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T H E U C S D G U A R D I A N | T U E S D A Y, M A Y 2 7 , 2 0 1 4 | W W W . U C S D G U A R D I A N . O R G

SPORTS

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BRANDON YU sports@ucsdguardian.org

Track & Field

Strong Showing at NCAAs Five UCSD athletes competed in Allendale, Michigan this past week in the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships, finishing with strong results and two All-American distinctions. BY CLAY KAUFMAN STAFF WRITER PHOTO USED WITH PERMISSION FROM UCSD ATHLETICS

handful of Tritons competed in four events over the course of three days at the NCAA Division II National Championships in Allendale, Michigan, from May 22 to May 24. Thanks to an exceptional set of performances, the team returned home with two All-American Honors. Redshirt freshman Dan Golubovic kicked off nationals for the Tritons, starting his decathlon on Thursday as the 11th seed. Golubovic completed half of the decathlon on the first day with a personal best throw in the shotput (37 feet, 3 inches). However, overall, Golubovic appeared to underperform in the majority of the first day’s events. “Day one ended up being a very rough meet for me,” Golubovic told the Guardian. “It was just poor performances all across the board. I couldn’t really catch a break. It was more of a mental challenge — trying to forget about the last event and move on to regroup for the next.”

Also making his national debut on day one, sophomore Carlos Bojorquez competed in the 1,500 meter run. The San Diego native, seeded 18th out of 20, narrowly missed advancing to the finals. His time of 3 minutes 56.2 seconds put him fifth in his heat, just short of earning advancement to the final round. Bojorquez concluded his NCAAs effort with a 14th place finish. On day two, Golubovic rounded up his national debut with more impressive performances. He won the 110meter hurdle heat

with a new best time of 15.20 and took top honors in the discus, throwing a personal best distance of 144-7 on his final attempt. Golubovic finished up his events 12th out of 16 with 6,616 points, about 1,000 points behind Chico State national champion J Patrick Smith. “It was a tremendous turnaround,” Salerno said. “He was really outstanding honestly. He had PRs in several events on the second day, which was pretty remarkable. He really brought his score back up, so it’s a good prophecy for his future for sure.” Junior sprinter Sabrina Pimentel, who enters this year’s national championship in the 10th seed out of 20, ran in her preliminary heat in the 800-meter on Friday, placing eighth with a time of 2:09.31 to advance to Saturday’s final. Pimentel, who earned All-American status in the 4x400 relay her freshman year and went just shy just of taking All-American status last year in which she placed ninth, snagged the national distinction this time around. Crossing the finSee TRACK & FIELD, page 11

ACADEMIC AWARDS

Six Tritons Earn Capital One All-Academic Award The UCSD athletes qualified for District 8’s First Team with their consistently strong academic standings. PHOTO BY NOLAN THOMAS /GUARDIAN FILE

BY brandon yu

sports editor Six UCSD student-athletes were recently named to the 2014 Capital One Academic All-District At-Large First Team. Andie Nishimi, Sandy Hon, Luke Calkins, Drew Dickinson, Max Jiganti and Chase Cockerill were all chosen by the College Sports Information Directors of America for the NCAA Division II District 8’s handful of academically distinguished collegiate athletes. The six Tritons comprised the majority of the 11 total individuals who were selected from District 8, which includes a host of programs from the California Collegiate Athletic Association, Great Northwest Athletic Conference and Pacific West Conference, proving that UCSD has as much brain as it does brawn. Additionally, all six athletes qualified for NCAA teams in their respective sports. Nishimi is a junior attacker on the women’s water polo squad, which finished eighth at nationals earlier this month. She maintains an amazing 3.93 grade-point average with a cognitive science major. On top of earning this award for the first time, Nishimi achieved careerhighs in goals (12), assists (nine) and steals (16) this season. Hon is an All-American senior

swimmer who has a 3.60 GPA in psychology and minors in music. She swam in the 200 medley relay at the NCAA Championships, taking a fifth place finish while breaking the school record with a time of 1 minute 42.23 seconds. Hon has earned a spot in the NCAA in each of her four years and is a two-time College

Swimming Coaches Association of America All-American. With a 3.94 GPA, senior diver and mechanical engineer Calkins excels in and out of the water. He was the Pacific Collegiate Swim and Dive Conference championship in the three-meter and one-meter, for which he also placed eighth

and 11th, respectively, at nationals. Calkins earned the PCSC Championship’s Male Diver of the Meet and was awarded the prestigious 2014 NCAA Elite 89 Award, which similarly recognizes the nation’s brightest student-athletes. See AWARDS, page 11

Paying Homage To the Amateurs full court press Brandon Yu bcyu@ucsd.edu After recently taking over for the capable Rachel Uda, I, as the somewhat newly-minted sports editor, bore anxiety from the start at the prospect of writing my first column. So as I was finally forced to approach that daunting pillar of 500 words, I took a decidedly different route from my mentor. I unglued my eyes from neatly compiled stat sheets and the player bios on the UCSD Athletics website and ventured into the lesser-known parts of the Triton sports world — where there are no athletes of the week, conference championships or NCAA tournaments. For my first column, I went all-out Anthony Bourdain and trekked a solid minute and a half from my apartment to the John Muir College public basketball courts. Here, anybody can jump into a pickup game of basketball. There are no tryouts and things are a bit less coordinated — from the athletes to the plays to entire games themselves. However, as I saw from watching a few games and flailing around in a couple others, that’s what makes it great. For the few who may have shined on high school courts and for others who just want to get in some cardio, the Muir courts serve as an outlet for playing out that one Game Seven, Jordan buzzerbeater fantasy. Amid the wild shots, the common air-balls and the questionable self-called fouls, what is great is that all of these street ballers don’t play because they are necessarily the best but because they just love playing the sport. And of course, there are the host of characters whose almost daily presence makes up the face of the outdoor courts. There’s Kurt, the white-haired, 70-something man who plays as rough as Dennis Rodman and calls plays like the Peyton Manning of street ball. There’s David, the lanky African guy who perpetually sports a Denver Nuggets jersey and constantly jacks up threes that never seem to go in. He’s supposedly a Sudanese prince, but he plays as if he’s a full king on the court. There’s also the slew of hefty, mustier-than-you’d-like ballplayers that make you pray games are not shirts and skins. And there are the ones who want to play bad enough that they are still shooting after the lights shut off at 10:15 p.m. Yet after getting to know this unique culture on campus, I noticed that perhaps the best part comes after the games are over. When players on either teams are done, whether they’ve lost all their games or come out on top in each of them, they almost always come together — strangers or not — and exchange low-fives and fist bumps in acknowledgment of a mutual bond of sweat and swishes. For many of these hoopers, the Muir Courts, in all its many faults and glories, is a sort of makeshift Madison Square Garden arena. The overhead lights don’t all properly work, some of the basketball nets are often falling off and there always seems to be sand on the court near the beach volleyball lot. But this collection of six hoops, standing atop those green-shaded concrete grounds, is home to countless games of fierce competitiveness and true love for the game. While there’s no physical hardware or national recognition for winners, the players want to win just as much as any UCSD athlete in a Triton uniform, and that’s what matters the most.