Bates Student: Sports: View from the cheap seats

		- November 6, 1998
		View from the cheap seats By DAVE RICHTER Staff Writer
		I had an article all planned out for this issue. It was a three-thousand-word detailed account chronicling the magnificent career of Legendary Tight End T.J. Lepore '01. This was Pulitzer Prize-winning stuff, but the football team had to go and do something newsworthy. So I guess I'll have to say something about them instead. For those of you who didn't watch I gotta wonder where your priorities are. This game against Colby was one hell of a football game. I truly have to say this was the best I've ever seen this team play. It is my understanding that the game balls went to Ryan Jarvis '00, Rejean Guerriero '01, and the defense as a whole. I may have also included the offensive line in that list as they did a great job in holding off a very aggressive pass rush. Still, this was a team effort if I ever saw one. Other than Jarvis and Guerriero nobody had a game that was much above their personal average. Nobody on the defense had more than ten tackles, no receiver had more than seventy yards, and quarterback Matt Bazirgan '00 had a good game, but not one that he would consider his best performance ever. This team won on Saturday because everybody played well, played hard, and played for all sixty minutes of the game. While that is true I still think some of the individual performances need to be recognized. Ryan Jarvis was spectacular last week rushing for 137 yards on 24 carries. The highlight of the day was his 37-yard touchdown run which put Bates ahead early in the second half. The play concluded with Jarvis dropping the ball on the ground which must have offended the refs in some way as they were quick to throw a flag for obsessive celebration. My theory is that Jarvis must have said something nasty about the ref's mother or something because I can't imagine what was wrong with what anybody did after that play. Fortunately, the penalty didn't matter as Rej Guerriero made the extra point anyway, despite being ten yards further back. Seldom do kickers receive or deserve the game ball, but in this case I think Guerriero was a big enough factor that you give it to him. He scored seven points, and Bates only won by six. Using our $120,000 educations would allow us to realize that if he missed all of his kicks then Bates loses that football game. These weren't all chip shots either like the one missed last year by the kicker at a certain school that shall remain nameless. The one part of this game where Bates simply looked the best all year had to have been on defense. The secondary, after a slow start played the best I've ever seen them play all season, and the usual strong performances were turned in by linebackers Frost Hubbard '00 and Bob Rosenthal '01. What I found most impressive however were how other players who don't get as much attention stepped up real big. Senior captain Jeff Konieczny had a number of tackles including one that stopped a sure touchdown, which may have saved the game for Bates. Jason Silva '00 also came up big, intercepting a pass to stop a Colby drive that looked like it might end in a score. It was big plays like these that won the game for the Bobcats more than anything else. Of course there were also the usual solid games on offense as well by Bazirgan, Jason Coulie '00, Paul Fantasia '00, and Brian Mulready '02. It was the fact that nobody really had a bad game that made the difference. I wrote before that Bates football players could be identified as the guys with limps, but in the past few days the team was more easily identified as the guys with permanent smiles on their faces. Hopefully the next two games will give them more to be happy about.

Back To Index