Courtesy of Mike Rasay
While there are still 37 days until the last final exam, the sports season is already beginning to wind down. The soccer season concluded over a week ago on Oct. 28 at Menlo College, the volleyball team played their final match against Pacific Union College yesterday, Nov. 5, and the cross country team competed at NAIA Regionals on Saturday, Oct. 4. The swim team is exactly halfway through their 2006-2007 season and the Crew team has traveled to a single meet and competition will recommence in March.
Serves and spikes and digs, oh my!
Five players from the 2005 volleyball season returned for a new year of action on the court. They are sophomores Loke Davis, Vaughan Bradley-Willeman, Milan Givens and Rebecca Frank along with Junior Brenda Salantes. Davis, Bradley-Willeman and Frank shared co-captain status for the 2006 season.
There were seven new players on the team: sophomore Robin Cumming and freshwomen Isidoa Jimenez, Karen “Sally” Espinosa, Alissa Chasten, Jennifer Pore, Andrea Schmitt and Cristin Allen. This was a first year with the team for Head Coach Daniel Rasay as well.
The team started their season at home in Haas Pavilion against Simpson University Sept. 8 and ended in the same place Nov. 5 for the Blue and Gold game against Pacific Union College. Going into the final game, the team had a match record of 1-11. The team’s sole win was against William Jessup University in the second match of the season when they won 3-1. This follows a winless season in 2005.
The volleyball team also experienced soaring crowd attendance as a result of themed games. Various themes included wearing pajamas, dressing in cheesy sweaters and teasing hair up in a mimicry of the big styles from the ’80s.
A kicking season
The soccer team emerges from the 2006 season with a losing 0-14 record. Their season started at home on Sept. 9 against the formidable Simpson University and ended Oct. 28 in a controversial game at Menlo College.
This year’s team is losing 6 players before next season to graduation and nursing aspirations. They are seniors Megan Burke-O’Connor, Claudia Mercado, Tashi Parsons-Moss, and Erica Worthington along with sophomore Laura Lieberman and freshwoman Kristen Hopkins. Parsons-Moss has played for the Cyclones all four of her years at Mills while both Mercado and Worthington played for three years.
Other returning players are juniors Stephanie Gomez and Amanda Parker and sophomores Genevieve Evans, Allison Lowrie, Dolores Melina, Maya Oubre and Vivianna Pena.
New players this year included Hopkins and fellow freshwomen Rachel Dorney, Katya Flumian, Tenagne Habte-Michael, Leslie Neil and Rebecca Williams as well as sophomore Ixquel Sarin.
Let’s go for a swim
The 2006-2007 swimming season began at the Trefethen Aquatic Center on the Mills College Campus Oct. 8 and 9 with the 20th annual Swim-A-Mile event. The event was organized by the Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland with the help of Mills College. Forty swimmers from the Mills community participated in the event, including members of the swim team.
Two more meets convened at Mills, a Squad Meet on Oct. 11 and a dual meet against CSU-East Bay on Oct. 21. The swim team then traveled to UC Santa Cruz on Oct. 28 to compete against UCSC and Seattle University. The team is now returning from Aliso Viejo, Calif. where they competed against host school Soka University and Chapman University.
The Bay Area Invite, the fourth and final event to be held at Mills this season, is Nov. 11 and 12.
There are five freshwomen on the swim team: Elizabeth Bennett, Emily Chan, Sachiko Hakuta, Laura Lucero and Corina Peila. There are also two seniors who will be graduating at the end of the season: Catherine Stitt and Alexi Ueltzen.
Row, row your boat along the lake
Crew is normally a spring season sport, but attends the Head of the American race every fall in Sacramento at UC Davis. The race this year was held Oct. 28 and the Mills boats came in 11th and 13th for the eight women novice race while the Varsity four women boat placed 16th. Their season starts in earnest in March.
Currently, the team has five returning athletes from the full season last year. Seniors Emily Bacon, Merri Gordon and Shannon Van Meir are in their final season and are among the returning five. Juniors Andrea Selva and Zoe Tollefson round out the returning athletes and the varsity team.
Sophomores Cherise Bentosino and Caroline Tilghman began last year with the crew team but couldn’t finish the season and returned this year with the novice crew. They are joined by a plethora of new athletes.
There are 15 freshwomen: Esther Anderson, Jennifer Courtney, Chelsea DeSouza, Emma Giboney, Emmy Klint-Gasner, Tara LaValley, Sverre LeRoy, Corelle Nakamura, Molly Raynor, Sonya Rifkin, Tiffany Ruch, Elizabeth Serage, Kelsey Smith, Natasha Tractenberg and Rebecca Waterhouse. There are also four new sophomores: Kelly Franke, Melinda GaRay, Kirin Khan and Stephanie Zarifis. Franke and Khan are new to the Mills crew team but have previous crew experience.
Run, run fast as you can
Cross Country has experienced a learning year as a team this season.
Only one runner, senior Emily Warde, returned from previous seasons with the cross country team. She will be leaving at the end of the season along with graduate student Terri Martin. Martin was one of 10 new runners this season and the only graduate student of the team. Fellow runner Ana Tijiboy is a junior and a former crew team member. There are two sophomores on the team: Katie Johnson and Samantha Foster. The remaining six runners are freshwomen Lupe Cazares, Hannah Watson, Katherine Frey, Kayley Turkheimer, Natasha Sommers and Perla Cantu.
The first cross country meet of the season was Sept. 9 at UC Davis in Sacramento. The Cyclones placed 12th against schools such as Stanford, UC Davis and various Cal States. By the end of the season, the Cyclones placed second at the Mills Invitational. This weekend the team went to NAIA Regional Championships in Fresno. There is only one meet left in the 2006 season, the NAIA National Championships in Kentucky on Nov. 11
