Wellesley Athletics Celebrates the Past, Present, and Future as the 2018 Academic Year Closes
The 2017–18 Wellesley Athletics season officially came to a close over Memorial Day weekend in Sarasota, Fla., as the Blue crew team continued its impressive run of success on the national stage by finishing as the runner-up at the 2018 NCAA Division III Rowing Championships. The crew program has now finished in the top four nationally in every NCAA championship since 2011, including top three finishes in each of the last four years.
While one streak continued this spring, another came to an end this winter as Maura Sticco-Ivins ’18 competed in her fourth and final NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship. Winner of both the Barbara Barnes Hauptfuhrer ’49 Senior Scholar-Athlete Award and the 2018 Outstanding Senior Athlete Award this year, Sticco-Ivins was joined at the annual Scholar-Athlete Awards ceremony by fencer Julia Calventus-Coveney ’21, as the rising star was named Wellesley’s Rookie of the Year after leading the fencing program to its first 20-win season since 2010–11.
Calventus-Coveney joined nine teammates at the NCAA Northeast Regional this March—the most qualifiers for the Blue since 2014. She finished her first year with a dominant 65-9 record in epee before taking 18th at the regional competition and later earning Northeast Fencing First-Team All-Star honors.
Another one of Wellesley’s most successful programs also made a return to national competition this year. During fall 2017, the Blue volleyball team made the program’s 12th trip to the NCAA tournament and its first since 2013. The team ended its season with a first-round setback, but the squad is poised to return strong in 2018.
In its 12 trips to the NCAA tournament, Wellesley volleyball has advanced to five national quarterfinals and two final fours. 2018 will be the 20th anniversary of Wellesley’s first final four appearances in 1998 and, fittingly, this fall the third class to enter Wellesley’s Athletics Hall of Fame will include a player from that squad. Volleyball alumna Katie Antypas ’99 will join five other alumnae student-athletes and Louise O’Neal, Wellesley’s director of athletics and department chair from 1990–2006, as they are inducted into the Wellesley Athletics Hall of Fame class of 2018: Marret Arfsten ’03 (field hockey), Sarah Hilgenberg ’00 (soccer), Elizabeth T. Jordan ’59 (swimming), Jennifer Kegel ’88 (cross country), and Amy Ayers Parratto ’83 (diving). They will all be honored at the biennial induction ceremony and dinner on the evening of Saturday, October 13.
Learn more about the 2018 Hall of Fame inductees and catch up on all the action from this season on the Wellesley Athletics website.
