THE JUSTICE

JUDGES BY THE NUMBERS

● SPORTS ●

MONDAY, MAY 20, 2019

15

SOFTBALL

BASEBALL TEAM STATS

UAA STANDINGS

Runs Batted In

UAA Conference WashU NYU Case Emory JUDGES

W L 12 1 8 8 7 7 8 8 3 13

W 31 26 22 20 17

Overall L Pct. 5 .851 13 .667 13 .629 19 .513 20 .459

Mike Khoury ’21 leads the team with 41 runs batted in. Player RBI Mike Khoury 41 Dan Frey 38 Isaac Fossas 36 Luke Hall 28

Innings Pitched Greg Tobin ’21 leads all pitchers with 56.1 innings pitched. Player IP Greg Tobin 56.1 Mason Newman 45.1 Cam Roberts 37.1 Albert Gutierrez 29.0

UPCOMING GAMES: Season has concluded.

SOFTBALL UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS Runs Batted In

UAA Conference W L W Emory 16 4 33 JUDGES 10 6 29 Case 10 8 25 NYU 8 9 20 WashU 4 11 15 Carnegie 2 15 13

Overall L Pct. 11 .925 7 .719 13 .615 13 .522 1 8 .577 25 .336

UPCOMING GAMES: Regular season has concluded.

Scottie Todd ’20 has a team-high with 27 runs batted in. Player RBI Scottie Todd 27 Jolie Fujita 26 Marley Felder 24 Keri Lehtonen 24

Innings Pitched Sydney Goldman ’22 has a team-high with 112.1 innings . Player IP Sydney Goldman 112.1 Scottie Todd 112.0 Amidori Anderson 20.2

TRACK AND FIELD Results from the UAA championships on April 6.

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s)

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s) 100-meter dash

RUNNER Regan Charie Jacob Ward Michael Leung

800-meter run

TIME 11.24 11.90 12.14

RUNNER TIME Julia Bryson 2:20.36 Leinni Valdez 2:22.82 Lizbeth Valdez 2:22.84

UPCOMING MEETS: May 23 at NCAA Championship May 24 at NCAA Championship May 25 at NCAA Championship

ZOE BRODSKY/Justice File Photo

BATTER UP: Brandeis’ Melissa Rothberg ’20 is up at bat in a match against Case Western Reserve University on April 12.

Historic season ends with 27–6–1 record ■ The Judges end season after a win against Penn State Berks University. By ALBERT GUTIERREZ JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

The Brandeis softball team continues their historic run as they finish their season with an impressive 27–6–1 record.

TENNIS Men: Results from the meet on April 28. Women: Results from the meet on May 12.

TOP PERFORMERS (Men’s)

TOP PERFORMERS (Women’s)

MEN’S SINGLES David Aizenberg

RECORD 6–1, 3–2

WOMEN’S SINGLES RECORD Diana Dehterevich 6–3, 7–5

MEN’S DOUBLES Vohra/Tzeng

RECORD 8–6

WOMEN’S DOUBLES RECORD He/Hatfield 7–8

UPCOMING MEETS:

Both seasons have concluded.

How it happened The Judges finished their season with 27 wins due to an overpowering offense, strong pitching performances and an experienced coaching staff. The team earned five All-University Athletic Association honors as well as a Coaching Staff of the Year award. Scottie Todd ’20 also earned Pitcher of the Year. The season’s offense was led by Jolie Fujita ’21, who hit a .421 average for the year, including four homers and six doubles. Todd hit a .400 average while leading the team in homeruns with five. Keri Lehtonen

’19 hit .301 with a conference, leading 15 doubles on the year. Firstyear Marley Felder ’22 also hit an impressive .355 average with 22 runs batted in. The Judges’ pitching staff was also a standout, as first-year Sydney Goldman ’22 and Todd combined for 25 wins this year. Todd finished with a 2.03 earned run average over 100 innings and Goldman finished with a 2.09 earned run average over 104 innings. Overall Although they dropped four games against Emory University, the Judges finished nationally ranked at number 20 and earned a NCAA regional berth for the first time since 2010. The Judges will now have to travel to Ithaca, New York to begin regional play. Their quest to a NCAA title will begin on Friday, May 10 when they take on Penn State University Berks. The regional competition will be double elimination, so losing the first round does not guarantee that

they drop out of the bracket, but winning is essential for the Judges to continue. The Judges finished first in all of Division III in runs scored. For the past five seasons, the Brandeis softball team has obtained records of 21-14 (.600), 18-19 (.486), 1317 (.433), 11-21 (.344) and 29-7-1 (.797), respectively. The team improved greatly this year as seen by these statistics. In an interview with the Justice, Keri Lehtonen ’19 explained, “[The softball team is] a family away from home. I have 20 people that I can talk to anything about-good or bad they are always there for me. And no matter how long I have known my teammates for I have a network of friends for life.” She also said, “Our goals were to have fun and have a better record than last year, and we blew those goals out of the water. We had a 16 game unbeaten streak and made the NCAA Tournament! I’m preparing to graduate this weekend and I am going to miss my team so much, and I am so so proud of them.”

PRO SPORTS BRIEF

National Football League 2019 draft viewed by 6.1 million people this year Watching the National Football League Draft on television has become a very popular activity. The 2019 NFL Draft occurred back in April and was broadcast by five different networks: ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN Deportes and the NFL Network. An average of 6.1 million people watched the draft during its three days, as reported in a 2019 Hollywood Reporter article. The programming highlights the college careers of many players that are chosen. Expert commentators, including former NFL general managers, coaches and star players, predict which players will be selected by the various teams and the likelihood of a given player finding success in the NFL. A great deal of print and online media is dedicated to predicting who will be chosen in the days or weeks leading up to the NFL Draft and then later lauding or lamenting a team’s choices during the inevitable critique that follows the draft.

The die-hard fans of a given team may become positively jubilant or nearly catatonic following the draft. This year, the New York Giants, in need of an eventual replacement for their aging star quarterback Eli Manning chose quarterback Daniel Jones from Duke University as the sixth overall player chosen in the first round of the draft. In taking Jones, the Giants passed on players who were considered by many to have been much more worthy of such a high pick. As reported in an April 26 CBS sports article, one fan did not mince words after the Giants had chosen Jones, exclaiming, “This is the worst day of my life. I feel like I’m in a bad nightmare but I keep pinching myself and it’s still real.” Despite this mixture of euphoria and “gnashing of teeth” that inevitably follows every NFL Draft and despite the great expertise of the general managers and scouts who are employed by teams

for the purpose of assessing the skills of college players, picking players in the NFL Draft is not an exact science. College football excellence does not always correlate with NFL prowess, where players by and large are faster and stronger than college players. Tom Brady, considered by many to be the greatest professional quarterback of all time, was picked in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft. As reported in an April Masslive article, among the six quarterbacks chosen before Brady in the 2000 NFL Draft, some had respectable careers but none came close to his success, and one did not even compete in a single game or attempt a single pass in the NFL. Recent quarterbacks chosen in the first round who have already shown brilliance and who are destined to have sustained highly-successful careers include Jared Goff of the Los Angeles Rams, Patrick Mahomes of the

Kansas City Chiefs and Carson Wentz of the Philadelphia Eagles. However, there are prominent examples of quarterbacks chosen in the first round who failed at the NFL level, according to a Businessinsider April article. These include Johnny Manziel, Paxton Lynch and Matt Leinart. Manziel, who was plagued by off-the-field problems, lasted just two seasons in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns. Lynch lasted two seasons with the Denver Broncos before being released, and after sitting out the 2018 season, he was recently signed as a backup for the upcoming season with the Seattle Seahawks. Leinart lasted just four seasons as a backup for three different teams. Given the inherent uncertainty in predicting the potential future success of college players who are chosen as NFL Draft picks, even for experienced experts, it would certainly be logical for us fans to just sit back and casually

wait to see how the players chosen by their favorite teams will perform over the next few seasons at the professional level. However, when it comes to sports, fans tend to be emotional rather than logical. They paint their faces with team colors and agonize over teams’ losses while celebrating with gusto their victories. For those fans who do not live in areas where a local NHL or NBA team is competing in the playoffs, this time of year is relatively lacking in sports drama, especially because the excitement of tight baseball pennant races is a few months off. This creates a great opportunity to satisfy professional sports craving by scrutinizing the NFL Draft. It seems that this obsession with the NFL draft that afflicts so many is a bit silly, but it is fun, and is it not all about entertainment and pleasant diversion anyway? —Megan Geller