Author: Paul Bazzano

This past weekend, George Mason Triathlon completed its season at USAT Collegiate Nationals in Tempe, Arizona.  The club sent four competitors to Nationals: John Baldwin, Christian Jacky, Brian Quintana, and Alyssa Bilewski. Leading the way for the Patriots was Baldwin who finished 143^rd overall with a time of 2:02:48. Baldwin recalls the experience by saying, “the atmosphere was awesome! So many college athletes being masochistic together.” Following behind were Jacky in 2:33:16 and Quintana in 2:46:01, who popped two tires on the bike leg. Bilewski, the only female competitor for Mason, finished with a time of 3:02:12.  Freshman Brian Quintana described the swim as more physical than any other race he has completed, “got kicked and pushed around a lot. It was more about survival.”  The Sonoran desert weather played a factor.  “I think we underestimated the weather conditions,” Bilewski continues by saying, “but if it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.” Jacky, a Junior, looks forward to doing it all again next year. This race tops off an excellent year for the club who will be hungry for more next season.

Men’s Club Volleyball recently competed and made it to the semifinals in their EIVA Divisional Tournament, hosted by Liberty University, on Saturday, March 22nd.

Matches were played as best two out of three with the possible third game to fifteen points.

Missing two of their starting players, first year junior, Alex James, stepped up to fill in the outside hitter position. In their first match of the day against the higher seeded Duke, the team struggled early on to provide a strong offense which cost them greatly losing the first game, 18-25. However, the match was far from over and the players were not ready to give up. Having warmed up in the first, the second game went their way as they battled to hold the lead throughout to win 25-22, bringing about the third game. Trading points back and forth, both teams had multiple match point possibilities, but in the end GMU was finally able to finish out the match winning 28-26.

GMU faced a tough JMU A team in the next match, losing 16-25 in the first and 19-25 in the second. Their final opponent, NC State, put up some good competition but not enough to keep us at bay as GMU won 25-17, 25-22, sending them into the semifinals for the fourth time this year. The semifinals pitted the team against a dominant Virginia Tech A team who are known to be a strong and well developed program. Despite this, GMU was able to stick with them through much of the match making them work for their spot in the finals. VT A bested them winning 20-25, 21-25.

Overall Mason Men’s Club Volleyball had a great showing in the tournament and were rewarded for their hard work with yet another semifinals appearance. The team plans to keep on working and are determined to continue having positive results. Who knows, maybe they’ll even win the tournament next year; we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

The Blue Ridge Hockey Conference (BRHC), in which GMU’s Men’s Club Ice Hockey Team competes in, recently released their 2014 awards.  Mason came up big, landing players across the board.  Two players made the 6-player All-BRHC team, forward Dylan Talbot and defender Nick Baker, while forward Steve Cordova made the 2nd Line All-BRHC team.  Dylan Talbot ended runner-up to Old Dominion University’s Andrew Appleby for League MVP.  Mason also produced the runner-up for Rookie of the Year in Jeff Eagan, who finished behind ODU’s Alex Dempsey.  With so much success the league had no choice, but to present the Coach of the Year honor to GMU’s Steve Hyjek, who well-deserved the award. Let’s all put our hands together in a round of applause congratulating the Mason Ice Hockey team on a wonderful season.