Perhaps some of the good karma was used up during football season.
Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, this year’s spring season – one that was expected to reflect all things good about Northwestern athletics – crumbled with one crushing setback after another, almost all in the last two weeks.
Spring, you see, is a time when NU usually strikes back. Revenge of the nerds, if you will.
It’s the one season when brains can and often do win over brawn, a notion that played out just recently. Last season all six NU spring squads made it to postseason play, and five of them reached at least the NCAA regionals.
All this had parched purple-clad sports fans on their feet, proclaiming that at the very least, they had spring to smile about.
Uh … oops.
If 2000 was the masterpiece of NU sports, then 2001 has became a Bob Ross landscape for the Wildcats – nice enough, but not quite ready for the Louvre.
The Cats didn’t have a bad season across the board. On the contrary, the spring teams still outperformed their autumn competitors, which combined to go 23-71-1 (even with a turnaround team on the gridiron), and their winter counterparts.
The women’s tennis team is perhaps the best team at NU this year, with its No. 7 ranking and an upcoming Sweet 16 matchup on Thursday against Southern California. Same success story for the men’s golf team, which won its third straight Big Ten championship and stands ready to make a run through the NCAA regionals.
But oddly enough, those are the only two teams left on a suddenly barren playoff plain.
The women’s golf team finished a surprising second at last year’s NCAA regionals to advance to the collegiate championships, but then sputtered to a stunning 15th place this season, missing out on an expected return to the NCAAs.
The baseball team was in a disadvantageous position in the middle of last season, only to make a late-season run and squeak into the Big Ten tournament. And this year, NU was again in poor shape, only to make a late season run … and lose four straight on the last weekend of the year to drop out of contention for the conference tourney.
The softball team finished fourth in the Big Ten tournament last season and won two of four games at NCAA regionals. Returning most of their contributors from 2000, the Cats promptly fell from fourth to eighth place in the conference, missing out on the Big Tens.
Finally, the men’s tennis team eked into the NCAA tournament in 2000, playing sacrificial lamb to No. 1 Stanford. But with another year under the belt and more confidence, NU was prepared to make the tournament for the second straight year, this time without the dreaded 64th seed. And when the Cats made it to the semifinals of the conference tournament, getting bounced by the eventual tournament champion, they had every reason to believe that they’d be right back in the NCAA fold.
And then NU got snubbed, inexplicably left out of the 64-team field.
So what does it all mean? Is NU limited in its athletic success by some unseen force? Or was this spring – so close to being great, yet still frustrating beyond belief – just an anomaly to be remedied next year?
No matter what, Cats fans have to feel at least a little slighted to have been within a stone’s throw of establishing itself as one of the better spring athletic schools out there only to stumble just short of the finish line.
NU’s spring sports will likely continue to be its best, simply because of those teams’ past successes if nothing else. But for a school with as checkered (a.k.a. awful) an athletic reputation as NU, every season – and every blown opportunity for success – counts a little bit extra.
Since some spring coaches now have a little unexpected free time, here’s a suggestion.
Send a memo to Randy Walker: Leave a few more of the big wins for us.
Glenn Kasses is a Medill sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected]
