Looking back at Week One Athletics for Super Two

With yesterday’s softball and basketball games, week two of athletic competition officially began on the boys side at Culver Summer Camps. Time to look back at the first week of camp for super 2.

Tuesday June 27: Last second Heroics lift two over band

Last Tuesday night Company Two’s basketball team took the court for the first time against the Naval Band in one of the more memorable CSS basketball games I’ve ever seen. The Band squad, coached by Mr. Dees and friends, ran a crack zone defense and showed some fairly ill ball-handling skills. They went up early but Company Two, led by Second Classman S. Meeker’s perimiter shooting and some timely free throws held it nearly even at the half.

The second half saw the lead change hands a few times which really worked the cheering sections of both the naval band and company two into a frenzy. Band had their drum line pounding away from the sidelines while Company Two busted out the old Atlanta Braves-style Tomahawk cheer to preserve their voices.

Naval Two’s coach, Mr. Monahan called a timeout with 20 seconds left on the clock and his team down by two points. Things looked more than a little grim as Company Two started up the Tomahawk Chop. On the next play however naval 2 inbounded the ball to Meeker, who managed to evade some tricky defenders, find a spot just outside the 3-point line, and drain a so-ugly-it-was-beautiful shot to put super 2 ahead by one as the game clock ran down. Phew. Company 2 rushed the court and shook hands with the Orange Crush. It was a nice way to start off the summer (though I wouldn’t have minded a slightly less stressful outcome).

At the end of the game S. Meeker led all N2 scorers with 21 points for naval 2 followed by 6 points from R. Tuchinsky at center for N2.

Wednesday June 28th: Softball falls frustratingly short

On Wednesday Company two turned its attention to winning a softball matchup against the always-dangerous Company One. Both sides came to win (naval 1 was still smouldering from a 1-point loss to 3 in basketball the night before) however the game proved to be a low-scoring frustrating affair characterized by some poor officiating luck for Company 2. Two N2 base hits were called back due to the official not seeing the hit, 4 outs were given to the other team during one inning, and the official was not initially aware of how many innings we were to play (5 was the correct answer, after some consultation by the counselors with Mr. Thompson over at the Naval 3 game). After 3 innings the score was tied at 1-1, an unusually low score for a slow-pitch softball game.

An infield error in the 4th inning let in two company 1 runs and Super Two’s side flew out in the fifth to end the game. There wasn’t much said on the way back to the barracks after that one…

Thursday June 29th: Flag Football Comes Through

Each Thursday at camp the unit plays flag football and last week was no different with N2 taking the field against the newly combined Air-Cav for its first flag football match of the summer. I was hopefull going into the match due to the strong arm of our quartback, second classman I. Spurr, the general speediness of our backfield, led by S. Meeker, and the enthusiasm of our defense led by new thirdclassman “Porkchop” Rodriguez from Eagle Pass, Texas (generally speaking, Texas is a state that breeds kids who do well at Culver. I’m thrilled to say we have three Lonestar-staters in the unit this summer!).

Company Two scored early on a 15 yard pass to Midshipman D. Booth (a defensive standout in basketball and our softball shortstop) and just kept pouring in the points, eventually racking up anywhere from 54-65, depending on who you asked, compared to 14 on the Air-Cav side. After the 4th touchdown N2 began putting its reserves on the field to give them some playing time as did the Air-Cav. The score continued to rise…and Naval 2 won its first flag football game in 3 years.

Friday June 30th: Big Shocks at the Track Meet

The Friday morning track meet is always the crucial contest in the weekly struggle for the athletic banner. In the overall scoring units earn 1 point for a team sport victory and 5 points for a loss (thus with our 2-1 record going into the track meet we had earned 7 points). In the track and swimming meets however scoring goes 1-3-5-7-9-11 starting from first place on down. So getting last place is the equivalent of losing two entire team contests, which is really hard to come back from.

Low score wins the banner at the end of the week.

When we put our lineup together a few days before the meet we knew we had a strong senior lineup anchored by Jo. Menendez and S. Meeker and bolstered by C. Patz who seemed like he could run and jump, and S. Guerra from Ecaudor who laughed when i asked him if he could run during PI earlier that week. Juniors looked fairly strong as well with the only question mark being our distance running. G. Graham 3rd class, from Texas seemed a lock in he shotput however…

To make a long story short, the senior track meet was a rout with naval 2 winning the 4×100 (Menendez, Guerra, Spurr, Patz) the 4×400 (Meeker, Micallef, Patz, Ching), the 100 (Guerra by what seemed like a mile!), the long jump (Guerra again!), and the 400 (S. Meeker). They also took second place in the high jump (Patz), and the 200 (Spurr with Menendez close behind).

Juniors also performed well, earning 3rd place honors overall due to strong runs from C. Hollman, N. Echeverri, and J. Arrellano. G. Graham did indeed win the shotput for us with “Porkchop” Rodriguez coming in second place just behind him (he’d never thrown before but we had Graham give him a basic tutorial beforehand to get him going).

Despite the strong finish naval one did even better, winning the junior track meet and taking second to us in seniors. Still, walking away from Friday having earned only 4 points is a nothing to sneeze at.

Other points to make about the track meet:

• it was exceptionally well organized and pulled off by the Athletic Staff.
• Mr. Guerra runs insanely fast.

Monday July 3rd: Volleyball wins big and swimming surprises everyone

Over the weekend some back of the envelope calculations revealed that Naval 2 was sitting in 3rd place in the athletic standings behind both naval 1 and 3 going into the last days of competition (monday’s swimming and volleyball and Tuesday’s soccer game). We had earned 13 points so far to their 11 each. We needed a big day athletically to pull ahead.

And we got one.

Volleyball was against N3 that day and came and went pretty swiftly with our squad dispatching them in 2 straight games, 21-15, 21-16. Led by Captains Jo. Menendez and “No Mercy” Narvaez the squad managed to consistently make the smart play and put pressure onto the Naval 3 team, earning a crucial victory in the process.

Over at the swim meet, things were looking iffy…while first classman Z. Mirkowski guaranteed 3 first place finishes (he’s been the fastest swimmer in the regiment since the moment he registered for camp his plebe summer) I wasn’t sure how the rest of the squad would come through. In the end though, they too stepped it up, bringing in first place finishes in Diving (Patz), the 50 and 100 Free (Tuchinsky), and the 50 Butterfly, 100 IM, and 100 Backstroke (Mirkowski). While our relays needed some work (we took 5th in both) we were able to score enough individual points to win the meet and give us an unbeatable lead going into the soccer game on Tuesday.

Tuesday July 4th: Our own little World Cup Final

Tuesday’s soccer match with Naval 4 was the talk of camp all day during classes. Naval 4 had been wowing passer-by’s during marathon practice sessions on the drill field and due to their high percentage of international campers (well over 70 percent by my estimate). They seemed like the team to beat this summer. Our guys were fairly confident though in how we stacked up after a scouting report from Jo. Menendez (who’d slipped into a few friendly games with their guys that week) and also because we had “No Mercy” Narvaez playing center attack for us, “Tuch-monster” Tuchinsky holding down the goal, and Mr. Meeker running sweeper in the backfield.

The game itself was a thriller. That is until Mr. “Mischief” Zambrano punched a strike into the goal off an expert pass from “No Mercy” Narvaez about 12 minutes in and Naval 2 followed with a gritty goal off good-positioning on a high ball passed into the penalty box (the goalie and about 10 other players jumped for it but only Narvaez was able to get anything on it).

Despite an almost comical own-goal by the Tuch-monster in the second half, Naval 2 was still able to pull out the win at the end of the day from its two goals. Rough, hard game, but a great one nonetheless.

And there you have your guide to Week One’s athletic competitions for Super Two at Culver Summer Camps. With all our success late in the week we were able to make up for the brutal softball loss and to win the athletic banner for the first time in at least 3 years but probably a lot longer than that.

Here are the final point standings from Week 1:

Naval 2 - 16 points 4-1 team sports record.

Naval 3 -26 points 4-1 team record

Naval 1 - 28 points 3-2 team record

Naval 4 - 40 points 1-4 team record

Naval Band - 42 points 1-4 team record

Air-Cav - 46 points 1-4 team record