PRINCETON WINS! by Nassau Weekly

This week, the Nass triumphs athletically, fails intellectually, and eats the entire lemon.

The Nassau Weekly

In Print since 1979 Online at nassauweekly.com

Volume 46, Number 4 March 26, 2023

Princeton Wins!

Editors-in-Chief

Sam Bisno

Sierra Stern

Publisher

Allie Matthias

Director of Recruitment and Campus Outreach

Lara Katz

Director of Fundraising and Alumni Engagement

Anya Miller

Managing Editors

Lucia Brown

Charlie Nuermberger

Business Manager

Jana Pak

Senior Editors

Lauren Aung

Alexandra Orbuch

Junior Editors

Frankie Duryea

Isabelle Clayton

Otto Eiben

Fun Fact: Rocky/Mathey Trivia is Downright Cutthroat

Princeton Curling’s Redemption Arc Redemption Arc Redemption Arc

By LARA KATZ

After losing the biggest college tournament of the year to University of Wisconsin-Superior back in November, Princeton Curling felt like we had something to prove—myself (as club president) especially. I was that junior curler who never quite won anything.

My competitive curling career was short, sweet, and not quite satisfying. For years, when I went to bonspiels (the affectionate term for a curling tournament), I was on a team that consistently lost over half of our games. It was not until junior year of high school that I won an event at any bonspiel. After this surprising success (my teammates were much

younger than me, and much newer curlers), I was picked up to join a Youth Olympics Trials team. At the YOG trials, we lost the final by a single point, but having never expected to end up in the final in the first place, I was undeterred. I joined a girls’ team, we won regionals by a landslide, and I started preparing for U18 Nationals. Then COVID canceled Nationals.

But I already had another plan brewing. In January 2020, I was connected through a mutual curling friend to another early Princeton admit, curler Nelson Rogers. Although we were high schoolers, we video called Dean Deas and discussed how to write up the curling club constitution for our future ODUS-recognized Student Group. I distinctly remember editing a paper copy of the constitution in the girls’ locker room at the Schenectady Curling Club during my last pre-COVID spiel. We sent in

our constitution in July 2020, pretty much immediately after we received our NetIDs and were eligible to initiate a student group. We defended our club virtually by the Student Group Recognition Committee in September 2020, and—only a week after our defense— we received Student Group Recognition.

But again, due to COVID, it was not until the fall of 2021 that we could actually get onto the ice—and even then, things were complicated. We had no funding and thus solicited donations and rigorously fundraised to get ourselves to a tournament. A curling team has four players, although it is common to bring an alternate (or even two) to bonspiels. Nelson and I found two other undergrads, Brian Li and Jonathan Rosenberg, apparently the only people on campus who had ever curled before, and bought plane tickets and booked a

single hotel room with our limited funding. Mid-November 2021, we found ourselves in Boston, MA, at the biggest college tournament of the year.

During the first game, I had to explain to Brian and Jonathan how to throw curling stones. Jonathan had attended one or two learn-to-curls in middle school, and Brian had curled now and again as a young child, but they hadn’t stepped foot on the ice in six or ten years respectively. With each of their shots during our first game, I walked them through the process out loud. Dominant foot goes in the hack, non-dominant foot steps on the slider. Be careful, it’s slippery! Lean on your stabilizer. Rock in the dominant hand. Rotate to 10 o’clock or 2 o’clock. Hips up, slider foot back, heel to toe, no further, slider foot forward, push your rock, rotate to 12 o’clock, gentle release! Pick up your slider. Go stand behind the hacks.

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A dark horse of college curling finally receives their flowers.

Always watch your rock. Brian fell over every time he threw a stone until halfway through the game. Nelson and I still remembered the mechanics of delivery, but having not been on the ice since March 2020, we were both more than rusty. We lost every game, but we were just thrilled to be there. We made two new friends, Isabelle from Bowdoin and Kelsey the MIT coach. As we checked out of our hotel, we used our club credit card, given to us by the university. It was declined, even though our fundraisers had earned enough for one room, two nights, in an inexpensive hotel. The same thing happened with our taxi rides to and from the curling club and the airport. Everything except the flights ended up getting charged to my personal debit card, which I’d gotten just before starting college. My parents sent me money as I waited six unnecessary months for full reimbursement.

By the beginning of the spring semester, we had

applied for and received starter funding from the USG Projects Board. We understood at this point that we could not afford, logistically or financially, to purchase memberships at one of the two most local curling clubs, Plainfield Curling Club and Bucks County Curling Club. So we used the starter funding to buy curling brooms, grippers, sliders, a used pebbler, the sturdiest cart the Home Depot salesperson said they had, and a couple of wooden two-by-fours to serve as hacks.

Nelson and I rented a car for a day, and he drove us to New Hampshire to pick up a set of used rental curling stones which the Grand National Curling Club kindly rented to us at a reduced rate. We drove back to Princeton and carried the stones—42 lbs each—into the then-unused double squash courts in Dillon Gym. One night, we booked Baker Rink for a few hours; we thought it would be a good idea to bring half of the stones down to see how playing on hockey ice might go. All was well on our way to the rink. We threw stones and enjoyed

the satisfying sound of granite hitting granite. The ice quality, for curling, was pretty abysmal, but we felt like we could make it work. After frantically trying to pry our two-by-fours out of the ice and finally finding a tool which could dig them out, we carried our stones back out of the arena and onto the street where we’d left our cart.

At the bottom of the hill, one of the wheels snapped off the cart.

(A current Editor-in-Chief of the Nass, Sierra Stern, happened to be walking by, and she laughed at the spectacle of two people trying to push a three-wheeled cart with 336 lbs of granite on it up Pyne Drive around 11 p.m. on a Monday.)

I called everyone I knew with a car, but no one was available. Eventually we just decided to leave four of the stones on the rink and drag the cart up the hill in two trips. I pushed and Nelson walked backward pulling. After that we vowed only to bring the stones to the rink via car.

Almost every weekend

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between April 2022 to March 2023 that classes have been in session and we haven’t been at a tournament, one of our members—mostly Daniel Dudt— has driven our stones from Dillon to Baker Rink. The ice is often covered in snow and not Zamboni-ed, so we sometimes have to start practice by mopping the ice. Then we pebble— spray tiny droplets of hot water—the ice. Most curling clubs use ionized water, but we just fill up our pebbler with a red Solo cup filled at the bathroom sink (the pebbler is too big to fit in the sink). The pebbler is essentially a backpack with a nozzle at the end of a hose, which is on the right side. I’m a lefty, so every time I pebble, my uncoordinated right hand sprays the tops of my curling shoes.

Then we freeze our wooden hacks into the ice with some more hot water, before placing a rock on top of the hack to help freeze it in. The hack’s essentially a starting block before you throw a stone, so it shouldn’t move at all. Then, if I’m not too lazy, I’ll draw houses—targets—onto the ice with a sharpie. That’s four rings: a 2’ ring, a 4’ ring, an 8’ ring, and a 12’ ring. Sometimes I use a marked piece of yarn as a compass, but mainly I freehand it.

Once the ice is set up, we play— or most of the time, teach.

By the end of last spring, we

had achieved Sports Club status, which means that we had moved from ODUS to Campus Rec. This past year, we attended bonspiels in Philadelphia, Boston, Schenectady, Cape Cod, Bridgeport, and Utica. We also held a mini tournament in Philly against Penn and Villanova. I had a policy that anyone who wanted to attend a spiel could go, but we didn’t always have the right numbers. Luckily, we made friends at Yale, Bowdoin, and UConn who helped us fill out our teams.

We got to our spiels through dues, donations, and sheer willpower—and the graciousness of the curling community. We achieved free lodging by staying with the inimitable Kris King at Harvard, Kelsey Becker at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Henry Rogers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Lauren Kleinas (mom of an old curling teammate) at Cape Cod, and my own parents for the spiel in Bridgeport (my home curling club!). We achieved free transportation by borrowing cars from team members Daniel Dudt, Brian Li, Isla Xi Han, and Clover Zheng. Most college curling teams spend $5,000-$10,000 per year, but due to our extreme budgeting, we managed to spend under $3,000.

In order to qualify for

Nationals, our gameplay at bonspiels racked up school points; the top 16 teams in the country with regard to points and a few other factors qualify for Nationals. This year’s Nationals roster was more East Coast-heavy than in previous years, as some of the Midwestern schools had more difficulty holding spiels this year than in past years. We qualified as #4 seed out of the 26 teams which had accrued verified points. Points are verified when you purchase a United States Curling Association (USCA) College membership, so there were a number of teams who did not accrue verified points because they knew they wouldn’t make the top 16 and therefore did not want to purchase a membership.

The teams at Nationals were (in order of rank) RPI, University Wisconsin-Stevens Point, University of Minnesota, Princeton, Harvard, Penn, Villanova, Penn State, Syracuse, Cornell, Bowdoin, MIT, RIT, University of WisconsinSuperior, Hamilton, and University of Toledo. Our team and the U.S. Naval Academy team (which did not qualify for Nationals) were the only new teams on the College Curling

CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

March 26, 2023 6 PAGE DESIGN BY TONG DAI ART BY HAZEL FLAHERTY

On Lemons

The lemon was precious, as was every morsel of food that entered one’s house. I was raised to shudder at the mere thought of throwing away anything on my plate, encouraged to catch all the stray grains of kasha and watching my dad soak up every last bit of soup in his plate with the bread my mum baked like clockwork every few days.

By SOFIIA SHAPOVALOVA

The look of sheer shock that sometimes flashes across whoever may be sitting opposite me in the dining hall never fails to amuse me. It is almost as if they’re the one eating the lemon, rind and all. Their re

meals. Their eyes widen at the absolute audacity of it all. You’re not meant to eat the peel, are you? Think of the chemicals!

It is, perhaps, the same look of utter disbelief that I

You mean I can eat the peel? I gazed at her, mouth open in complete bewilderment.

Little did I know that the rind of the lemon was, in fact, perfectly consumable.

As an eight year old, I was already ahead of the curve in terms of appreciating the golden citrus as it should be. While other children recoiled upon smelling the distinct sourness that came from cutting into the humble lemon, when the bitter juices are released from the skin’s tight hold by the piercing of a skillfully sharpened knife, I took pride in my own ability to fish out the wedge that always lay at the bottom of my cup of tea, waiting for me like a shining coin daring to be unearthed by the panners who brave the rivers. I’d pop it into my mouth and look up expectantly at my parents, terribly pleased with this talent of mine that seemed to me the true mark of adult sophistication.

It was, in a way, a substitute for the symbolism I thought laid behind things like brie and olives—delicacies my family rarely afforded, but ones that were of no real significance to me. Indeed, if you asked me then, I’d passionately claim that lemons were loads better than the former two. After all, you couldn’t put a whole spoonful of sugar—like the ones I’d carefully extract in my youth from the pot residing in the lower shelf of our pantry— on an olive or a slice of brie and gently place it in your mouth, relishing in the symphony of sweet and sour that erupted on your tastebuds. The effect simply wouldn’t be the same. For my aunt, there had been no need to think of the chemicals that may or may not have polluted the fruit. Although I couldn’t say if the lemons imported to Ukraine back in 2012 were ridden with pesticides or not, I do know that it wouldn’t

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have made a difference either way. The lemon was precious, as was every morsel of food that entered one’s house. I was raised to shudder at the mere thought of throwing away anything on my plate, encouraged to catch all the stray grains of kasha, and watched my dad soak up every last bit of soup in his plate with the bread my mum baked like clockwork every few days. I didn’t grow up hungry, but I did grow up knowing that there were moments when my mother had been. When her dinner was that very piece of bread and a glass of milk.

I didn’t grow up to be a saint either. It’s frighteningly easy to throw away the remains on your plate when the kale salad was obviously made a few days ago and you can tell the dining hall staff is just trying their best to use up the week’s leftovers on a Sunday evening. I don’t do it without a feeling of guilt, knowing my mother would certainly frown upon

me. Sometimes I frown upon others too, when I see the obnoxiously large mix of french fries, pasta, and chicken tenders precariously piled on someone’s plate (not a single lemon in sight!), accompanied, of course, by a dinner roll and that epitome of American culture we commonly understand to be a chocolate chip cookie, only to have them take a few bites, claim that they’re really not that hungry, and throw it all away. In moments like those, a mental panic threatens to seize me, and I am made acutely aware of everything that is different about me at this school that has enough food to feed a small army. An army like the one in Ukraine.

I didn’t know what the lemon meant to me until I submitted myself to interrogation (being the Good Student of Human Nature I am), and, admittedly, I am still searching for a definitive answer. At first thought, it’s almost as if it’s all just a simple party trick or a

hidden talent.

Yes, I can indeed eat the lem on! No, the taste isn’t bad at all!

The lemon is also inevitably tied to the tea, a glorious liq uid that I’m positive accounts for at least fluid composition (the other 80% being some mix of vodka and water, being the Eastern European I am). The tea is a ritual, following each homecooked meal along with a con versation or some honeyed treat, or maybe both if I was re ally lucky that day.

The lemon is, too, I realize now, my connection to home. To my aunt across time and space, to my family miles away, and to the child I was. The lem on is risk, something you can not know until you try.

The lemon is, perhaps, me.

As an eight year old, Sofiia Shapovalova was already ahead of the curve in terms of appreciating the Nassau Weekly as it should be.

March 26, 2023 8

Fun Fact: Rocky/Mathey Trivia is Downright Cutthroat

Tensions run high at the Wednesday-night event.

By DANIEL VIORICA

It might seem like Princeton students would be cracked at trivia. Here be College Jeopardy players, quiz bowl whizzes, even a couple Slavic majors. We like to think we’re all nerds. We like to think we’re pretty good at knowing useless things. Trivia might be a fun way to boost our egos with something that doesn’t matter.

This is all basically true. It’s also true that trivia provides something different for Princeton students: An outlet where we can rip our friends, enemies, rivals, significant others, and distant acquaintances to shreds.

Each Wednesday night, eighty-some undergraduates gather in the Rockefeller College common room at 9:30 p.m. to attend Rocky/Mathey trivia night. The event is run by three Rockefeller College

resident graduate students, Benny, Melvin, and Arthur, who come up with questions and serve as emcees.

Once you become a regular at trivia, a few things become clear. You’re going to see people you know. The same teams show up again and again and again, and typically show up towards the top of the leaderboard. Some go by the same name every week, usually mediocre puns: Agatha Quizteam, Nash Equilibrium. Others switch around, but you know them by face if not by name. One previously competed as Felly but more recently as Jaké; another high performer was once memorably known as Male Nipple.

How do you feel about trivia?

I love it, says Benny, the RGS who serves as the senior organizer of Rocky/Mathey trivia night. It’s one of my favorite events.

It’s a really delightful event,

says longtime trivia player Juju, where we get to get all of our aggression out... just a primal scream kind of environment. It’s very healthy.

There are times when, I think, folks could do with taking it a tad less seriously than they do, says Benny.

It’s addicting. It’s magical. It’s the best night of the week.

A typical game goes something like this. ***

You walk in and the air is loud and yellow. People are everywhere. There are the grad students on the far left preparing the board, there are the chips and pretzels and lemonade on a table right in front, and your eyes cast upon the crowd, linger on an acquaintance or two—he’s here? she’s here?—before landing upon where your team waits, sitting. They didn’t get the good couch this week. Bummer. Half of

them are on the floor.

Greetings are exchanged perfunctorily. Everyone’s day was fine, but we have more important things to worry about—has someone picked up a score sheet? Does anyone have a pen? One of my teammates scratches down the name Trivia Traitors, front and back. After a moment, she adds a cartoon heart.

We get a pretty consistent group, mostly from Forbes, mostly sophomores, occasional frosh and special guests. Looking across the way, our sister team is here too. Our friends, rivals—part of the same social constellation. Sitting far away, but one of us might go over to talk before the game starts. They go by a few names, usually Big Enough, sometimes Peter Town or Duck Faniel.

Why that last one? Not important.

All ready and Benny is

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starting to read out the first round of questions. Eightysome students in a room with friends and unchecked adrenaline don’t typically quiet down. But when Benny speaks, there is eerily complete silence.

Each round has ten questions; in Round One there are no themes, so they can be about anything. The first question asks for the name of some obscure foreign leader from the 1990s. Everyone looks over to Jude, our resident foreign affairs expert. Every once in a while there’s a pop culture question for either Linnet or Grace, history or geography for Juliana. Tim gets math and science, sometimes correctly, and I’m supposed to do literature stuff.

All ten questions are read out, first once, then again. Linnet writes down a word or two to remind us of what was asked next to each answer box.

There are no hints in trivia, no multiple choice. You know the answer or you don’t. The grad students put on two songs to discuss and write out answers, give us minute and thirty-second warnings before taking the scoresheets back.

This time it’s a bit of a head scratcher. At the end of the round, we’re all staring as Melvin marks down scores—

Five points. Eh. Not our best round, but hey, we’re fine.

That is, until we look at the scoreboard. Both Better than Sex (nice) and Male Nipple have eight points each. This early on, a three-point differential might be problematic.

We look at each other. We lock eyes. We can fix something in Round Two.

It’s the same as Round One. Ten questions, read out loud twice, time to confer, no theme.

No, we do not fix things. We actually do worse: Four points total—look at the scoreboard, Male Nipple and Better than Sex have six each. Not looking good.

There’s still one chance for redemption: Round Three, the picture round. The third round

is different from the first two in that the questions aren’t general knowledge. Each team is instead presented with a sheet of paper with ten images. They are then asked to identify something in the pictures, whether that be character, subject, or more quirky: Which person dated all of these celebrities?

For us Traitors, the picture round is fairly boom or bust. We either get all ten or a measly two or three points. But if we do get all ten, we have another trick up our sleeves: For one of the four rounds each team can “joker,” doubling their points for that round.

It’s a big risk. You only get one per game, and in order to win you have to use it correctly. Still, this represents an opportunity to make twenty points and catapult head-over-toe past our inadequately-named rivals.

Melvin announces the theme: Oscar nominated movies. We look at one another. A shout breaks out.

This is our round.

Looks like it’s stills from each film. A lot of them are pretty obvious, we get them in a second or two. The one with blue people? Avatar. The one

with an old guy and period lighting? Probably Elvis. The one with Paul Mescal? Aftersun. The weird, half-animated one? That’ll be Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and The Fablemans go similarly quickly. The space guy stumps us initially, but Linnet points out at the last minute that it’s got to be Top Gun: Maverick

(I wouldn’t know. ’Cause only I watch films.)

Which leaves only the one at the end. Number 10. It depicts— a lava flow? The National Geographic logo? What?

(Well. I don’t watch documentaries...)

Someone says something like, Our Burning World Sure. That’s fine. Just put it down.

Time is running out and we’re looking back at the answers. It all looks good and then Tim, who is not a movie person, says Hey. I have an idea. For some reason, I feel like ten is Fire of Our Love.

(What?) (That sounds really dumb.) (Yeah.) (Sure.)

Volume 46, Number 4 10

Does anyone have something better? I mean—

So we put it down. There’s a thrum in the air as the score sheets are collected, as the organizers start correcting and as Arthur steps up and reads out the answers. Starts off as expected: Banshees, Fablemans, whatever, whatever, whatever.

You get a sense of the room. When a team gets a hard question right, you hear them shout. Every once in a while people mess up a question they expected to get, and there’s a collective groan, low and angry. Pretty quiet this round; we make eye contact with our rivals, they make eye contact with us. No real emotion for better or worse.

Tensions ratchet as time progresses. Question eight, question nine, so far we’ve gotten everything right. And we’re basically blowing it off at this point. eighteen points with a joker isn’t super bad, it may not be super great but it isn’t super bad either, right?

Right?

Arthur reads out the last answer.

We scream.

A perfect twenty round is the best feeling in Princeton. Maybe the best feeling in the world.

We might actually catch up on this one.

Then we look at the scoreboard. Both Better than Sex and Male Nipple also got the perfect twenty.

We lost that night. Five of us were sitting around moping, half-eaten bowls of pretzels, glasses still sticky with lemonade, sitting in strange positions, waiting for the night to be over so we could walk back to Forbes dejected.

The most exciting thing that happened was in the last round. One of the big teams, Agatha Quizteam, had turned in their score sheet late, after Melvin read out the theme and started reading through answers. Massive party foul. When everyone else in the room noticed, they started booing, lowing like cows or a chorus of hungry ghosts.

At the end, maybe masochistically, one or two of us went over to look at the top scores. Better than Sex and

Male Nipple tie for first with forty-four. Both teams cheered when they found out—happy, obnoxiously happy. Agatha Quizteam, party foul aside, got third and Nash Equilibrium got fourth. We were a paltry fifth, thirty-eight points from a maximum of fifty-four.

A horrible performance.

That is, until we looked at the other teams. Around where they were handing out prizes—usually only a candy bar or two, but you play for the bragging rights—there were around twenty people clustered, milling, chatting, self-congratulating, and taking team pictures in front of the scoreboard. Gross.

Wait— how many people?

We look at one another. There are five of us. The maximum team size is six. If two teams tied for first, and the maximum team size was six, then there should be no more than twelve people standing up there.

There were a lot more than twelve people standing up there.

We look around, and the other big teams, Agatha Quizteam and Nash Equilibrium have around ten players as well.

Well per capita, we got like twice as many of them.

Yeah but we’re not playing per

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Fire of Love.

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tour this year.

Nationals were held in Bowling Green, Ohio on Team Toledo’s home ice, the Black Swamp Curling Center. Our Nationals Team consisted of myself (Lara Katz ‘24), Daniel Dudt *23, Brian Li ‘24, and Matthew Benton ‘26. We talked about holding tryouts for Nationals, but the team ended up being determined solely on availability. We couldn’t even field an alternate, let alone two, unlike most of the other colleges in attendance. If one of our four players could not make a game for any reason, we would automatically forfeit that game (unlike at bonspiels, where the legal minimum number of players is three— something we have certainly taken advantage of when a

player is late, sick, or has to drop out last-minute for another reason!).

Matthew started curling in October 2022, and Brian essentially started curling at the November 2021 bonspiel in Boston, though he wasn’t able to get back onto the ice again until April 2022, when we started curling out of Baker Rink.

Daniel, on the other hand, faces a curling redemption arc longer than my lifetime. He comes from a curling dynasty (his sister, Susan Dudt, used to be the skip of my girls’ team, and was known among junior girls as the best player anyone in our region had ever seen.) Daniel competed at Junior Nationals throughout high school but never medaled. Like me, he also went to the Youth Olympic Trials but lost the final. He attended men’s nationals the past four years in a row but

also never medaled. He went to Mixed Doubles Nationals with Susan in 2021 but lost the playoffs. He even competed in the Men’s Olympic Trials in 2022. Because of Daniel’s experience, we decided to have him throw the last stones of each end, even though I would skip the team. There were two reasons for my skipping: Firstly, I know the teams—both my own and other schools’—better than Daniel, and secondly, Daniel is a far better sweeper than me (skips don’t sweep much).

Daniel has had a long, formidably impressive curling career, but he has never achieved a medal at a USCA National Championship Event. Yet when we stepped off the ice after our first morning practice at College Nationals, Daniel said to me, “I’m pretty sure we could beat any team here.”

I did not believe him. Not

only had we lost a game at Utica to the lowest-ranked team at the event, Hamilton, but I had put together a large spreadsheet before the event, in which I calculated the statistical likelihood of any given college team winning in their pool, making it to the semifinals (all teams would play in the quarterfinals, but then half would be eliminated), and making it to a given finals bracket (gold medal, bronze medal, consolation, and consolation runner-up). My predictions were based on schools’ win-loss records, how many teams they tended to send to bonspiels (schools with multiple teams were likely to spread their strongest players across multiple teams, but put them all on the same team for Nationals), and their reported points. In only one out of eight scenarios did Princeton make it past the quarterfinals, and

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PRINCETONPRINCETON

in that scenario we had a fifty-fifty chance of winning the Consolation Event.

Our first pool play match was against the University of Minnesota, and we lost. Team Minnesota, who play out of the five-sheet Four Seasons Curling Club and receive sponsorships from Dakota Curling Supplies and Endgame Curling, were one of the friendliest teams at the event. Vice McKenna Green even joined us for our iconic warm-up moves before every game. The team were strong communicators—two of them were married, so that’s a good sign—and they threw well. We didn’t play badly ourselves and the game was close, but there were a few mistakes we couldn’t come back from. Brian was especially nervous throughout the game, at one point appearing to trip on air and flinging his broom into the rock I was throwing (called

“burning the rock”), which meant the rock had to be taken out of play. He was fine, luckily, but he told us he didn’t hit his head so many times that we started to wonder if he actually had.

Our second game was against Hamilton, who had all dressed for the occasion in onesies. Every team at Nationals (except Cornell, lol) had some kind of uniform, whether jackets, hoodies, or shirts, but Hamilton had taken things a

step further. We fought a dragon and a shark that game, but the tigers came out on top. Hamilton is coached by MJ Walsh, a Professor Emerita at Colgate who runs the College Curling Association. Our third game was against Harvard, coached by former junior and college curler Evan Mullaney. A photo of Evan’s face was once stamped on a rock at the

Schenectady

Curling Club as a gag by his teammates, and his face remained on that rock for a number of years. When I saw him at the 2021 Broomstones Spiel, after having met him many years prior at a junior bonspiel, all I said was, “It’s you again, the rock-face-man!” (not a peak social skills moment for Lara). Team Harvard fought

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CURLING

long and hard, and for much of the game, they were winning. In the seventh end, though, we managed to pull back into a tie by scoring three—we had a chance for four points, but Daniel’s stone ended up going too far to count.

And Princeton did not have the hammer (last shot advantage) in the eighth end. We put guards in front of the house (non-scoring, protective stones) to put our stones behind, but Harvard had more scoring rocks in the house.

Daniel described a hit-n’-roll shot to me that conceptually made sense but in reality did not. I think I said, “Totally, totally, the shot is so there.”

Brian’s mom took a video of this game-changing shot, and you can hear the people

behind the glass calling the shot “a good effort” while the rock’s still coming down the ice. When it hits, rolls, and bounces off another rock to sit in the center of the house, my whole team—with the exception of Daniel—is shocked. I cover my mouth and Brian and Matthew’s mouths hang open. But when Daniel comes down the ice, all he says is, “Don’t act surprised when I make the shot as called.”

After the game, due to a booking snafu courtesy of myself, we had to leave our Airbnb and move to a hotel. Inconvenience aside, the hotel was next to a Waffle House, where we celebrated having officially made it to the top half of our pool, slated for the Championship bracket instead

of the Consolation bracket. That night, our third game of Saturday, we played RPI in the quarterfinals. The team was skipped by a guy who had not only dressed as Puss in Boots for the Schenectady spiel (which was Shrek-themed) but is also the owner of two real-life sugar gliders. At the Schenectady spiel, we told the RPI team we wanted to go to an RPI party. They told us RPI has no parties, only functions, and took us to a bowling alley. Perhaps it is in character, then, that the team played uncharacteristically poorly and was forced to forfeit the match three-quarters of the way through: The skip’s grandmother told me her grandson always loses if he has to play after 8 p.m.

The next morning, after a Daylight Savings-shortened night of sleep, we returned to the ice for the semifinals against University of Wisconsin-Superior. Having been defeated by this same team back in November, we felt like we had something to prove. We played well, but ultimately, I think we won on strategy. After a uniquely strong showing in the pre-game draw shot challenge, we began the game with hammer. The first two ends were blanks—no score—so we kept the hammer. We gave up the hammer in the third end after scoring two, and then stole one point in the fourth end. After the half-time break, we started to play more aggressively. By the end of the seventh end, we were up by

Volume 46, Number 4 14 PAGE DESIGN BY TONG DAI ART BY HAZEL FLAHERTY

With Lara Katz, the Nassau Weekly made it to the gold medal game.

Au

By HIBA SIDDIKI

Last night I ingested my mother’s gold in hopes it would bring value to every worthless part of my body

I brought her bangles to my teeth and bit them so hard I drew blood holding them under my tongue until my mouth began to burn and glowing embers blazed within me until finally

I swallowed

Last night I brought her necklaces to my lips and engulfed them whole Felt eons of suffering slink down my throat Gagged every second but persisted because I was craving to be reborn

Suddenly I could not handle it anymore Dropping to the floor animalistic in nature I voraciously chewed through every last piece of her gold

I devoured the precious pieces she had tried to hide from me the ones she thought she had concealed beneath motherly privacy

Slowly but surely gold began to course through my veins and I wondered with my head delirious in pain if when I wept my tears would bear the color of her invaluable chains

So I turned to my mother’s mirror and stuck out my tongue witnessed my tastebuds shimmer with flecks of aurum shoved my hands through the glass shards breaking off from the impact as cuts filled my fingers and tears filled my eyes then cried even more tears those of joy when I realized

My tears of gleaming glitter had painted the dark hardwood floor into a starry sky

Last night I ingested my mother’s gold

This morning my skin is the sun my eyes drip honey my touch is alive

This morning I am revitalized

Volume 46, Number 4 16 PAGE DESIGN BY VERA EBONG ART BY HANNAH MITTLEMAN

The Best Night of the Week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

capita.

I, for the record, was the voice of reason.

Hey guys, we’ll just beat them next time. It’s fine.

Maybe if we also have ten people.

And then the fateful thing happens. Tim looks across the room. He sees them, the two teams, the two cringey winning teams, smiling like there’s nothing better in the world than winning a game of Rocky/ Mathey trivia.

He yells: nice ten-person team.

They don’t hear us at first. Then other Traitors join in.

It’s always good to see ten person teams winning. Yeah. We like that.

Really great job with your ten-person team!

At some point we get on their nerves. One of them shouts back: Nice losing team!

Damn, says Tim. Can’t say anything to that.

The end of trivia might be the best part. Talking with friends, mingling with our sister team. I’m close with ten or so regulars, and it’s nice to see their faces even if it’s only once a week, 9:30 p.m. at night on Wednesdays in the Rocky common room.

It’s a lot of fun, I said during my conversation with Benny. And it means a lot to all of us.

Oh, I’m glad. It’s supposed to be fun. If it ever becomes not the case that the dominating dynamic is fun, then we have to shift something.

No no no. The dominant dynamic is always fun.

I chat with an acquaintance on one of the winning teams, hang around a bit. Then the Forbes crowd breaks off and we walk home in contemplative silence. Mostly. I do say one thing.

Next week. We’re going to play by the rules. And we’re going to win

Daniel? Are you heading to class?

I turned around.

Um yeah, kinda.

We were in the middle of the McCosh Walk, right next to Washington Road. Just an acquaintance of mine, not someone I knew super well.

We should talk about something. If you have a second.

Sure.

Because what do you do if someone you sort of know comes up to you, fixes you an intense stare, asks you to talk? What could it be about?

The next day, I was running three minutes late for my CPS appointment when I heard someone call my name.

It’s about trivia. Last night. Then it made sense.

Volume 46, Number 4 17 PAGE DESIGN BY BENJAMIN SMALL ART BY EMMA MOHRMANN

. ***

If your team wants us to change our behavior, you guys do not talk to Benny. You do not yell at us from across the room. You talk to us. You ask us and we figure things out. It’ll be more fun that way. For everyone. Got it?

(Silence.)

Do you got it?

I nodded feebly.

Okay. Good. Then I’ll see you around.

She left, and I hurried off to my appointment.

***

When I got to trivia the next week, there was a big sign right

at the entrance, done up in blue permanent marker:

MAX TEAM SIZE

7 people

Please don’t make us yell at you <3

***

I have a good feeling about this week. No ten person teams, thank god; the team formerly known as Male Nipple has a paltry four members, looking sullen in their corner.

No, the bigger threat is our sister team, today known as Peter Town. Right over there, giving us the stink eye. A friend of mine once described them as “all men.”

I used to play with them, actually. Sometimes I still get asked by an especially enthusiastic member if I’m, quote, coming home.

The answer is always, no Because I play to win. If that means switching teams, so be it.

The first few rounds go very well. Almost perfectly, actually. We get a full twenty on the picture round again, but so do a lot of others. Still, it looks like we’re ahead, in first place.

Most importantly, we’re ahead of Peter Town. Well, it’s not super important. We don’t absolutely have to beat them, we don’t actually take it all that seriously.

But hey. Winning feels nice.

They are close enough to catch up, so it’s all up to the fourth and last round: The theme round. It’s similar to the first and the second rounds in that the first nine questions can be about anything. But all

Volume 46, Number 4 18

those answers are related, obviously or unobviously, to the theme. The 10th question is always “what is the theme?” and worth five points (but can’t be doubled by a joker). We tend to be pretty good at these, but Peter, of Peter Town, is a specialist. So we buckle in.

Which 1960s girl group is known for the song “Be My Baby”?

This twentieth president of the United States came into office after James Garfield was assassinated.

In American folklore, which figure was said to bring water to wounded soldiers during the revolutionary war?

What? What??

When Melvin and Arthur come around to clarify questions, we ask for half of them again. Still stumped.

Then some of the easier answers start to come together. Percy Jackson. Ginny and Georgia. Georgia (the country).

Harry Potter characters.

No, no. It’s gotta be... Weasleys.

From there we get all, or almost all of them. The band has to be the Ronettes. Juliana gets the president as Chester Arthur. And for the folklore we have no clue, but there’s only one Weasley left, so we just put down Molly. We turn in our sheets.

So how did you guys do? asked a member of our sister team afterwards.

Not bad. Not bad. But we’ll have to see.

Benny reads out the answers. We look at the scoresheet, and there it is, a full fourteen points.

Peter Town got the theme, but not much else.

What the fuck. The Ronettes?? There’s no way you guys knew Molly Pitcher.

Well. Hey. We got points for it.

That week we won. That week we were the ones to cheer obnoxiously. We were the ones to get our pick of lame prize

candy, we were the ones to take a cringey group picture in front of the scoreboard. We were the ones to thank the RGSs and walk back gloating. We won. Fair and square.

Never mind the fact that I did talk to Benny last week about the team sizes. Yeah. That was me. So what?

And never mind the fact that this was the week before midterms, that Agatha Quizteam and Nash Equilibrium weren’t even there. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. This week, we won. There is nothing sweeter.

But next week is always another game.

It’s also true that the Nassau Weekly provides something different for Daniel Viorica: An outlet where we can rip our friends, enemies, rivals, significant others, and distant acquaintances to shreds.

March 26, 2023 19 PAGE DESIGN BY BENJAMIN SMALL ART BY EMMA MOHRMANN

PROTEST

JULIETTE CARBONNIER

March 26, 2023 20 PAGE DESIGN BY VERA EBONG