Fall 2011
Around the Quads
Roar, Lion, Roar
All-Ivy QB Brackett Leads Lions Football
By Alex Sachare ’71
Columbia’s football team outscored its opponents last season but lost more than it won. With All-Ivy First Team quarterback Sean Brackett ’13 back at the helm and a veteran offensive line led by All-Ivy First Team tackle Jeff Adams ’12, the Lions will begin quest of their first winning season since 1996 on Saturday, September 17, at Fordham in the 10th annual Liberty Cup game.
This will be Columbia’s fifth season under Coach Norries Wilson, whose team was 4–6 overall and 3–4 in Ivy play last season despite outscoring its opponents 225–220 overall and 151–146 in Ivy competition. After posting a 5–5 record in Wilson’s first season, Columbia has had three losing campaigns to drop Wilson’s coaching record to 12–28 overall and 7–21 in the Ivy League.
With the graduation of All-Ivy First Team wide receiver Andrew Kennedy ’11, one of Brackett’s primary targets figures to be fifth-year senior Mike Stephens ’12, who suffered a season-ending injury in the first game last year and is returning for his second season as one of the team’s captains. The 6-foot-7, 305-lb. Adams anchors an offensive line that includes six players who had significant playing time last season.
Columbia’s defense lost a pair of All-Ivy First Team players, linebacker Alex Gross ’11 and defensive back Calvin Otis ’11. The Lions will rebuild around All-Ivy Second Team linebacker Josh Martin ’13E and several other experienced players, including linebacker Ryan Murphy ’13, defensive backs Ross Morand ’12 and Kalasi Huggins ’12, and defensive lineman Seyi Adebayo ’13.
After opening on the road against Fordham, Columbia will play its home opener against Albany on September 24 and then begin Ivy competition at Princeton on October 1. The Lions wrap up their non-league schedule at home against Sacred Heart on October 8 before hosting defending Ivy League champion Penn in the annual Homecoming game on October 15.
Last season, Columbia got off to a 3–1 start before losing at Penn and then dropping a 24–21 Homecoming heartbreaker to Dartmouth, part of a four-game losing streak. The Lions bounced back with a 24–21 win over Cornell in their final home game, but were beaten at Brown 38–16 to finish below .500.
ON TARGET: Sarah Chai ’12, Anna Harrington ’12 Barnard and Marilyn He ’14 teamed up to defeat Texas A&M 10–9 and win the recurve event at the 2011 U.S. Intercollegiate Archery Championships on May 21. The next day, Chai finished second to two-time Olympian Jennifer Nichols of Texas A&M in the individual competition, with Harrington finishing fourth. In the compound division, Sydney Shaefer ’12 finished fourth. Harrington and Chai both were named All-Americans, the third consecutive season Chai has been so honored and the first for Harrington.
NEW COACHES: Columbia entered 2011–12 with new head coaches for its fencing, wrestling and women’s rowing programs.
Michael N. Aufrichtig, chairman of the New York Athletic Club fencing program for the past five years, is the new head men’s and women’s fencing coach. The NYAC program had unprecedented success under Aufrichtig, qualifying seven members to the 2010 World Championships and winning five national championships in 2011.
Aufrichtig, who fenced at NYU, succeeds co-head coaches Aladar Kogler and George Kolombotavich, who retired following last season. With Kogler and Kolombatovich at the helm since 1983, Columbia has had a long run as one of the nation’s premier college fencing programs. Their Columbia teams won 17 Ivy League men’s fencing titles and eight Ivy League women’s fencing titles during the past 28 years. The men’s fencing program won the national title in three consecutive years from 1987–89, and after the NCAA changed to a combined men’s and women’s format, they coached the Lions to championships in 1992 and 1993.
Seventeen Columbia fencers won individual NCAA fencing titles under Kogler and Kolombatovich, including Columbia University Athletics Hall of Fame inductees Katy Bilodeau ’87; Bob Cottingham ’88; Jon Normile ’89E; Tzu Moy ’91, ’02 P&S and Ben Atkins ’93, ’98L as well as Jeffrey Spear ’10, who was named the recipient of the NCAA Top VIII award in January 2011, and current assistant coach Daria Schneider ’10. Many of their fencers also competed in the Olympics, most recently 2008 Beijing Games silver medalists Erinn Smartt ’01 Barnard and James Williams ’07, ’09 GSAS.
Carl Fronhofer, an assistant coach with the wrestling program the last three years, has been named the Andrew F. Barth [’83, ’85 Business] Head Coach of Wrestling. Fronhofer is a former All-American at Pittsburgh who compiled a 123–39 record while wrestling for Pitt and qualified for the NCAA Championships each of his four years. He came to Columbia after two seasons as the top assistant at Bloomsburg University and three seasons as an assistant at Pitt.
Scott Ramsey has been named Columbia’s head women’s rowing coach. He was an assistant in the Lions’ rowing program from 2007–09 before spending two years as an assistant women’s rowing coach and head novice coach at Iowa. He is a graduate of Penn, where he rowed for three years on the heavyweight team.
ON THE RUN: Caroline LeFrak (née Bierbaum) ’06, one of the most decorated cross country runners in Columbia history, is continuing her racing career as a member of the elite New York Athletic Club, where she finished first in the five-mile run at the New York Road Runners team championship on August 6. A lawyer and founder of a sports management agency, she qualified for January’s U.S. Olympic Trials for the marathon.
Meanwhile, Delilah DiCrescenzo ’05, Erison Hurtault ’07 and Lisa Stublic ’05 all were scheduled to compete in the 2011 IAAF World Championships August 27–September 4.
DiCrescenzo qualified for the U.S. team by finishing third in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase at the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in July. Hurtault qualified to represent his native country, Dominica, by finishing third in the 400 meters at the Central American and Caribbean Games. Stublic, meanwhile, assured herself of a spot in the 2012 London Olympics representing Croatia, her country of residence, when she won the OMV Linz Marathon in April, setting a national record of 2:30.46.