Bobcat news<\/a>, Bates will host two NCAA championship tournaments in the next\u00a0 year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nOf the 16 Bates head coaches, eight were captains in college, including field hockey head coach Wynn Hohlt, who captained the Williams field hockey and lacrosse teams. Hohlt encourages her captains to see the team\u2019s big picture. \u201cWe sit down at the end of tryouts, and I ask for their feedback,\u201d she says. Their being involved in determining the team\u2019s makeup \u201cis an important part of learning about team dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nordic coach Becky Flynn Woods \u201989 was a college team captain in a sport where athletes often train and compete out of their coach\u2019s sight. So it\u2019s up to the captain \u201cto work hard and get it done, day in and day out,\u201d Woods says. \u201cThat sends a powerful message to the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sport\u2019s customs and characteristics determine captains\u2019 responsibilities. In rowing, captains bear an acute responsibility for care of pricey equipment. In track and field, an individual sport with disparate events, the captains on the women\u2019s side focus on team cohesion. One tradition is creating T-shirts with unique messages or decorating teammates\u2019 lockers before every race.<\/p>\n
Performing duties for teammates and coaches alike, captains discover that anything team-related can demand their attention. \u201cI don\u2019t think I realized how pervasive this role was,\u201d says Linton, and Clement agrees: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more responsibility than I was planning on.\u201d Captains must keep tabs on and foster team morale, because head coaches know that any personal issues typically go to captains first. \u201cMost players are more comfortable talking to the captains about their concerns than to me,\u201d notes head women\u2019s basketball and women\u2019s soccer coach Jim Murphy \u201969.<\/p>\n
Captains organize visits by high school recruits and they pass down team culture and school knowledge, not a small matter on young teams like volleyball, where nine of 12 members are first-years or sophomores. Captains make sure equipment gets to the field (or onto the bus) and run warm-ups during practice and on game day.<\/p>\n
Captains also organize fundraising for team purchases and training trips.\u00a0\u201cIf the team wants to get jackets, pants, or in the case of this year, rugby shirts, they are responsible for finding the product, getting me all pertinent information \u2014 style, colors, sizes \u2014 and raising the money,\u201d says Hohlt. Rowing co-captain Caitlin Murphy \u201909 of Duxbury, Mass., spent part of her fall organizing her teammates into work parties, at $12 per hour, doing home chores to raise funds for the team\u2019s spring training trip to Florida.<\/p>\n
But amid the minutiae \u2014 and occasional frustrations, Clement admits \u2014 there are moments of pure leadership.<\/p>\n
Last January, squash co-captain Sean Wilkinson \u201908 of London, England, and his fellow Bobcats were playing Navy, their intense rival, at Yale. Wilkinson was officiating a match between fellow co-captain Ricky Weisskopf \u201908 and Tucker George, the No. 1 Midshipman whose proclaimed goal each year is to defeat Weisskopf.<\/p>\n
During the match, Weisskopf suffered a knee cut. Squash rules are clear: A player has two minutes to have a blood injury cleaned and bandaged, and if it happens a second time the match is forfeited. Problem was, the Yale trainer\u2019s room was four floors and several minutes away.<\/p>\n
The sportsmanlike solution, said Wilkinson, was to give Weisskopf time to get to a trainer. But in increasingly heated tones, the Navy player and two Navy coaches insisted that Weisskopf should forfeit the match. With Bobcat head coach John Illig down in the trainer\u2019s room with another player, Bates\u2019 junior captain took the Navy\u2019s broadside but held his ground. \u201cIt\u2019s all about standing up for Bates squash and for our reputation for sportsmanship,\u201d Wilkinson says. \u201cIt\u2019s what I learned from my captains, Alex Wolff \u201905 and Rob Weller \u201905.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilkinson\u2019s ruling prevailed, and Weisskopf was allowed to get his cut bandaged. No longer bloody and definitely not bowed, he sailed through his match with Tucker George, giving Bates a 5-4 team victory over the Midshipmen.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s certainly worth a big \u201cWooooo!\u201d from the volleyball captains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the end of every point, volleyball co-captains Brittany Clement \u201908 and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":905,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-926","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10801,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/926\/revisions\/10801"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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