Though the Harvard football team didn’t capture the Ivy League title, a number of players will be bringing home some hardware following the 2012 season.
After a season where Harvard couldn't meet preseason expectations, finishing 5-2 in Ivy play and placing second in the league, 10 Harvard players earned All-Ivy First Team nods, the league announced Tuesday. While two players—sophomore defensive end Zach Hodges and junior and recently elected captain Joshua Boyd—earned the accolade on the defensive side, the Crimson earned two of the four spots on special teams, as junior kicker David Mothander and senior punter Jacob Dombrowski were named to the first team.
But the Crimson shined offensively—not surprising in a year when the team’s 394 points broke the modern-era Ivy League scoring record. In all, six of the 15 offensive players on the first team hailed from Cambridge. Two of the players—senior H-back Kyle Juszczyk and junior tight end Cam Brate—earned unanimous selections, while senior offensive linemen John Collins and Jack Holuba, Colton Chapple, and Treavor Scales also made the squad.
In all, six of the 10 Crimson first-team selections were seniors. Chapple’s selection over Cornell quarterback Jeff Mathews, the 2011 Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year who led the league with 355.1 passing yards per game this season, cements Chapple’s status as the frontrunner for the award this season.
In addition to the 10 first-team selections, six Crimson players were named to the second team, and three earned All-Ivy honorable mentions, including captain Bobby Schneider, who missed the final four games of the 10-game season after breaking his arm in a 39-34 loss at Princeton.
This past weekend you might not have recognized Harvard.
Thanks to the bitter rivalry, endless tailgates, disoriented alumni, overwhelming amounts of school pride, and thousands of people actually interested in football, Harvard seemed more like Blue Mountain State than the world’s most renowned University.
If you left after a boring first half filled with as much excitement as four years at Yale, shame on you. Here’s what you missed: an epic comeback, terrible cheerleader pushups, the loudest cheers emitted from Harvard students since they received their respective admittance letters, and a storming of the field reminiscent of Bunker Hill.
As if things couldn’t get any better, Twitter blew up with Harvard pride on Saturday following the victory. Here is what some of Harvard’s athletes had to say about the 129th meeting of The Game.
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Senior linebacker Joshua Boyd has been named the 140th captain of Harvard football, the team announced at its annual awards banquet Monday night.
Boyd, who will return to the team next year as a fifth-year senior, becomes the third consecutive linebacker to hold the Crimson captainship. Alex Gedeon ’12 served as captain in 2011, while senior Bobby Schneider led the team this season.
“Following Bobby Schneider is no easy task, but it’s one I’m up for, and I can’t wait to get started,” Boyd said at the banquet.
Boyd, a Hyde Park, Mass. native, captained his high school football team as a senior and will now have the chance to undertake the same role in college.
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Running back Treavor Scale’s impressive showing in The Game may have earned him The Crimson’s Athlete of the Week honors this week, but a medley of other athletes turned in excellent performances as well, earning them acknowledgment on the runners-up list.
Laurent Rivard, Men's Basketball
Junior wing Laurent Rivard had his best game of the young season Friday against Manhattan, leading the men's basketball team in scoring with 17 points. Rivard made five three-pointers on the day and is shooting nearly 45 percent on the season from behind the arc. Rivard connected on 5 of 10 three-pointers and added three steals, three rebounds, and one assist.
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Every year, the hard-working students of Harvard and Yale shut their books for a weekend and loosen up by tailgating, watching football, enjoying the tradition of the 129-year rivalry—and oh yes, pulling pranks.
The Game has long provided an opportunity for pranksters to make their mark on the rivalry. The Harvard Lampoon kidnapped Handsome Dan II, Yale’s mascot, prior to the 1933 Game. Photographs later showed the bulldog licking the feet of the John Harvard Statue (after slabs of meat had been smeared on them).
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