June 10, 2023 • 34 mins
Welcome to Navy Sports Central - The Official Podcast of the Navy Sports Nation!
In this episode, we'll be celebrating the Top 10 Navy Sports Moments of the 2022-23 season. These selections were based their impact the program, their overall significance (regular or post season) and record-breaking performances. Join us as we relive the excitement and pay tribute to these incredible Navy athletes that made this season one for the books!
So tune into the 50th episode of Navy Sports Central for as we recognize the talent and tenacity of these remarkable athletes. Don't forget to share your thoughts and feedback with us on the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page, and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Go Navy! Beat Army!!
Related Links:
In this episode, we'll be celebrating the Top 10 Navy Sports Moments of the 2022-23 season. These selections were based their impact the program, their overall significance (regular or post season) and record-breaking performances. Join us as we relive the excitement and pay tribute to these incredible Navy athletes that made this season one for the books!
So tune into the 50th episode of Navy Sports Central for as we recognize the talent and tenacity of these remarkable athletes. Don't forget to share your thoughts and feedback with us on the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page, and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Go Navy! Beat Army!!
Related Links:
- Women's Rowing Patriot League Championships
- Navy Men's Rugby Goes Undefeated to Win the National Championship
We want to hear from you! Give us your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:
When was the last time a Midshipman won a national championship in Outdoor Track & Field?
A. 1945
B. 1982
C. 1996
D. 2004
Give us your answer on the Navy Sports Nation Group Facebook page.
Follow Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts:
When was the last time a Midshipman won a national championship in Outdoor Track & Field?
A. 1945
B. 1982
C. 1996
D. 2004
Give us your answer on the Navy Sports Nation Group Facebook page.
Follow Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts:
Check out the Navy Sports Nation group page on Facebook!
Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:
Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:
- Seven In Music (Intro)
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- Loka Music (Deep Dive Pt. 2 Lead In)
- Artlss (Question of the Day Lead In)
- Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Karl (00:14):
Hi everybody.
My name is Karl Darden and I'dlike to welcome and thank all of
you for joining us today onNavy Sports Central.
I'm your host and this is theofficial podcast of the Navy
Sports Nation, where we take adeeper dive into Navy Sports.
In this episode, we'll becounting down the top 10 moments
of the Navy Sports season.
I'll set things up bydiscussing the basic criteria I
used to make my selections, andthen I'll give you a little bit
(00:35):
of the backstory beforeproviding the details for each
one of the top 10 entries.
So start thinking about some ofyour favorite moments during
the year and we'll see howclosely we match up.
I will look forward to gettingyour feedback on the Navy Sports
Nation group Facebook page.
We'll get started here in asecond.
Okay, thanks for joining us onthis 50th episode of Navy Sports
(01:05):
Central.
Definitely a nice milestone.
So, whether you've been with usfrom the very beginning or
jumped on board somewhere alongthe way, i appreciate you taking
the time.
As I mentioned in the intro, iput together a list of the top
10 moments in the Navy Sportsseason.
I did something similar lastyear and it went over pretty
well, so I figured I'd give itanother shot.
Of course, when you go back andlook at the last, we'll call it
nine months or so.
(01:26):
it wasn't easy cutting the listall the way down to 10.
So I did want to share with yousome of the things I focused on
when making my selections.
First was overall impact.
In other words, what was myinitial gut reaction as a Navy
fan when I either witnessed themoment or read about the result?
How fired up did I get?
So here we're talking about anemotional response and how close
(01:46):
it comes to pegging the meter.
The second factor was what wasthe significance of the moment
and what did it mean for theprogram?
Did it happen in the regularseason or was it during the
playoffs?
Was Army the opponent and wasthere some sort of title on the
line?
So the more significant themoment, the more weight it
carried in the final rankings.
The third criteria was werethere any records broken?
(02:07):
This is a testament to how muchhard work these athletes put in
to prepare for that moment.
There's no doubt they'll tellyou when they're out there
competing.
It's much more about performingat their absolute best, but
establishing a new record isalways a nice bonus.
Alright, so that gives you anidea of how I went about making
these choices, but before we getinto our countdown, i did want
to run through a couple ofhonorable mentions.
So here we go.
(02:28):
Our first honorable mentiongoes to the Navy Women's
Lacrosse team for defeating tworanked opponents on their way to
a 13 and 6 season, whileachieving a national ranking
themselves by the end of theyear.
First, here's a little bit ofbackground.
The Mids made it all the way tothe Patriot League Championship
game in 2022.
And they had quite a fewseniors on that team who were
key contributors that moved onafter graduation.
(02:49):
Probably the biggest loss wasReagan Roehlofs, who led the
team in scoring, but they alsolost their excellent goalkeeper,
Jo Torres, to the transferportal.
As a matter of fact, she endedup at Towson, so there were a
few question marks going intothis spring.
The Mids had a lot of talent,but they were very young and
that made it kind of tough topredict how the season was going
to go.
But the one thing I've learnedsince I began following Navy
(03:10):
Women's Lacrosse is that CoachTimchal always finds a way to
put a highly competitive team onthe field every year.
She and her staff know how topull in strong recruits and
develop them quickly so they canmake an impact right away.
And this year, the player thatwas the biggest difference maker
was freshman midfielder EvaYovino.
I watched quite a few gamesthis season and there were times
where I would just track Yovinojust to see what she was doing.
(03:31):
First of all, there's no doubtthat she could put the ball in
the back of the net She wassecond on the team in goals but
what really caught my eye washow well she distributed the
ball And she was a superaccurate passer as well.
I don't know how many times Isaw her thread the needle
between two defenders to hitsomeone cutting to the cage,
which resulted in a goal for theMids.
Yovino finished the season with92 points on 42 goals and 50
(03:53):
assists.
Two of her favorite targetswere fellow midfielder Emily
Messenese and attacker LeeleeDenton.
On defense, senior AthenaCarroon led the team in ground
balls and caused turnovers,while sophomore Emma Richardell
really stepped up to take overat goalkeeper.
So the team was sitting on a3-2 record by the time they
traveled down to Richmond toface the 18th ranked Spiders.
In their first game of theseason, the Mids lost to 11th
(04:15):
ranked Duke 15-10.
They started off really slow inthat game and never really
recovered.
But that wasn't the caseagainst Richmond.
They got on the board first andled by as many as four goals
before taking a 10-8 lead intothe half.
And when they came out of thelocker room to start the third
quarter the offense continuedbreaking down the Spiders'
defense.
Led by Yovino, Messenese andDenton.
The Mids scored another 10goals while the defense
(04:36):
completely shut down Richmond.
In the second half Navy won,going away 20-9.
And the result was significantbecause that tied the record for
the largest margin of victoryover a ranked opponent.
That win got the Mids a lot ofattention, but they were still
unranked.
And then two weeks later the19th ranked Jacksonville
Dolphins came to Annapolis.
This game started off just likethey went against the Blue
Devils, but once again YovinoMessenese, and Denton helped
(04:59):
Navy pull ahead early in thesecond quarter 7-5.
From there it was a reallytight game.
The two teams traded the leadback and forth several times in
the second half.
Then about halfway through thefourth quarter, jovino assisted
on Denton's 15th goal of theyear to put the Mids up by 2.
The defense made that stand up.
Jacksonville did score a goalto get within 1, with about
4-1.5 minutes left, but that'sas close as they got.
(05:20):
Navy won the game 13-12.
Now, the fact that they wereknocking off ranked opponents
wasn't necessarily a bigsurprise.
Coach Tim Shaw's teams had ahabit of doing that, but this
was different because the Midswere so young.
They sure didn't play like it,though.
The team ended up finishing 6-3in the Patriot League, and they
made it all the way to thesemifinals in a tournament
(05:40):
before losing a heartbreaker toArmy 12-11 in overtime.
Now the really good news isthat the Mids will return all of
their key players next spring,and they'll look to take another
step towards getting back tothe Patriot League championship
game and winning that firsttitle since 2018.
Given how young the team wasthis year, i thought they
totally exceeded expectations.
They finished ranked 25 in thefinal IWLCA poll of the year,
(06:04):
and that was good enough to earnthem one of our honorable
mentions in this year'scountdown.
Okay, that brings us to oursecond and final honorable
mention, and it goes to AlexRizzo, who is a senior on the
Navy Men's Track team.
Rizzo set a program record forthe indoor mile.
He did that at the David HenryInvitational held at Boston
University back in February.
Now this place is known forhaving a very fast track.
(06:26):
In fact three years ago JakeBrophy became the first mid to
break the four-minute mile atthat very same venue.
He ran a time of 359.98.
Rizzo is coming off a verystrong junior year after making
second team on Patriot League inthe mile and he continued to
perform consistently across allthe middle distances Up in
Boston.
He set his sights on thecurrent Navy record for the mile
, which had been lowered by DaveNelson last year to 359.52.
(06:50):
I actually did a little diggingand managed to find the results
of that race, including thesplit times.
So I figured we could check outhow Rizzo did on each quarter
to see exactly how he set thenew record.
First of all, indoor tracks aretypically a 220-yard oval.
Some easy math tells us thattwo laps around gives us that
quarter-mile distance.
Rizzo ran the opening quarter in58.75 seconds.
(07:10):
So he got off to a really quickstart, which is good, because
typically I think when you gooff to these records you want to
get off to a good start, kindof settle into a pace in the
middle distances and then goahead and finish strong.
So that second quarter he camein with a time of 101.31, which
put him almost right at twominutes.
At the half-mile mark, in fact,his time was two minutes.30
(07:32):
seconds.
The third quarter split wasjust a fraction of a second
faster, at 1 minute.72 seconds.
So with two laps to go, rizzo'stime was 301.014.
By now I'm sure his lungs arestarting to burn, but somehow he
managed to find another gear,because he finished that final
quarter in 57.34 seconds andthat gave him an official time
(07:54):
for the mile of 358.748 seconds,shaving about three-quarters of
a second off the previousrecord set by Nelson.
It was an amazing effort byRizzo.
He went on to help the team winthe indoor and outdoor Patriot
League championships, but thiswas the individual performance
that earned him the honorablemention.
So great job, alex.
All right, we're going to goahead and take a short break and
(08:14):
then we'll jump into our top 10Navy sports moments of the
season with numbers 10 through 6.
Stay with us.
All right, we are done with thepreliminary.
(08:38):
So now it's time for our deepdive segment, where I'll count
down what I thought were the top10 Navy sports moments of the
season.
This is by no means an officiallist.
I did my best to apply mycriteria objectively, but I will
say that I tried to dig down tofind some great performances
among the sports that we don'thear about as much, and I think
I managed to identify at least acouple, but I'll let you guys
(09:00):
be the judge of that.
All right, anyway, let's getstarted Coming in at number 10,
we've got the Navy football teamdefeating Central Florida for
the second straight year.
Now I know you might be askinghow does the Navy team that goes
four and eight qualify for atop 10 spot?
And look, there's no questionthat it was a disappointing
season, but there were a coupleof games that the team played
(09:21):
last year that reminded you oftheir potential and what could
be in store for the future.
That game back in Novemberagainst the Knights was one of
them.
So just to kind of set thestage, the Mids were coming off
a tough loss to Notre Dame in agame where they rallied from 22
points down to get within threebefore the Irish ran out the
clock after recovering an onsidekick.
That was with just a littleover a minute left in the game
(09:41):
and they escaped with a 35 to 32win.
Now the Mids had to go on theroad to take on Central Florida.
The Knights were ranked 20th inthe country and were one of the
American Conference's mostefficient teams on offense.
They put up nearly 33 points agame, while averaging 240 yards
through the air and almost 230on the ground.
The Mids, on the other hand,were struggling to put together
sustained drives on a consistentbasis.
(10:02):
But the one big plus was theirdefense.
They had a way of disruptingthe opponent's passing game even
though they were at aconsiderable size disadvantage,
and they were among the best atshutting down the run in all of
Division I college football.
As I broke down this game, theone thing I realized was that,
in terms of timely big plays,this was probably the Mids best
game of the year.
Xavier Arline only attemptedone pass and that one fell
(10:24):
incomplete, but he directed theNavy offense to two scores in
the first half, including a oneyard run of his own to get the
Mids on the board first, and athalftime Navy led 14-6.
From there, the defense justbasically shut UCF down.
The Knights only had 84 rushingyards the entire game, which
was almost 150 below theiraverage, And even though they
put up over 200 passing yards,the only one that did any major
(10:46):
damage was a 28-yarder that wentfor a touchdown early in the
third quarter.
The one guy on the Navy defensethat was giving Central
Florida's quarterback migraineswas Senior Striker John Marshall
.
That guy was all over the fieldblowing up play after play.
This was basically his line forthe game.
He had a total of 10 tackles,including four sacks, and every
time the Mids needed a big stop,marshall was there.
(11:08):
The defense played an amazingsecond half as a unit and took
complete control of the game.
Bijan Nichols kicked a 45-yardfield goal with about seven
minutes to go in the thirdquarter And that was basically
it for the scoring.
The Knights' last fourpossessions went punt, punt,
punt and then they turned itover on downs.
From there, arline and fullbackDaba Fofana took turns running
the ball and they ate up thelast six minutes of the clock to
(11:28):
close out another Navy win overa ranked opponent.
The final score was 17-14.
That was probably the highpoint of the Mids' season.
We all know what happened intheir next game against Army,
but as disappointing as the yearwas, the win over Central
Florida was a clear indicator ofthe team's potential And being
able to get a win on the roadagainst a ranked opponent
without their startingquarterback.
Remember the tie-lavetie waslost for the year with a torn
(11:49):
ACL back in October.
That was enough to get the Navyfootball team on my list at
number 10.
Next up at number 9, i've gotthe Navy Sprint football team
going undefeated to win theirsecond straight CSFL
championship.
These guys were pretty dominantall year long.
They were 8-0 and held theiropponents to less than 11 points
a game while averaging over 36.
Alex Totta was in Mids' leadingrusher.
(12:11):
He averaged about 139 yards pergame.
And quarterback Brandon Atwoodcompleted over 64% of his passes
while posting a passer ratingof about 145%.
Now Totta just graduated, butAtwood will be back for his
senior year On defense.
The Mids' leading tackler wasjunior linebacker Jack Costigan.
He had a total of 55.
And then defensive linemanDavid Niskey was the team's sack
(12:34):
leader with 8.5.
Now, most of the time the Midsjust clobbered their opponents,
but the two games against Armywere pretty close and in fact
the championship game was a realnail-biter.
The Black Knights scored theirsecond touchdown about 5 minutes
into the second quarter to goup 14-0.
And then the Mids finally gotthings going.
Atwood connected with receiverAndrew Margiotta for a 28-yard
(12:54):
touchdown.
The kick was no good, but theMids did put together another
drive before halftime, and thenAtwood punched it in from a yard
out to cut the lead to 1, 14-13.
Now neither team scored in thethird quarter, so things stayed
the same until Alex Tato took itin from a yard out with about 6
minutes to go in the fourth.
That gave the midzer first lead.
It was 21 to 14.
After they got the two-pointconversion Less than three
(13:17):
minutes later, army tied thescore, though, and now it was up
to the Navy offense.
As they took the field, theyhad about three minutes and 40
seconds left on the clock, so aslong as they could put together
good drive, any kind of scorewould basically give them the
championship.
Atwood drove the Navy offensedown to the Black Knights 41,
and that's when Alex Tata brokearound the right end and outran
(13:37):
everybody down the sidelines toscore what turned out to be the
game-winning touchdown, andthere was just about a minute
and a half left.
The final score was 28 to 21.
So the Mids had gone undefeatedfor a second straight season on
their way to winning anothersprint football championship,
and that's what earned them thenumber nine spot on my list.
Okay, now it's time for numbereight on our countdown, and
that's where I put the Navymen's soccer team, after they
(13:59):
won their second Patriot Leaguetitle and their first since 2013
.
This was kind of a weird yearfor college soccer.
There was one significant rulechange and I'm thinking it was
basically just an attempt to cutdown on potential injuries that
can occur, you know, when youstart playing in overtime.
So the NCAA rule that therewould be no more overtime played
during the regular season,obviously during the tournament,
(14:21):
that would be different, butfor the regular season,
essentially, if the game wastied at the end of regulation,
that was it.
There's no, no overtime, nopenalty kicks, no, nothing.
So what do you think was theoutcome there?
If you guessed it'd be a bunchmore tied games, you'd be
correct.
In fact, the Mids finished theseason with more ties than they
had wins.
Overall, they had nine ties andseven wins on the year.
(14:43):
So you know, while the ties maynot look all that sexy, the one
thing it was showing was thatthe Mids were really tough to
beat.
So they finished the seasonwith an overall record of seven,
five and nine and a conferencerecord of three, one and five.
That earned them a number fourseed going into the Patriot
League tournament.
And this is where their alreadysolid defense really took things
(15:05):
to another level.
The Mids were led by goalkeeperPierce Holbrook and over the
course of those three games thequarterfinals, the semifinals
and the finals of the PatriotLeague tournament the Navy Dee
pitched a complete shutout.
They didn't allow a single goalin either regulation or the
overtime periods.
In the quarterfinals they beatthe number five seed.
Lafayette won nothing.
That set them up with BostonUniversity who was seeded second
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, and when these two teamsplayed earlier in the year they
had fought to a one-one tie.
During the semifinal gameneither team scored a goal in
regulation or in overtime.
So it came down to penaltykicks And you know that turned
into kind of a marathon also.
Finally, in the 10th round,freshman Jalen Grant put one in
on the right side, getting itpast the Boston goalkeeper, and
(15:49):
when it was a terriers turn,their guy sailed his kick right
over the crossbar.
So the mids had survived anerve-wracking 9-8 penalty
shootout and advanced on to thefinal.
The championship game againstAmerican University looked like
it was going to end in ascoreless tie also, but in the
83rd minute sophomore CharlieKriel found A.
J.
Scheutz on the left side of thepenalty box And he hit him with
(16:10):
a nice pass.
And Schutze was in a fullsprint as he moved inside the
penalty box And what he waslooking to do was execute a
cross kick to give one of hisother teammates an opportunity
in front of the goal, but itactually wound up deflecting
slightly off one of the Eaglesdefensive players and got
redirected past the goalie intothe right corner of the goal.
It was a really crazy turn ofevents that gave the mids a 1-0
(16:31):
lead And less than 10 minuteslater, wouldn't you know it,
they were a Patriot Leaguechampions.
It was the first league titlefor coach Tim O'Donohue.
He put a premium on playingstrong defense the entire season
and it definitely paid off.
During the tournament, the midsplayed 290 minutes of soccer
over three games and no onescored on him not a single
player.
That's pretty incredible andit's more than worthy of the
(16:52):
team earning the number 8 spoton my list.
Okay, next up at number 7, we'vegot Navy wrestler Grady Griess,
winning the EIWA HeavyweightChampionship, to qualify for the
NCAA Tournament.
Griess is a junior and he wasone of the team's most
dependable wrestlers the entireseason.
He led the mids in both totalwins with 32 and dual wins with
8.
And this included a 3-0 winover his opponent in the Star
(17:16):
Match against Army.
But he really hit his stride inthe EIWA Championships.
This is the country's oldestcollegiate wrestling tournament
and it is an NCAA qualifier.
Griess got off to a great startby winning his opening match by
a major decision 17-4.
And he followed that up withanother pretty dominating win,
10-1 in the quarters, overTravis Stefanik from Princeton.
(17:36):
In the semifinals Griess facedthe 26th ranked heavyweight in
the country, Cory Day fromBinghamton, and he actually did
wrestle him earlier in theseason and posted a win against
him.
This match was pretty tight,but Griess did come out on top
4-1.
So that set the stage for apretty terrific final match.
Griess' opponent was NathanTaylor from Lehigh, whom he had
(17:57):
beaten back in January 9-1.
But this time things were a lotdifferent.
The match was really reallytight.
In fact it was 1-1 late in thethird round and it looked like
they were headed to overtime.
I'd say it was probably lessthan 20 seconds ago.
Both of the wrestlers werelocked up and Taylor did have a
hold of Grease's leg, but hedidn't look like he had a clear
advantage because Griess had apretty decent riding position.
(18:18):
Then, with about 12 secondsleft and you had to look really
close to see what happened hereTaylor released Griess' leg and
tried to quickly scramble outfrom underneath him, but it
didn't work.
Griess maintained leverage withhis upper body and he scored a
2-point takedown, and then hegot another 2 points for the
near fall by putting Taylor onhis back just as time ran out.
It was a pretty dramatic winand you can see it on Grease's
(18:41):
face.
He was pretty fired up and thatmade him Navy's newest EIWA
champion and their first in theheavyweight division since 2013.
So that tripped earned GradyGriess All-America status and a
trip to the NCAA tournament,which more than qualified him
for the number 7 spot in ourcountdown.
Now let's go ahead and move on.
Coming in at number 6 on ourlist of top 10 moments in Navy
(19:02):
sports, we have Isaiah Drake andSyam Buradagunta earning first
team All-America honors at the2023 NCAA Championships in
gymnastics.
To achieve that status, theathletes had to finish in the
top 8 in their respective event.
Buradagunta did that in thefloor exercises, while Drake
punched his ticket in theall-around competition.
You know one of the morestressful aspects of these
(19:23):
competitions is waiting for thefinal results to get posted
after you finished a particularrotation.
Buradag unta was sitting infourth place after he finished
his floor exercise, but therewere three other schools that
still needed to complete thatrotation.
So if five other guys scoredbetter he would drop to ninth
place, and it turns out he hadjust a cushion he needed.
There were four gymnasts thatdid edge him out, but Buradag
(19:44):
unta managed to hold on to thatnumber eight spot to qualify as
a first team, while AmericanDrake was really consistent
through each rotation of hisall-around competition.
He finished strong by postinghis best score in the floor
exercise and the pommel horse tograb that eighth and final spot
on the podium.
So it was a great day for theprogram.
Navy had not one, but twofirst-team All-Americans in
(20:06):
gymnastics, and you'd have to goall the way back to 1973 to
find the last time that thathappened.
So congratulations to both ofthese outstanding athletes And,
by the way, they'll be back nextyear to try and do it again.
Okay, we are done with the firsthalf of our countdown.
Numbers five through one arecoming up next, so don't go
anywhere.
All right, thanks for stayingwith us on Navy Sports , K arl
(20:42):
Darden here with you And we areup to number five in our
countdown of the top 10 momentsof the Navy Sports season And as
of the time of this recording,this next one took place less
than 24 hours ago.
So, coming in at number five,we have Navy Javelin thrower
Braden Presser, who set apersonal and program record on
his way to a sixth place finishat the NCAA Outdoor Track and
(21:03):
Field Championships.
I actually had a chance towatch this event on ESPN+.
There were a total of 24athletes competing and Presser
was in the second flight of 12.
Each athlete had six throws andthey completed them in sets of
three.
So by the time Presser came up,the 12 guys in the first flight
had already gone and the topmark was about 241 feet.
(21:26):
Now it turns out that Presserdid foul on his very first throw
, but it was way out there.
So I knew that if he made acouple of adjustments on his
approach, that he would be rightin the thick of things.
And sure enough, his next throwwent just about as far He
didn't.
He didn't foul this time and itmeasured at 75.48 meters, which
comes out to be about 247 feet8 inches And that jumped him all
(21:46):
the way up to third for thetime being, and it was his best
throw of that rotation.
His third one was about two anda half meters shorter.
So by the time he started hissecond rotation, presser was
down in sixth place And the newleader had posted a throw of
79.8 meters, which is about 261feet.
Presser's fourth attempt wasabout 71 meters and then he
(22:06):
really put everything togetheron his fifth throw, because he
just nailed it It traveledexactly 76 meters, which works
out to be 249 feet 4 inches, andthat was a new program record
for the Academy and also apersonal best for him, which
broke the record that he setjust two weeks ago at the East
Regionals.
And, most importantly, it wasenough for Presser to hold on to
(22:26):
sixth place and earn him firstteam All-America status.
It was a great finish to theseason and, just like some of
the other athletes you've heardin his countdown, presser
performed at an elite level onthe national stage and he set a
personal record in the process.
That's what locked him in atnumber five, alright.
Next up at number four, we havethe women's first varsity eight
boat coming from behind in thelast 400 meters to beat Boston
(22:47):
University and win the PatriotLeague title.
Now, i did mention this racebriefly in the last podcast
episode and I'll go ahead andput a link in the show notes so
you can watch the video.
I can tell you right now it was.
it was really impressive.
So the video picks up abouthalfway through the race and
Boston University led the Midsby about four seats, which is
close to half a boat length.
The Terriers were the numberone seed and the defending
(23:10):
champions and when they won lastyear they broke Navy streak of
six straight Patriot Leaguechampionships.
So Boston did a nice jobbuilding out that lead over the
first thousand meters Like Isaid, it was about half a boat
length and then into the third500 meters they bumped it up
another seat.
So there are about five seatsahead, with roughly I'm going to
say about 700 meters to go.
(23:30):
And at that point Navy Cox andMaeve Swick, who's actually from
Annapolis, called her and hercrew to increase the stroke rate
.
At the time they were probablyin the high 30s.
The announcement mentionedsomething around 37 strokes per
minute And then the Mids crankedit up to pretty close to 40,
based on their estimates anyway.
So within a minute and a halfBoston's five seat lead was gone
(23:52):
And with about 150 meters to gothe Navy women had actually
opened up a four seat lead oftheir own.
It was a tremendous effort bythe first Varsity eight.
I think the announcers wereeven caught off guard by how
quickly they overtook Boston,because they still had the Mids
tracking a few seats behind,with about 250 meters to go,
when the overhead shot clearlyshowed them surging into the
lead and opening pretty fast.
(24:14):
That move pretty much broke theTerriers will, i got to believe
.
I mean just to see a team justblow by you like that.
The Mids crossed the linealmost a boat length in front
and they regained their PatriotLeague title, which was their
seventh in eight years.
That awesome finishing sprintearned the Navy eight crew both
of the year honors as well asthe number four spot on our list
.
(24:34):
Okay, so now we're down to thetop three, and I don't think
that any list like this would becomplete without some mention
of the Navy track and field team.
The men and women were dominantduring the indoor season,
picking up two more stars in theArmy Navy series, and they also
repeated as Patriot Leaguechampions, so that was one
reason I put them at numberthree in our countdown, but the
(24:54):
main reason is for what they didon April 1st, and that's when
the team beat Army again to earntwo more stars in outdoor track
.
It was the 11th straight winfor the men and the eighth for
the women, and, more importantly, those two performances
resulted in Navy clenching thestar series for the ninth
straight year.
The men outscored the BlackKnights 126 to 77.
That was their highest pointtotal since 2000.
(25:17):
And that 49 point differentialwas the second largest margin of
victory in the history of theArmy Navy series.
The women took down the BlackKnights by a score of 111 to 92.
And that was their 22nd winoverall against Army.
I did want to spend a little bitof time looking at the track
team's impact on the Army NavyStar Series though And, by the
way, i'm going to include men'sand women's cross country in
(25:38):
there as well, because eventhough it's a separate sport,
it's all the same coaching staffand everything.
They all come under the Navytrack and field umbrella, so
that's going to be our frame ofreference.
Of course, the Mids won theArmy Navy Star Series this year
14 to 10.
And if you go back and takeaccount of the different sports
that they won, they picked uptwo stars in men's and women's
cross country, two in indoortrack and two in outdoor track.
(26:01):
So that's a total of six starsout of the 14, which obviously
is pretty close to half.
That gives you a pretty goodmeasure of the impact that this
program has.
So, from a performancestandpoint, i don't think
there's much doubt that Navytrack and field was a standard
bear for Navy athletics thisyear, and that's why they are
number three on our list.
Okay, we've got just a couplemore to go, so let's press on.
(26:25):
At number two on our top 10 list, the Navy men's swimming
4x100-yard relay team defeatsArmy to win their 19th straight
Patriot League title.
This was probably the mostexciting race I've seen in a
really long time.
First, let me set things up foryou.
Army had beaten the Mids forthe first time in 31 years back
in December to take the star.
In fact, they also won the4x100-yard relay in that meet,
(26:46):
so they were feeling pretty goodabout their chances.
Going into the last event ofthe championships, the Mids held
the slim 4-point lead, whichbasically meant the team that
won the relay would take homethe league title.
Jonah Harm swam the lead off theleg and he got the team off to
a pretty good start with a timeof 43.75.
He finished just behind CalebKelly from Loyola, but he was
ahead of Army's Tanner Fall.
Harms turned things over toAustin Lockhart, who gave Navy
(27:07):
the lead after he overtookLoyola's Henry Mueller on the
second leg.
His split of 43.9 seconds hadthe Mids barely a tenth of a
second ahead of the BlackKnights.
Andrew Everett swam the thirdleg for the Mids.
This time a 43.45 built thelead out to about half a second
by the time he was finished.
So it all came down to GarrettMcGovern swimming the final leg.
But Army wasn't through yet.
(27:29):
The guy swimming their anchorleg was Owen Harlow, and he was
one of their best sprinters.
In fact he made up thedifference right away and then
he took over the lead going intothe final turn.
Now I was watching this race onESPN Plus and the closer it got,
the closer my face got to thecomputer monitor.
I was trying to see whetherMcGovern or Harlow was ahead,
and at one point it did looklike McGovern had edged slightly
(27:49):
in front.
but there was way too muchwater splashing around in the
last ten yards to tell for sure.
Now, boatswimmers seemed totouch the wall at the same time,
but McGovern's hand got therefirst.
His split was 42.99, whichmeant that Navy had won by just
over three tenths of a second inwhat was an absolutely
thrilling finish.
So they got some revenge overArmy for their loss in the Star
(28:10):
Series and they clinched their19th straight Patriot League
title, putting them at numbertwo in our countdown.
Alright, finally, that bringsus to the top Navy sports moment
of this season.
Now, i don't doubt that my listmight be slightly different
through the first nine entriescompared to others that may turn
up, but I don't see how therecan be any debate over the
moment.
(28:30):
That's number one.
So here we go At number one inour countdown of the top ten
Navy sports moments for the2022-23 season.
The men's rugby team comes frombehind to defeat the University
of California to win theDivision I national championship
.
The Mids not only won it, theydid it without losing a single
game, and for those of you whohaven't heard it yet, you need
to check out our last episode.
(28:51):
My guest was Coach JamesWillocks, the assistant director
for Navy Rugby, and he providedsome terrific insights on the
program and where it goes fromhere.
Now, just focusing in on thatchampionship game, it was a
battle from the very beginning.
The Mids had beaten Cal acouple of months earlier and
that was another tough game.
In this one they took a coupleof hits early and found
themselves down 15-0 less than25 minutes into the contest.
(29:14):
Cal was having a lot of successwith their vertical running
attack as opposed to going wide.
I think the closest analogy Ican make to American football is
when a team focuses on runningbetween the tackles.
That's what they were doingreally well.
Some people may refer to thatas running north and south, and
Coach Willocks pointed out thatCal had used the same strategy
in their earlier game with somesuccess.
But the Mids made a fewadjustments and pulled
(29:35):
themselves back into the game.
William Webb got the team onthe board in the 29th minute,
and then Sean McLeaney scoopedup a ball following a tackle and
scored.
About 10 minutes later The Midsmade both conversion kicks.
So now California just led byone 15-14 at halftime.
In the second half the GoldenBears added another try to
increase their leads to 22-14,but Navy didn't panic.
About 10 minutes later theoffense got their power game
(29:58):
going again and Ryan Bullockfinished off a long maul by
diving in for the try.
The Mids got the conversionkick and that made the score
22-21.
Now what was interesting was,up to this point Navy had
basically hung in the game withCal using a very well executed
set-piece strategy, and thatreally started to become a
factor with about 20 minutes togo in the first half.
(30:18):
So it was a little ironic thatthe score that put them ahead
came on a nice pass out to thewing to land an op.
He broke two tackles and ranthrough the entire right side of
the California defense,sprinting 30 meters for the try,
giving Navy their first lead ofthe game, 28-22
But there was still over 10minutes to go and that was
plenty of time for the GoldenBears to answer.
They got pretty close too.
(30:39):
On a couple of occasions theydrove down inside the Navy 5
meter line, but the Mids defenseheld, led by Lewis Gray, and
they kept them out of thetri-zone both times.
That was pretty much it.
The Mids ran out the clock fromthere and closed out the game,
finishing off a perfect seasonwith an NCAA title.
So in their first year as avarsity program.
The Navy men's rugby teamsquared off against the best
(30:59):
teams in the country and beatevery single one of them, since
they were 18-0 and won anational championship, making
their selection as number one onour top 10 list of Navy sports
moments for the 2022-23 seasonpretty much a no-brainer.
Congratulations to the players,the coaching staff and all the
fans who've supported the Rugbyprogram over the years.
Okay, that does it for ourcountdown.
I hope you guys got somethingout of that.
(31:21):
It was a lot of fun puttingthat one together.
Let me tell you Now.
Here's what I'd like you to doThink about some of your
favorite Navy sports moments andthen go to the Navy Sports
Nation group Facebook page andadd them into the comments
section.
I'm really kind of curious tosee where you guys came out on
this.
Alright, hang with me just alittle bit longer.
I'll be back shortly to wrapthings up with our question of
the day.
Alright, we've got to check onemore box, and that is our
(32:00):
question of the day.
Before we do that, let's goahead and take a look at the one
from our last episode.
So here it was.
We're talking about thePresident's Cup, which is the
award that the Patriot Leaguegives for the top performing
athletic program.
So here's the question With 11Patriot League titles in 2023,
which is a school record, by theway Navy's in the Running for
another President's Cup, whichis awarded to the top performing
(32:21):
schools in the regular andpost-season What other schools
have won it since the PatriotLeague was formed in 1986?
I also added that there areonly two other schools and that
Navy joined the league in 1991.
So your choices were A Loyola, BArmy, C Lehigh and D Bucknell.
So here's how things 6% of youpicked Loyola, 45% chose Army,
(32:46):
32% selected Lehigh and 17% ofyou went with Bucknell.
So it turns out that the othertwo schools are Bucknell and
Army And, in case you'rewondering, Bucknell leads all
programs with 18 Patriot LeaguePresident's Cup titles.
Navy is second with 10 and thenArmy has four And, by the way,
this makes the ninth straightyear that the Mids have won the
(33:07):
President's Cup.
So they're on a pretty goodroll here.
All right.
Now here's the question of theday for this episode.
As I mentioned earlier, bradenPresser finished sixth in the
Javelin at this year's NCAAOutdoor Track and Field
Championships.
In what year did a Midshipmanlast win a national championship
in outdoor track?
Is it A 1945, B 1982, C 1996,or D 2004?
(33:32):
So you guys can put somethought into that and let me
know what you think.
I'll have it posted on the NavySports Nation Group Facebook
page by the end of the day.
That's going to do it for thisedition of Navy Sports Central.
Thank you all so much forjoining us Now.
If you like what you've heard,be sure to follow us wherever
you get your podcasts andremember to spread the word to
all the other Navy fans outthere.
(33:52):
We have been getting a greatresponse to our question of the
day, so if you want to jump inon that, just go to the Navy
Sports Nation Group Facebookpage.
I will go ahead and pin it tothe top so you won't miss it.
And just a quick reminder theviews expressed on Navy Sports
Central are my own and do notreflect those of the US Naval
Academy or Navy Athletics.
By the way, the music used inNavy Sports Central comes to
(34:14):
your courtesy of Audio Jungle.
This is a great site forpurchasing the rights to use
music from thousands of artistsaround the world, and those we
feature in the podcast will becredited in our show notes.
Talk to you soon, everybody.
Until next time.
This is Karl Darden.
Go Navy! Beat Army!!
Hi everybody.
My name is Karl Darden and I'dlike to welcome and thank all of
you for joining us today onNavy Sports Central.
I'm your host and this is theofficial podcast of the Navy
Sports Nation, where we take adeeper dive into Navy Sports.
In this episode, we'll becounting down the top 10 moments
of the Navy Sports season.
I'll set things up bydiscussing the basic criteria I
used to make my selections, andthen I'll give you a little bit
(00:35):
of the backstory beforeproviding the details for each
one of the top 10 entries.
So start thinking about some ofyour favorite moments during
the year and we'll see howclosely we match up.
I will look forward to gettingyour feedback on the Navy Sports
Nation group Facebook page.
We'll get started here in asecond.
Okay, thanks for joining us onthis 50th episode of Navy Sports
(01:05):
Central.
Definitely a nice milestone.
So, whether you've been with usfrom the very beginning or
jumped on board somewhere alongthe way, i appreciate you taking
the time.
As I mentioned in the intro, iput together a list of the top
10 moments in the Navy Sportsseason.
I did something similar lastyear and it went over pretty
well, so I figured I'd give itanother shot.
Of course, when you go back andlook at the last, we'll call it
nine months or so.
(01:26):
it wasn't easy cutting the listall the way down to 10.
So I did want to share with yousome of the things I focused on
when making my selections.
First was overall impact.
In other words, what was myinitial gut reaction as a Navy
fan when I either witnessed themoment or read about the result?
How fired up did I get?
So here we're talking about anemotional response and how close
(01:46):
it comes to pegging the meter.
The second factor was what wasthe significance of the moment
and what did it mean for theprogram?
Did it happen in the regularseason or was it during the
playoffs?
Was Army the opponent and wasthere some sort of title on the
line?
So the more significant themoment, the more weight it
carried in the final rankings.
The third criteria was werethere any records broken?
(02:07):
This is a testament to how muchhard work these athletes put in
to prepare for that moment.
There's no doubt they'll tellyou when they're out there
competing.
It's much more about performingat their absolute best, but
establishing a new record isalways a nice bonus.
Alright, so that gives you anidea of how I went about making
these choices, but before we getinto our countdown, i did want
to run through a couple ofhonorable mentions.
So here we go.
(02:28):
Our first honorable mentiongoes to the Navy Women's
Lacrosse team for defeating tworanked opponents on their way to
a 13 and 6 season, whileachieving a national ranking
themselves by the end of theyear.
First, here's a little bit ofbackground.
The Mids made it all the way tothe Patriot League Championship
game in 2022.
And they had quite a fewseniors on that team who were
key contributors that moved onafter graduation.
(02:49):
Probably the biggest loss wasReagan Roehlofs, who led the
team in scoring, but they alsolost their excellent goalkeeper,
Jo Torres, to the transferportal.
As a matter of fact, she endedup at Towson, so there were a
few question marks going intothis spring.
The Mids had a lot of talent,but they were very young and
that made it kind of tough topredict how the season was going
to go.
But the one thing I've learnedsince I began following Navy
(03:10):
Women's Lacrosse is that CoachTimchal always finds a way to
put a highly competitive team onthe field every year.
She and her staff know how topull in strong recruits and
develop them quickly so they canmake an impact right away.
And this year, the player thatwas the biggest difference maker
was freshman midfielder EvaYovino.
I watched quite a few gamesthis season and there were times
where I would just track Yovinojust to see what she was doing.
(03:31):
First of all, there's no doubtthat she could put the ball in
the back of the net She wassecond on the team in goals but
what really caught my eye washow well she distributed the
ball And she was a superaccurate passer as well.
I don't know how many times Isaw her thread the needle
between two defenders to hitsomeone cutting to the cage,
which resulted in a goal for theMids.
Yovino finished the season with92 points on 42 goals and 50
(03:53):
assists.
Two of her favorite targetswere fellow midfielder Emily
Messenese and attacker LeeleeDenton.
On defense, senior AthenaCarroon led the team in ground
balls and caused turnovers,while sophomore Emma Richardell
really stepped up to take overat goalkeeper.
So the team was sitting on a3-2 record by the time they
traveled down to Richmond toface the 18th ranked Spiders.
In their first game of theseason, the Mids lost to 11th
(04:15):
ranked Duke 15-10.
They started off really slow inthat game and never really
recovered.
But that wasn't the caseagainst Richmond.
They got on the board first andled by as many as four goals
before taking a 10-8 lead intothe half.
And when they came out of thelocker room to start the third
quarter the offense continuedbreaking down the Spiders'
defense.
Led by Yovino, Messenese andDenton.
The Mids scored another 10goals while the defense
(04:36):
completely shut down Richmond.
In the second half Navy won,going away 20-9.
And the result was significantbecause that tied the record for
the largest margin of victoryover a ranked opponent.
That win got the Mids a lot ofattention, but they were still
unranked.
And then two weeks later the19th ranked Jacksonville
Dolphins came to Annapolis.
This game started off just likethey went against the Blue
Devils, but once again YovinoMessenese, and Denton helped
(04:59):
Navy pull ahead early in thesecond quarter 7-5.
From there it was a reallytight game.
The two teams traded the leadback and forth several times in
the second half.
Then about halfway through thefourth quarter, jovino assisted
on Denton's 15th goal of theyear to put the Mids up by 2.
The defense made that stand up.
Jacksonville did score a goalto get within 1, with about
4-1.5 minutes left, but that'sas close as they got.
(05:20):
Navy won the game 13-12.
Now, the fact that they wereknocking off ranked opponents
wasn't necessarily a bigsurprise.
Coach Tim Shaw's teams had ahabit of doing that, but this
was different because the Midswere so young.
They sure didn't play like it,though.
The team ended up finishing 6-3in the Patriot League, and they
made it all the way to thesemifinals in a tournament
(05:40):
before losing a heartbreaker toArmy 12-11 in overtime.
Now the really good news isthat the Mids will return all of
their key players next spring,and they'll look to take another
step towards getting back tothe Patriot League championship
game and winning that firsttitle since 2018.
Given how young the team wasthis year, i thought they
totally exceeded expectations.
They finished ranked 25 in thefinal IWLCA poll of the year,
(06:04):
and that was good enough to earnthem one of our honorable
mentions in this year'scountdown.
Okay, that brings us to oursecond and final honorable
mention, and it goes to AlexRizzo, who is a senior on the
Navy Men's Track team.
Rizzo set a program record forthe indoor mile.
He did that at the David HenryInvitational held at Boston
University back in February.
Now this place is known forhaving a very fast track.
(06:26):
In fact three years ago JakeBrophy became the first mid to
break the four-minute mile atthat very same venue.
He ran a time of 359.98.
Rizzo is coming off a verystrong junior year after making
second team on Patriot League inthe mile and he continued to
perform consistently across allthe middle distances Up in
Boston.
He set his sights on thecurrent Navy record for the mile
, which had been lowered by DaveNelson last year to 359.52.
(06:50):
I actually did a little diggingand managed to find the results
of that race, including thesplit times.
So I figured we could check outhow Rizzo did on each quarter
to see exactly how he set thenew record.
First of all, indoor tracks aretypically a 220-yard oval.
Some easy math tells us thattwo laps around gives us that
quarter-mile distance.
Rizzo ran the opening quarter in58.75 seconds.
(07:10):
So he got off to a really quickstart, which is good, because
typically I think when you gooff to these records you want to
get off to a good start, kindof settle into a pace in the
middle distances and then goahead and finish strong.
So that second quarter he camein with a time of 101.31, which
put him almost right at twominutes.
At the half-mile mark, in fact,his time was two minutes.30
(07:32):
seconds.
The third quarter split wasjust a fraction of a second
faster, at 1 minute.72 seconds.
So with two laps to go, rizzo'stime was 301.014.
By now I'm sure his lungs arestarting to burn, but somehow he
managed to find another gear,because he finished that final
quarter in 57.34 seconds andthat gave him an official time
(07:54):
for the mile of 358.748 seconds,shaving about three-quarters of
a second off the previousrecord set by Nelson.
It was an amazing effort byRizzo.
He went on to help the team winthe indoor and outdoor Patriot
League championships, but thiswas the individual performance
that earned him the honorablemention.
So great job, alex.
All right, we're going to goahead and take a short break and
(08:14):
then we'll jump into our top 10Navy sports moments of the
season with numbers 10 through 6.
Stay with us.
All right, we are done with thepreliminary.
(08:38):
So now it's time for our deepdive segment, where I'll count
down what I thought were the top10 Navy sports moments of the
season.
This is by no means an officiallist.
I did my best to apply mycriteria objectively, but I will
say that I tried to dig down tofind some great performances
among the sports that we don'thear about as much, and I think
I managed to identify at least acouple, but I'll let you guys
(09:00):
be the judge of that.
All right, anyway, let's getstarted Coming in at number 10,
we've got the Navy football teamdefeating Central Florida for
the second straight year.
Now I know you might be askinghow does the Navy team that goes
four and eight qualify for atop 10 spot?
And look, there's no questionthat it was a disappointing
season, but there were a coupleof games that the team played
(09:21):
last year that reminded you oftheir potential and what could
be in store for the future.
That game back in Novemberagainst the Knights was one of
them.
So just to kind of set thestage, the Mids were coming off
a tough loss to Notre Dame in agame where they rallied from 22
points down to get within threebefore the Irish ran out the
clock after recovering an onsidekick.
That was with just a littleover a minute left in the game
(09:41):
and they escaped with a 35 to 32win.
Now the Mids had to go on theroad to take on Central Florida.
The Knights were ranked 20th inthe country and were one of the
American Conference's mostefficient teams on offense.
They put up nearly 33 points agame, while averaging 240 yards
through the air and almost 230on the ground.
The Mids, on the other hand,were struggling to put together
sustained drives on a consistentbasis.
(10:02):
But the one big plus was theirdefense.
They had a way of disruptingthe opponent's passing game even
though they were at aconsiderable size disadvantage,
and they were among the best atshutting down the run in all of
Division I college football.
As I broke down this game, theone thing I realized was that,
in terms of timely big plays,this was probably the Mids best
game of the year.
Xavier Arline only attemptedone pass and that one fell
(10:24):
incomplete, but he directed theNavy offense to two scores in
the first half, including a oneyard run of his own to get the
Mids on the board first, and athalftime Navy led 14-6.
From there, the defense justbasically shut UCF down.
The Knights only had 84 rushingyards the entire game, which
was almost 150 below theiraverage, And even though they
put up over 200 passing yards,the only one that did any major
(10:46):
damage was a 28-yarder that wentfor a touchdown early in the
third quarter.
The one guy on the Navy defensethat was giving Central
Florida's quarterback migraineswas Senior Striker John Marshall
.
That guy was all over the fieldblowing up play after play.
This was basically his line forthe game.
He had a total of 10 tackles,including four sacks, and every
time the Mids needed a big stop,marshall was there.
(11:08):
The defense played an amazingsecond half as a unit and took
complete control of the game.
Bijan Nichols kicked a 45-yardfield goal with about seven
minutes to go in the thirdquarter And that was basically
it for the scoring.
The Knights' last fourpossessions went punt, punt,
punt and then they turned itover on downs.
From there, arline and fullbackDaba Fofana took turns running
the ball and they ate up thelast six minutes of the clock to
(11:28):
close out another Navy win overa ranked opponent.
The final score was 17-14.
That was probably the highpoint of the Mids' season.
We all know what happened intheir next game against Army,
but as disappointing as the yearwas, the win over Central
Florida was a clear indicator ofthe team's potential And being
able to get a win on the roadagainst a ranked opponent
without their startingquarterback.
Remember the tie-lavetie waslost for the year with a torn
(11:49):
ACL back in October.
That was enough to get the Navyfootball team on my list at
number 10.
Next up at number 9, i've gotthe Navy Sprint football team
going undefeated to win theirsecond straight CSFL
championship.
These guys were pretty dominantall year long.
They were 8-0 and held theiropponents to less than 11 points
a game while averaging over 36.
Alex Totta was in Mids' leadingrusher.
(12:11):
He averaged about 139 yards pergame.
And quarterback Brandon Atwoodcompleted over 64% of his passes
while posting a passer ratingof about 145%.
Now Totta just graduated, butAtwood will be back for his
senior year On defense.
The Mids' leading tackler wasjunior linebacker Jack Costigan.
He had a total of 55.
And then defensive linemanDavid Niskey was the team's sack
(12:34):
leader with 8.5.
Now, most of the time the Midsjust clobbered their opponents,
but the two games against Armywere pretty close and in fact
the championship game was a realnail-biter.
The Black Knights scored theirsecond touchdown about 5 minutes
into the second quarter to goup 14-0.
And then the Mids finally gotthings going.
Atwood connected with receiverAndrew Margiotta for a 28-yard
(12:54):
touchdown.
The kick was no good, but theMids did put together another
drive before halftime, and thenAtwood punched it in from a yard
out to cut the lead to 1, 14-13.
Now neither team scored in thethird quarter, so things stayed
the same until Alex Tato took itin from a yard out with about 6
minutes to go in the fourth.
That gave the midzer first lead.
It was 21 to 14.
After they got the two-pointconversion Less than three
(13:17):
minutes later, army tied thescore, though, and now it was up
to the Navy offense.
As they took the field, theyhad about three minutes and 40
seconds left on the clock, so aslong as they could put together
good drive, any kind of scorewould basically give them the
championship.
Atwood drove the Navy offensedown to the Black Knights 41,
and that's when Alex Tata brokearound the right end and outran
(13:37):
everybody down the sidelines toscore what turned out to be the
game-winning touchdown, andthere was just about a minute
and a half left.
The final score was 28 to 21.
So the Mids had gone undefeatedfor a second straight season on
their way to winning anothersprint football championship,
and that's what earned them thenumber nine spot on my list.
Okay, now it's time for numbereight on our countdown, and
that's where I put the Navymen's soccer team, after they
(13:59):
won their second Patriot Leaguetitle and their first since 2013
.
This was kind of a weird yearfor college soccer.
There was one significant rulechange and I'm thinking it was
basically just an attempt to cutdown on potential injuries that
can occur, you know, when youstart playing in overtime.
So the NCAA rule that therewould be no more overtime played
during the regular season,obviously during the tournament,
(14:21):
that would be different, butfor the regular season,
essentially, if the game wastied at the end of regulation,
that was it.
There's no, no overtime, nopenalty kicks, no, nothing.
So what do you think was theoutcome there?
If you guessed it'd be a bunchmore tied games, you'd be
correct.
In fact, the Mids finished theseason with more ties than they
had wins.
Overall, they had nine ties andseven wins on the year.
(14:43):
So you know, while the ties maynot look all that sexy, the one
thing it was showing was thatthe Mids were really tough to
beat.
So they finished the seasonwith an overall record of seven,
five and nine and a conferencerecord of three, one and five.
That earned them a number fourseed going into the Patriot
League tournament.
And this is where their alreadysolid defense really took things
(15:05):
to another level.
The Mids were led by goalkeeperPierce Holbrook and over the
course of those three games thequarterfinals, the semifinals
and the finals of the PatriotLeague tournament the Navy Dee
pitched a complete shutout.
They didn't allow a single goalin either regulation or the
overtime periods.
In the quarterfinals they beatthe number five seed.
Lafayette won nothing.
That set them up with BostonUniversity who was seeded second
(15:27):
, and when these two teamsplayed earlier in the year they
had fought to a one-one tie.
During the semifinal gameneither team scored a goal in
regulation or in overtime.
So it came down to penaltykicks And you know that turned
into kind of a marathon also.
Finally, in the 10th round,freshman Jalen Grant put one in
on the right side, getting itpast the Boston goalkeeper, and
(15:49):
when it was a terriers turn,their guy sailed his kick right
over the crossbar.
So the mids had survived anerve-wracking 9-8 penalty
shootout and advanced on to thefinal.
The championship game againstAmerican University looked like
it was going to end in ascoreless tie also, but in the
83rd minute sophomore CharlieKriel found A.
J.
Scheutz on the left side of thepenalty box And he hit him with
(16:10):
a nice pass.
And Schutze was in a fullsprint as he moved inside the
penalty box And what he waslooking to do was execute a
cross kick to give one of hisother teammates an opportunity
in front of the goal, but itactually wound up deflecting
slightly off one of the Eaglesdefensive players and got
redirected past the goalie intothe right corner of the goal.
It was a really crazy turn ofevents that gave the mids a 1-0
(16:31):
lead And less than 10 minuteslater, wouldn't you know it,
they were a Patriot Leaguechampions.
It was the first league titlefor coach Tim O'Donohue.
He put a premium on playingstrong defense the entire season
and it definitely paid off.
During the tournament, the midsplayed 290 minutes of soccer
over three games and no onescored on him not a single
player.
That's pretty incredible andit's more than worthy of the
(16:52):
team earning the number 8 spoton my list.
Okay, next up at number 7, we'vegot Navy wrestler Grady Griess,
winning the EIWA HeavyweightChampionship, to qualify for the
NCAA Tournament.
Griess is a junior and he wasone of the team's most
dependable wrestlers the entireseason.
He led the mids in both totalwins with 32 and dual wins with
8.
And this included a 3-0 winover his opponent in the Star
(17:16):
Match against Army.
But he really hit his stride inthe EIWA Championships.
This is the country's oldestcollegiate wrestling tournament
and it is an NCAA qualifier.
Griess got off to a great startby winning his opening match by
a major decision 17-4.
And he followed that up withanother pretty dominating win,
10-1 in the quarters, overTravis Stefanik from Princeton.
(17:36):
In the semifinals Griess facedthe 26th ranked heavyweight in
the country, Cory Day fromBinghamton, and he actually did
wrestle him earlier in theseason and posted a win against
him.
This match was pretty tight,but Griess did come out on top
4-1.
So that set the stage for apretty terrific final match.
Griess' opponent was NathanTaylor from Lehigh, whom he had
(17:57):
beaten back in January 9-1.
But this time things were a lotdifferent.
The match was really reallytight.
In fact it was 1-1 late in thethird round and it looked like
they were headed to overtime.
I'd say it was probably lessthan 20 seconds ago.
Both of the wrestlers werelocked up and Taylor did have a
hold of Grease's leg, but hedidn't look like he had a clear
advantage because Griess had apretty decent riding position.
(18:18):
Then, with about 12 secondsleft and you had to look really
close to see what happened hereTaylor released Griess' leg and
tried to quickly scramble outfrom underneath him, but it
didn't work.
Griess maintained leverage withhis upper body and he scored a
2-point takedown, and then hegot another 2 points for the
near fall by putting Taylor onhis back just as time ran out.
It was a pretty dramatic winand you can see it on Grease's
(18:41):
face.
He was pretty fired up and thatmade him Navy's newest EIWA
champion and their first in theheavyweight division since 2013.
So that tripped earned GradyGriess All-America status and a
trip to the NCAA tournament,which more than qualified him
for the number 7 spot in ourcountdown.
Now let's go ahead and move on.
Coming in at number 6 on ourlist of top 10 moments in Navy
(19:02):
sports, we have Isaiah Drake andSyam Buradagunta earning first
team All-America honors at the2023 NCAA Championships in
gymnastics.
To achieve that status, theathletes had to finish in the
top 8 in their respective event.
Buradagunta did that in thefloor exercises, while Drake
punched his ticket in theall-around competition.
You know one of the morestressful aspects of these
(19:23):
competitions is waiting for thefinal results to get posted
after you finished a particularrotation.
Buradag unta was sitting infourth place after he finished
his floor exercise, but therewere three other schools that
still needed to complete thatrotation.
So if five other guys scoredbetter he would drop to ninth
place, and it turns out he hadjust a cushion he needed.
There were four gymnasts thatdid edge him out, but Buradag
(19:44):
unta managed to hold on to thatnumber eight spot to qualify as
a first team, while AmericanDrake was really consistent
through each rotation of hisall-around competition.
He finished strong by postinghis best score in the floor
exercise and the pommel horse tograb that eighth and final spot
on the podium.
So it was a great day for theprogram.
Navy had not one, but twofirst-team All-Americans in
(20:06):
gymnastics, and you'd have to goall the way back to 1973 to
find the last time that thathappened.
So congratulations to both ofthese outstanding athletes And,
by the way, they'll be back nextyear to try and do it again.
Okay, we are done with the firsthalf of our countdown.
Numbers five through one arecoming up next, so don't go
anywhere.
All right, thanks for stayingwith us on Navy Sports , K arl
(20:42):
Darden here with you And we areup to number five in our
countdown of the top 10 momentsof the Navy Sports season And as
of the time of this recording,this next one took place less
than 24 hours ago.
So, coming in at number five,we have Navy Javelin thrower
Braden Presser, who set apersonal and program record on
his way to a sixth place finishat the NCAA Outdoor Track and
(21:03):
Field Championships.
I actually had a chance towatch this event on ESPN+.
There were a total of 24athletes competing and Presser
was in the second flight of 12.
Each athlete had six throws andthey completed them in sets of
three.
So by the time Presser came up,the 12 guys in the first flight
had already gone and the topmark was about 241 feet.
(21:26):
Now it turns out that Presserdid foul on his very first throw
, but it was way out there.
So I knew that if he made acouple of adjustments on his
approach, that he would be rightin the thick of things.
And sure enough, his next throwwent just about as far He
didn't.
He didn't foul this time and itmeasured at 75.48 meters, which
comes out to be about 247 feet8 inches And that jumped him all
(21:46):
the way up to third for thetime being, and it was his best
throw of that rotation.
His third one was about two anda half meters shorter.
So by the time he started hissecond rotation, presser was
down in sixth place And the newleader had posted a throw of
79.8 meters, which is about 261feet.
Presser's fourth attempt wasabout 71 meters and then he
(22:06):
really put everything togetheron his fifth throw, because he
just nailed it It traveledexactly 76 meters, which works
out to be 249 feet 4 inches, andthat was a new program record
for the Academy and also apersonal best for him, which
broke the record that he setjust two weeks ago at the East
Regionals.
And, most importantly, it wasenough for Presser to hold on to
(22:26):
sixth place and earn him firstteam All-America status.
It was a great finish to theseason and, just like some of
the other athletes you've heardin his countdown, presser
performed at an elite level onthe national stage and he set a
personal record in the process.
That's what locked him in atnumber five, alright.
Next up at number four, we havethe women's first varsity eight
boat coming from behind in thelast 400 meters to beat Boston
(22:47):
University and win the PatriotLeague title.
Now, i did mention this racebriefly in the last podcast
episode and I'll go ahead andput a link in the show notes so
you can watch the video.
I can tell you right now it was.
it was really impressive.
So the video picks up abouthalfway through the race and
Boston University led the Midsby about four seats, which is
close to half a boat length.
The Terriers were the numberone seed and the defending
(23:10):
champions and when they won lastyear they broke Navy streak of
six straight Patriot Leaguechampionships.
So Boston did a nice jobbuilding out that lead over the
first thousand meters Like Isaid, it was about half a boat
length and then into the third500 meters they bumped it up
another seat.
So there are about five seatsahead, with roughly I'm going to
say about 700 meters to go.
(23:30):
And at that point Navy Cox andMaeve Swick, who's actually from
Annapolis, called her and hercrew to increase the stroke rate
.
At the time they were probablyin the high 30s.
The announcement mentionedsomething around 37 strokes per
minute And then the Mids crankedit up to pretty close to 40,
based on their estimates anyway.
So within a minute and a halfBoston's five seat lead was gone
(23:52):
And with about 150 meters to gothe Navy women had actually
opened up a four seat lead oftheir own.
It was a tremendous effort bythe first Varsity eight.
I think the announcers wereeven caught off guard by how
quickly they overtook Boston,because they still had the Mids
tracking a few seats behind,with about 250 meters to go,
when the overhead shot clearlyshowed them surging into the
lead and opening pretty fast.
(24:14):
That move pretty much broke theTerriers will, i got to believe
.
I mean just to see a team justblow by you like that.
The Mids crossed the linealmost a boat length in front
and they regained their PatriotLeague title, which was their
seventh in eight years.
That awesome finishing sprintearned the Navy eight crew both
of the year honors as well asthe number four spot on our list
.
(24:34):
Okay, so now we're down to thetop three, and I don't think
that any list like this would becomplete without some mention
of the Navy track and field team.
The men and women were dominantduring the indoor season,
picking up two more stars in theArmy Navy series, and they also
repeated as Patriot Leaguechampions, so that was one
reason I put them at numberthree in our countdown, but the
(24:54):
main reason is for what they didon April 1st, and that's when
the team beat Army again to earntwo more stars in outdoor track
.
It was the 11th straight winfor the men and the eighth for
the women, and, more importantly, those two performances
resulted in Navy clenching thestar series for the ninth
straight year.
The men outscored the BlackKnights 126 to 77.
That was their highest pointtotal since 2000.
(25:17):
And that 49 point differentialwas the second largest margin of
victory in the history of theArmy Navy series.
The women took down the BlackKnights by a score of 111 to 92.
And that was their 22nd winoverall against Army.
I did want to spend a little bitof time looking at the track
team's impact on the Army NavyStar Series though And, by the
way, i'm going to include men'sand women's cross country in
(25:38):
there as well, because eventhough it's a separate sport,
it's all the same coaching staffand everything.
They all come under the Navytrack and field umbrella, so
that's going to be our frame ofreference.
Of course, the Mids won theArmy Navy Star Series this year
14 to 10.
And if you go back and takeaccount of the different sports
that they won, they picked uptwo stars in men's and women's
cross country, two in indoortrack and two in outdoor track.
(26:01):
So that's a total of six starsout of the 14, which obviously
is pretty close to half.
That gives you a pretty goodmeasure of the impact that this
program has.
So, from a performancestandpoint, i don't think
there's much doubt that Navytrack and field was a standard
bear for Navy athletics thisyear, and that's why they are
number three on our list.
Okay, we've got just a couplemore to go, so let's press on.
(26:25):
At number two on our top 10 list, the Navy men's swimming
4x100-yard relay team defeatsArmy to win their 19th straight
Patriot League title.
This was probably the mostexciting race I've seen in a
really long time.
First, let me set things up foryou.
Army had beaten the Mids forthe first time in 31 years back
in December to take the star.
In fact, they also won the4x100-yard relay in that meet,
(26:46):
so they were feeling pretty goodabout their chances.
Going into the last event ofthe championships, the Mids held
the slim 4-point lead, whichbasically meant the team that
won the relay would take homethe league title.
Jonah Harm swam the lead off theleg and he got the team off to
a pretty good start with a timeof 43.75.
He finished just behind CalebKelly from Loyola, but he was
ahead of Army's Tanner Fall.
Harms turned things over toAustin Lockhart, who gave Navy
(27:07):
the lead after he overtookLoyola's Henry Mueller on the
second leg.
His split of 43.9 seconds hadthe Mids barely a tenth of a
second ahead of the BlackKnights.
Andrew Everett swam the thirdleg for the Mids.
This time a 43.45 built thelead out to about half a second
by the time he was finished.
So it all came down to GarrettMcGovern swimming the final leg.
But Army wasn't through yet.
(27:29):
The guy swimming their anchorleg was Owen Harlow, and he was
one of their best sprinters.
In fact he made up thedifference right away and then
he took over the lead going intothe final turn.
Now I was watching this race onESPN Plus and the closer it got,
the closer my face got to thecomputer monitor.
I was trying to see whetherMcGovern or Harlow was ahead,
and at one point it did looklike McGovern had edged slightly
(27:49):
in front.
but there was way too muchwater splashing around in the
last ten yards to tell for sure.
Now, boatswimmers seemed totouch the wall at the same time,
but McGovern's hand got therefirst.
His split was 42.99, whichmeant that Navy had won by just
over three tenths of a second inwhat was an absolutely
thrilling finish.
So they got some revenge overArmy for their loss in the Star
(28:10):
Series and they clinched their19th straight Patriot League
title, putting them at numbertwo in our countdown.
Alright, finally, that bringsus to the top Navy sports moment
of this season.
Now, i don't doubt that my listmight be slightly different
through the first nine entriescompared to others that may turn
up, but I don't see how therecan be any debate over the
moment.
(28:30):
That's number one.
So here we go At number one inour countdown of the top ten
Navy sports moments for the2022-23 season.
The men's rugby team comes frombehind to defeat the University
of California to win theDivision I national championship
.
The Mids not only won it, theydid it without losing a single
game, and for those of you whohaven't heard it yet, you need
to check out our last episode.
(28:51):
My guest was Coach JamesWillocks, the assistant director
for Navy Rugby, and he providedsome terrific insights on the
program and where it goes fromhere.
Now, just focusing in on thatchampionship game, it was a
battle from the very beginning.
The Mids had beaten Cal acouple of months earlier and
that was another tough game.
In this one they took a coupleof hits early and found
themselves down 15-0 less than25 minutes into the contest.
(29:14):
Cal was having a lot of successwith their vertical running
attack as opposed to going wide.
I think the closest analogy Ican make to American football is
when a team focuses on runningbetween the tackles.
That's what they were doingreally well.
Some people may refer to thatas running north and south, and
Coach Willocks pointed out thatCal had used the same strategy
in their earlier game with somesuccess.
But the Mids made a fewadjustments and pulled
(29:35):
themselves back into the game.
William Webb got the team onthe board in the 29th minute,
and then Sean McLeaney scoopedup a ball following a tackle and
scored.
About 10 minutes later The Midsmade both conversion kicks.
So now California just led byone 15-14 at halftime.
In the second half the GoldenBears added another try to
increase their leads to 22-14,but Navy didn't panic.
About 10 minutes later theoffense got their power game
(29:58):
going again and Ryan Bullockfinished off a long maul by
diving in for the try.
The Mids got the conversionkick and that made the score
22-21.
Now what was interesting was,up to this point Navy had
basically hung in the game withCal using a very well executed
set-piece strategy, and thatreally started to become a
factor with about 20 minutes togo in the first half.
(30:18):
So it was a little ironic thatthe score that put them ahead
came on a nice pass out to thewing to land an op.
He broke two tackles and ranthrough the entire right side of
the California defense,sprinting 30 meters for the try,
giving Navy their first lead ofthe game, 28-22
But there was still over 10minutes to go and that was
plenty of time for the GoldenBears to answer.
They got pretty close too.
(30:39):
On a couple of occasions theydrove down inside the Navy 5
meter line, but the Mids defenseheld, led by Lewis Gray, and
they kept them out of thetri-zone both times.
That was pretty much it.
The Mids ran out the clock fromthere and closed out the game,
finishing off a perfect seasonwith an NCAA title.
So in their first year as avarsity program.
The Navy men's rugby teamsquared off against the best
(30:59):
teams in the country and beatevery single one of them, since
they were 18-0 and won anational championship, making
their selection as number one onour top 10 list of Navy sports
moments for the 2022-23 seasonpretty much a no-brainer.
Congratulations to the players,the coaching staff and all the
fans who've supported the Rugbyprogram over the years.
Okay, that does it for ourcountdown.
I hope you guys got somethingout of that.
(31:21):
It was a lot of fun puttingthat one together.
Let me tell you Now.
Here's what I'd like you to doThink about some of your
favorite Navy sports moments andthen go to the Navy Sports
Nation group Facebook page andadd them into the comments
section.
I'm really kind of curious tosee where you guys came out on
this.
Alright, hang with me just alittle bit longer.
I'll be back shortly to wrapthings up with our question of
the day.
Alright, we've got to check onemore box, and that is our
(32:00):
question of the day.
Before we do that, let's goahead and take a look at the one
from our last episode.
So here it was.
We're talking about thePresident's Cup, which is the
award that the Patriot Leaguegives for the top performing
athletic program.
So here's the question With 11Patriot League titles in 2023,
which is a school record, by theway Navy's in the Running for
another President's Cup, whichis awarded to the top performing
(32:21):
schools in the regular andpost-season What other schools
have won it since the PatriotLeague was formed in 1986?
I also added that there areonly two other schools and that
Navy joined the league in 1991.
So your choices were A Loyola, BArmy, C Lehigh and D Bucknell.
So here's how things 6% of youpicked Loyola, 45% chose Army,
(32:46):
32% selected Lehigh and 17% ofyou went with Bucknell.
So it turns out that the othertwo schools are Bucknell and
Army And, in case you'rewondering, Bucknell leads all
programs with 18 Patriot LeaguePresident's Cup titles.
Navy is second with 10 and thenArmy has four And, by the way,
this makes the ninth straightyear that the Mids have won the
(33:07):
President's Cup.
So they're on a pretty goodroll here.
All right.
Now here's the question of theday for this episode.
As I mentioned earlier, bradenPresser finished sixth in the
Javelin at this year's NCAAOutdoor Track and Field
Championships.
In what year did a Midshipmanlast win a national championship
in outdoor track?
Is it A 1945, B 1982, C 1996,or D 2004?
(33:32):
So you guys can put somethought into that and let me
know what you think.
I'll have it posted on the NavySports Nation Group Facebook
page by the end of the day.
That's going to do it for thisedition of Navy Sports Central.
Thank you all so much forjoining us Now.
If you like what you've heard,be sure to follow us wherever
you get your podcasts andremember to spread the word to
all the other Navy fans outthere.
(33:52):
We have been getting a greatresponse to our question of the
day, so if you want to jump inon that, just go to the Navy
Sports Nation Group Facebookpage.
I will go ahead and pin it tothe top so you won't miss it.
And just a quick reminder theviews expressed on Navy Sports
Central are my own and do notreflect those of the US Naval
Academy or Navy Athletics.
By the way, the music used inNavy Sports Central comes to
(34:14):
your courtesy of Audio Jungle.
This is a great site forpurchasing the rights to use
music from thousands of artistsaround the world, and those we
feature in the podcast will becredited in our show notes.
Talk to you soon, everybody.
Until next time.
This is Karl Darden.
Go Navy! Beat Army!!
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