the year’s nadirs came in the 2–0 loss by men’s soccer to unranked Saint Peter’s College in an NCAA Tournament opening-round game at Stevenson Field. At the time, the Ivy champion Bears, who entered the game unbeaten since September, were ranked eleventh nationally and first in New England.

» BEST

BREAKTHROUGH

After coming up empty for sixty-three years, on Halloween afternoon at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx the men’s cross-country team won the Heptagonals—a.k.a. the Ivy championship— for the first time in school history.

» WORST REWARD FOR WORKING OT

The women’s hockey team battled Harvard for four taut hours and into double overtime in the ECAC semifinals before the Crimson struck for the game-winner at 5:30 into the second OT. The 2–1 loss ended the Bears’ season.

» WORST SCOREKEEPER’S NIGHTMARE

The Brown and University of Connecticut baseball teams combined for forty-four hits and forty-seven runs in a 26–21 UConn victory. Each team had twenty-two hits, and no inning went scoreless. The Bears, who scored eleven runs in the fourth inning, led 21–12 after six innings, only to watch the Huskies pour on twelve runs in the seventh inning.

» BEST WITH A BLADE

Ruth Schneider ’06 finished fifth in the women’s épée at the NCAA Championships, earning All-America status for the second straight year. She had finished twelfth as a freshman.

» BEST DUO

Men’s tennis doubles partners Jamie Cerretani ’04 and Adil Shamasdin ’05 compiled a 22–2 record and were ranked as high as seventh in the nation en route to being selected to compete in the NCAA Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The duo won the Omni Northeast Regional Doubles Championships in the fall, which earned them a berth in the National Indoor Championships, where they beat a pair of top-ten teams and advanced to the consolation finals.

» BEST FOURSOME

The women’s track’s 4x800-meter relay team of Katherine Kosub ’04, Caci Cambruzzi ’04, Kate Cushing ’04, and Naja Ferjan ’07 set a new Ivy Heptagonals record with their winning time of 8:47.45. It was also a school record, breaking by more than a second the mark the four had established earlier in the spring at the Penn Relays.

» BEST DOUBLEHEADER

Brown fans who spent the late afternoon and evening of January 31 on campus were doubly rewarded. First, at Meehan, a goal by Nick Ringstad ’04 at thirty-one seconds into overtime gave the men’s hockey team a 2–1 win over archrival Harvard. Then, a few steps away at the Pizzitola Center, the men’s basketball team scored a pulsating, 92–88 overtime victory over Penn. Mike Martin ’04 sent the game into OT by grabbing

the ball after Jaime Kilburn ’04 intentionally missed a free throw and swishing a buzzer-beater from just inside the foul line.

» BEST RECOVERY

Following a dismal 1–4 start, the football team, led by the emergence of All-Ivy running back Nick Hartigan ’06, won four of its last five games to finish second in the league at 4–3 (5–5 overall).

» WORST FINISH

By mid-February the men’s hockey team was cruising atop the ECAC and ranked in the top twenty nationally. But a nightmare finish snuffed out the Bears’ ECAC-title and NCAA Tournament dreams. They went 1–6–1 and scored just fourteen goals over their final eight games.

» BEST FREESTYLE FAREWELL

Liz Daniels ’04 concluded a stellar swim career by winning two individual events (50 and 100 freestyles) and swimming on two winning relay teams at the Ivy championships, automatically qualifying for the NCAAs in the 50 free. At the NCAA Championships at Texas A&M, Daniels then swam a career-best 25.37 in the 50-free prelims and finished sixteenth overall. For the second straight year she was the lone Ivy female swimmer to score at the NCAAs. Next up for Daniels: this summer’s Olympic Trials in Long Beach, California.