Weekly sports roundup: White Out for Mandi draws a crowd

At its annual White Out for Mandi fund-raiser this week, the women's ice hockey team put forth a strong performance against Brown, ending in a 2–2 overtime tie. The Bulldogs (7–10–4, 5–5–4 ECAC) went on to add a fifth game to their unbeaten streak when they took down Brown the next day, winning 3–1. This year's White Out for Mandi raised $29,000 and brought a crowd of 1,125 to Ingalls Rink—a new record for a women's ice hockey game. 

In other sports news this week (information from Yale Sports Publicity):

Several athletes on the men's track and field team put forth strong performances at this weekend's Terrier Invitational. Captain James Shirvell ’14, who competed in the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships last year, placed third among 176 runners in the mile run, finishing in just over 4 minutes and breaking Yale's previous mile record by nearly 4 seconds. Marc-Andre Alexandre ’17, meanwhile, came in two hundredths of a second shy of breaking the Yale record in the 400-meter. 

The wins keep coming for the men's and women's swimming and diving teams. On Friday, the women defeated New Hampshire 156.5–143.5, ending a long winning streak for the Wildcats, and the men beat Fordham 205–93 and Rider 209–90 on Saturday. 

Two games into its Ivy season, the women's basketball team has a perfect record. The Bulldogs (8–8, 2–0 Ivy) beat Brown 73–52, with Sarah Halejian ’15 and Lena Munzer ’17 each scoring 14 points. The team shot 51.7 percent from the field. 

At its first home meet of the season, the women's gymnastics team made a narrow 184.350–182.800 victory against Penn. Maren Hopkins ’14 set a career best of 9.250 to tie for sixth place in the beam, while the day's best score came from junior Joyce Li's first-place 9.675 performance on the beam.

The No. 36 women's tennis team staged a major upset at the ITA Kick-Off Weekend this week, when it defeated No. 28 Tulsa by a score of 4–3. But the next round of the tournament proved more difficult, when the Bulldogs took on No. 11 Michigan. That game ended in a 4–0 loss, but captain Annie Sullivan ’14 and Hannah Yu ’15, playing in the No. 1 spot, upset a Michigan doubles team that is ranked ninth in the country. 

What seemed destined to be a season of endless victory for the No. 3 men's and No. 5 women's squash teams came to a halt last week, when both teams faced off against longtime rival Trinity, the top-ranked men's squash team in the nation and the second women's team, on Wednesday. The Yale teams each lost 5–4, but they were quick to bounce back: the women swept No. 7 Stanford, No. 19 St. Lawrence, No. 12 George Washington, and No. 17 Middlebury, while the men went 5–4 against St. Lawrence, 8–1 against Western Ontario, and 9–0 against Navy. 

For two days in a row, the men's ice hockey team took on Brown. The first game, in Providence, ended in a 3–1 defeat for the No. 10 Bulldogs, but the team then rallied and scored six goals at a home game the next day, blanking the Bears. Yale (10–5–4, 5–4–3 ECAC) takes on Cornell and Colgate this week. 

The men's basketball team lost to Brown 74–67 this week after beating the Bears just a week earlier in this season's Ivy opener. Justin Sears ’16 was the team's top scorer, single-handedly bringing in 17 points. Next up for the Bulldogs (7–9, 1–1 Ivy): games against Columbia and Cornell this week.

It was a day of mixed results for Yale's fencing teams at the NYU Fencing Invitational on Saturday. The men's team ended the meet with a 3–3 record, beating teams from UNC, NYU, and Wayne State. The women's team finished with a 2–3 record--an improvement from the past three years of competition, in which the Bulldogs finished with a 1–4 record. 

At its third meet of the semester, the women's track and field team put forth a solid showing. Although the Terrier Invitational was unscored, several athletes set season-best scores and three made personal bests. Emily Urciuoli ’14 earned the team's best finish of the day with her fourth-place height of 3.60m (11’9.75”) in the pole vault.