17
Spring Sports Highlights
Once again, the girls lacrosse team
sported the best record of the spring, a
15-2 mark that included an 11-0 start
and a pair of close losses to Nobles and
St. Mark’s toward season’s end. Boston
College-bound Caroline Zaffino ’15
(54g, 25a) and future Harvard lacrosse
player Rosemary Scalise ’15 (51g, 11a)
led a team that averaged more than
12 goals a game. Scalise, Zaffino, and
Lindsey Reynolds ’16 earned All-ISL
honors.
Sports Summary
The track team’s record hovered
around .500 this season, but Samantha
Yates ’15 established new SPS records
in the 800m (2:19.59) and the 1500m
(4:42.23), while Kerry Swartz ’15 (200m,
25.94) and Khalfani Green ’17 (400m,
49.62) also set school marks. Green
was the New England 800m champion,
while Yates won the 800m, 1,500m,
and 3,000m at the ISL Championships,
earning meet MVP and
Boston Globe
All-Scholastic honors. In boys tennis
action, No. 1 George Congdon ’15 went
27-5 in singles sets. The softball team,
too, struggled for victories (5-8), but
Isabel Stoddard ’17 led the ISL with
a .613 batting average, while Taryn
Collins ’17 hit .438. Baseball’s All-ISL
catcher Cam Bando ’15 was one of the
most dangerous hitters in the ISL, bat-
ting over .400, despite opposing teams
making every effort to pitch around
him. Bando and softball player Jenna
Rheault ’15 earned the ISL’s Awards of
Excellence for epitomizing the mission
of the league.
Cam Bando ’15 batted more than .400,
despite opposing teams making every
effort to pitch around him.
KAREN BOBOTAS
VARSITY BOYS
WON LOST TIED
Baseball
7 11 0
Crew-1st boat
5 6 0
Crew-2nd boat
6 5 0
Lacrosse
7 11 0
Tennis
5 12 0
Track
5 11 0
35 56 0
VARSITY GIRLS
Crew-1st boat
4 4 0
Crew-2nd boat
1 7 0
Lacrosse
14 2 0
Softball
5 8 0
Tennis
2 12 0
Track
6 8 0
32 41 0
VARSITY TOTAL 67 97 0
JV BOYS
Baseball
0 10 0
Crew-3rd boat
2
7 0
Crew-4th boat
0 8
0
Lacrosse
1 11 0
Tennis
4 4 3
7 40 3
JV GIRLS
Crew-3rd boat
3 5 0
Crew-4th boat
3 2 0
Lacrosse
7 5 0
Tennis
6 3 1
19 15 1
JV TOTAL
26 55 4
GRAND TOTAL 93 152 4
and long-distance events and repeating
that feat the following year. Her best
international results include the 15th-
place finish in the sprint at Inverness,
Scotland (2015); 15th in the team relay
at Lausanne, Switzerland (2012); and
18th in the long-distance and 29th in
the middle-distance at Vuokatti, Finland
(2013). In September of 2015, Crocker
was the women’s open champion at
the U.S 2-Day Classic Championships
in Truckee, Calif.
“She still has the disadvantage of not
having started orienteering seriously
until her mid-20s,” says Gagarin. “The
international stars have been doing it
at least a decade longer, and most don’t
have full-time professor jobs. Still, she
does amazingly well. If you understand
the demands of the sport and the skills
of those who are good at it, such as Ali,
then you can only marvel.”
The sport also has offered Crocker the
opportunity to compete as a ski orienteer
– doing all the navigating and deciding
and physical activity on Nordic skis. She
placed eighth among women at the 2011
World Championships in Sweden and has
also competed on skis in Kazakhstan.
And remember, Crocker is also a busy
astrophysicist, with research that fo-
cuses on the physics of star formation.
In addition to her teaching load at Reed
College in Portland, Ore., she studies
the complexities of gas in our galaxy
and others to determine their connection
to the development of stars. According
to her Reed bio, Crocker’s “most recent
paper documents how the ultraviolet
light from young stars interacts with
its surroundings.”
In 2008, Crocker was among a group
of scientists who discovered a Jupiter-
like planet and another about the size of
Saturn. The finding, the first of its kind,
had astronomers suggesting that solar
systems like our own may be common.
The discoveries, published in the journal
Science
, were made by an international
team, using 11 telescopes around the
world, including one Crocker was man-
aging to observe stars and planets for a
senior research project at Dartmouth.
While balancing the demands of aca-
demia, Crocker’s love for orienteering
will propel her for the foreseeable future.
She has her eyes on the August 2016
World Championships in Sweden and
on the North American Championships
in September 2016, which will be hosted
by her college alma mater. And, ironically,
her life as an astrophysicist, she says, may
actually help her in her athletic pursuits.
“The closest connection I can make is
the spatial reasoning skills required for
what I do in my work and as an orienteer,”
she says. “A lot of the people who find
orienteering fun are math and science
people. I certainly enjoy puzzles, figuring
out the universe – while running over a
hill as fast as possible.”