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Updated: 3:53pm May 13, 2009

Last season, the Columbia baseball team defeated Ivy League powerhouse Dartmouth en route to the school’s first baseball championship since 1977. But in their quest to defend the title, the 2009 team fielded a weaker squad that had trouble winning big games.

Before stepping into Ivy League play, the Lions started the season with 18 nonconference games against tough opponents. Over the first few weeks of the season, Columbia battled Lamar and Charlotte and emerged with just one win in seven games.

The Columbia men’s tennis team had one of its most successful seasons in recent memory, culminating in its second Ivy League championship in three years. The Lions won the Ivy title in their final match, defeating Princeton 7-0 and moving on to the NCAA tournament.

When a coach who just finished his 31st season at the helm of a team calls a season his toughest ever, you listen. For head coach George Kolombatovich and the Columbia fencing team, 2009 was one where injuries rocked many fencers over the course of the season, yet at the end the Lions finished in fourth place at the NCAA championships and second in the Ancient Eight.

Led by the eventual Ivy League Player of the Year, junior midfielder/forward Sophie Reiser, the Columbia women’s soccer team amassed a 4-2-1 record in conference play to finish third in the Ivy League. While their 2008 campaign was certainly noteworthy, the Lions had higher hopes after winning the Ivy title in 2006. Columbia headed into its final conference matchup with the chance to win at least a share of the championship, but fell short of the title at Harvard.

The No. 53 Ivy League champion men’s tennis team picked up another award last week when the annual all-Ivy teams were released. Freshmen Haig Schneiderman was a uninamous selection for Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and senior Bogdan Borta was named to the all-Ivy first team for singles. Junior Jon Wong and junior transfer Mihai Nichifor were named to the second team all-Ivy in singles, and Borta and Nichifor were named first team all-Ivy in doubles. In addition, Wong and Schneiderman were named second team all-Ivy in doubles, and Schneiderman earned honorable mention for his singles play.

I wasn’t supposed to end up in this place. Coming to Columbia nearly four years ago, I knew I wanted to get involved in some sort of extracurricular activity, but I presumed it was going to be something comprising a mixture of law and politics. Yet during my first week on campus, I blindly followed one of my floormates to a small office on 112th and Broadway upon hearing there would be sports fans there. What I found was a place that would bring me my highest highs and lowest lows at Columbia, with a set of ridiculous stories in between.

My first article for Spectator was a football Around the League article in September 2005.

Four years, three PixBox victories, and exactly 130 articles later, it is now time—this is my last-ever article for Spectator, and most likely, the last article I will ever write.

The Columbia softball team (16-34, 4-16 Ivy) had another disappointing season, finishing last in the Ivy League. Despite the subpar team performance, there were a few individuals who had successful seasons.
Early on in the campaign, the Lions appeared to be playing better ball than last year. The Light Blue went 7-5 at the Rebel Spring Games this year, compared to 5-9 last season, but this strong spring break performance did not translate into success in the Ivy League as Columbia was only able to win one more Ivy game than last season.

The men’s golf team qualified for the NCAA championship in 2009 by winning the Ivy League for the second consecutive year. The Lions won the Ivy title in dramatic fashion, overtaking Penn, which led by three strokes going into the final round, on the last hole of the tournament.

“The field that has been announced [for the NCAA tournament] is very talented,” head coach Rich Mueller said, “but we’re becoming more and more accustomed to playing with these teams in the regular season.”

Coming off two consecutive 7-7 Ivy League campaigns and facing the loss of four senior starters, the men’s basketball team entered the 2008-2009 season with a bleak outlook.

To make matters worse, junior transfer Brian Grimes tore his ACL five minutes into the team’s first practice. Grimes was expected to fill the role of departed three-time all-Ivy League performer John Baumann. With Grimes out for the season, the Lions were forced to rely on a number of inexperienced players.

The men’s soccer team finished its 2008 season seventh in the Ivy League with an overall record of 4-12-1 (2-5 Ivy). The team fought through a midseason slump, which culminated in a six game losing streak, to close out the season in a 2-0 shutout over Cornell at home.

I’ve written this column in my head about 400 times, and it changes every time.

I suppose that, when I send in the final version and then read it the next day, I’ll still want to change it. Some things will work, some things won’t, and I’ll mentally rewrite this column another 400 times, because no one column will ever do four years at Spectator justice.

The heavyweight rowing team returned to form this weekend, defeating Navy to take the Maxwell Stevenson Cup. The women’s team, however, was unable to capture the Woodbury Cup from Northeastern, placing fourth in the Beanpot.

The No. 10 heavyweights (11-2) stormed back from a difficult loss to Boston University and Syracuse last weekend to take the Maxwell Stevenson Cup for the second year in a row. The Lions triumphed over the No. 15 Midshipmen and the tough conditions in the varsity eight racing, finishing in 5:55.1, over seven seconds ahead of Navy, who came in at 6:02.8.

The Columbia women’s basketball team showed flashes of greatness during its 2008-2009 campaign, but the Lions were unable to dominate the Ivy League. Columbia (13-15, 6-8 Ivy) opened conference play with a hard-fought 47-44 win over Cornell, but the Light Blue faltered in the rematch, losing to the Big Red by a five-point margin in Ithaca.

Inconsistency defined Columbia during league competition. In their first back-to-back Ivy games of the season, for example, the Lions lost a 63-61 heartbreaker at Yale but followed that performance with a 76-51 win at Brown.

The 2008 Columbia football season was bittersweet for the Light Blue. Its 2-5 Ivy League record landed it in a tie for sixth place in the Ancient Eight, which is a better than its last-place finish in 2007. But there is no doubt that the Lions could have achieved more.

The men’s tennis team will travel down to Gainseville on May 8 to take on No. 22 University of Miami in the first round of the 2009 NCAA Division I Men’s Tennis Championships. The No. 53 Lions got the automatic berth after winning the Ivy League for the second time in three years, while the Hurricanes got into the tournament via an at-large bid, finishing second in the powerhouse ACC. The winner of the match will take on the winner of Marist and No. 10 Florida on May 9.

When it comes to men’s tennis in the Ivy League, there is no shortage of talent.