Pitcher Sam Dodge took home the Athlete of the Week Award, but The Back Page recognizes other athletes in Harvard sports who excelled over the course of the weekend's games.

Erica Veidis and Jarvis Harris, Track and Field

The two athletes were the stars of the weekend’s annual Harvard-Yale track and field meet. Veidis, a sophomore indoor All-American, won the 800 meters with a 2:05.92 mark that was the second-fastest time ever run at the event. She led a one-two-three Harvard finish in the event. On the men’s side, Harris broke the school record with his 110 hurdles victory, beating the previous one by .11 seconds with a time of 14.13 seconds.

First Varsity, Women’s Heavyweight and Men’s Heavyweight

The first varsity teams for both the men’s and women’s heavyweight crew teams put forth winning efforts over the weekend. The 11th-ranked women picked up their first win of the spring with a victory over the fifth-ranked Princeton Tigers and 17th-ranked Cornell Big Red on Saturday morning. The team won by nearly five seconds over Princeton and almost eight over the Big Red. The fourth-ranked men’s team won three of the five races against the Brown Bears on Saturday morning and took home the Stein Cup for the third straight year.

Murphy Vandervelde, Men’s Lacrosse

With his overtime goal against the 14th-ranked Penn Quakers, the sophomore from Wellesley, Massachusetts, sent the Harvard men’s lacrosse team to its first victory over a ranked opponent. Since scoring his first career goal on March 23rd, Vandervelde has eleven goals in five games, including consecutive hat tricks against Albany and Duke. With the win, the team attained a slim hold on the final playoff berth in the Ivy League.

Harvard has not had a player selected in the NFL Draft since Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05 was taken in the seventh round of the 2005 NFL Draft. Now, though, with the 2013 NFL Draft less than two weeks away, senior tight end Kyle Juszczyk has a chance to buck that trend.

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Fewer than 24 hours after the conclusion of the 2013 NCAA tournament, CBS Sports began to look to the future.

That future looks bright for the Harvard men’s basketball team.

On Tuesday morning, CBSSports.com released its “Top 25 (and one): Way-too-early preseason rankings for 2013-14,” ranking the Crimson at No. 21.

Kentucky owns the top spot, while 2012-13 national champion Louisville came in at third. Harvard beat out 1-seed Indiana and Final Four shocker 9-seed Wichita State.

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It was certainly a week for rookie success in Harvard athletics, as the Athlete of the Week and the two runners-up are all freshmen. With back-to-back complete games helping the Crimson softball team to victories over Princeton and Cornell this past week, freshman pitcher Jamie Halula earned herself Athlete of the Week honors. Here are two other Harvard athletes that had excellent performances this past week:

DJ Link, baseball

Freshman DJ Link had 10 hits, four RBIs, and five runs scored in the Harvard baseball team’s four games over the weekend. Link was key in Harvard’s come-from-behind victory over Cornell in the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader. With the Crimson down four going into the seventh inning, Link sparked a seven-run inning with a lead off walk and scored four batters later. Link was not done in the inning, however, as the Crimson were able to bat around. In his second trip to the plate, the freshman catcher smacked a single to right field to score two more runs. Link followed up Friday’s performance by registering a team-high four hits and scoring three runs in the Crimson’s wild 20-19 victory over Princeton on Sunday afternoon.

Charlotte Hendrix, women’s water polo

Playing in five games this week for the women’s water polo team, freshman Charlotte Hendrix ended the week with nine goals, 13 assists, and nine steals. In Sunday’s contest with Cal State Bakersfield, the rookie finished with a career-high 10 total points in Harvard’s 17-12 loss.  Those ten points consisted of three goals and seven assists, another career mark for the rookie. Just a day earlier, Hendrix helped the Crimson to a 12-6 victory over George Washington with three goals, an assist, and three steals.

When you hear the score 20-19, you might think of a close, hard-fought football game. Or maybe a basketball game halfway through the first quarter. But a baseball game? How crazy would that be?

Yet when the Harvard baseball team (6-21, 3-5 Ivy) faced off against Princeton (7-20, 5-3) on Sunday, the result was just that. Playing at O’Donnell Field in the second game of a doubleheader, the Crimson outlasted the Tigers in a wild nine innings and walked off in the bottom of the ninth to claim a 20-19 victory. The win was the team’s sixth of the year and third in Ivy League play.

Such an unusual game was filled with appropriately unique stats. Here’s a look at the epic showdown by the numbers.

2: Grand slams, one from sophomore infielder Tanner Anderson in the bottom of the sixth and another the very next inning from Princeton first baseman Mike Ford. Tigers catcher Tyler Servais also belted a grand slam in the first game of the doubleheader.

38: The number of hits in the slugfest, 23 for Harvard and 15 for Princeton. The Crimson’s previous season-high was 14 against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

9: Errors made in the game, with Harvard committing five and Princeton committing four. Despite the high error total, only six of the game’s 39 runs were unearned.

5: The number of Crimson batters who registered at least three hits. Freshman catcher DJ Link went 4-for-5, and sophomore outfielder Brandon Kregel scored five runs.

11: The number of frames that teams scored in, with all but two coming as multiple-run innings (the high was Princeton’s seven-run second).

20: The number of runs Harvard scored, double its previous season high of 10 versus Cornell last weekend.

19: The number of runs Harvard runs allowed, six more than the season’s previous high of 13 that came just a few hours earlier in the first game of the day against Princeton.

3: Runs Harvard scored in the bottom of the ninth to win the game, all of which came on wild pitches.