The Dartmouth Sports Weekly 06/01/15

6.1. 15

NICK LOMBARDI ’15: SLUGGER, STUDIO ART MAJOR

KRISTEN RUMLEY ’15 NO-NO WINS BEST MOMENT

YAMAHATA ’18 VOTED BEST FRESHMAN ATHLETE JEFFREY LEE, ELIZA MCDONOUGH, ANNIE DUNCAN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

SW 2

BY THE NUMBERS

6 Straight National meets for Dana Giordano ’16

4th Place finish for women’s sailing at Nationals

2 Nationals qualifiers for women’s track and field

17th Place overall for heavyweight crew at IRA Regatta

Baseball slugger Nick Lombardi ’15 lands on B y GAYNE KALUSTIAN The Dartmouth Staff

There’s an immediate quality to the appearance of Dartmouth baseball’s third baseman Nick Lombardi ’15 that tells his story in a second. He has an obvious gap in the coloring of the skin tone on his left wrist where the EvoShield he wears while playing baseball mutes the afternoon sun. A white TaylorMade visor pushes froths of hair out of his face and accentuates the leather-like skin on the back of his neck, shaded so dark it could only have come from weeks spent outside during the first “livable” weeks of the Hanover spring.

The accents on his white Nike high tops match the ones on his Tshirt and his visor — likely not an accident. But there’s a lived quality about his shoes. They are a little bit worn, a little bit dirty. He is a picture of an outdoorsman and athlete with an eye for color who does things, goes places, spends as many afternoons as possible taking in what little sun there is — and these Nikes, presumably hand-picked from his closet that reeks of a California native with Hawaiian shirts, Vans and baseball jerseys, have gone with him. His “work shirt” that he keeps next to his station in the senior workshop of the Black Family Visual Arts Center is from In-N-Out — the one, true mark of a Californian.

Where you’re from, Lombardi said, is inseparable from who you are.

“You really gotta believe in your hometown,” he said. “Wherever that may be, that’s what made you.

You have to stick to who you are, and part of stickin’ to who you are is stickin’ to where you’re from.”

Born and raised in Saugus, California, Nick “Mango” Lombardi is the son of a mechanic who knows “every little in and out of cars” and the grandson of a tinkerer. Lombardi has been playing baseball dating back to his earliest memories and has been tackling projects for just as long, ranging from a 22-foot painting of

Katie McKay ’16 Editor-in-Chief

6. 1. 15

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2015

Luke McCann ’16 Executive Editor

Joe Clyne ’16 Henry Arndt ’16 Sports Editors

Annie Duncan ’17 Kate Herrington ’17 Katelyn Jones ’17 Photography Editor

Justin Levine ’16 Publisher

Jessica Avitabile ’16 Executive Editor

JOSH RENAUD /THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

After four years on the baseball team, Nick Lombardi ’15 was selected to the second team all-Ivy as a senior.

Kid Cudi to a table commissioned by the College, completed with the help of teammate and righthanded pitcher Chris England ’15. Now, just two weeks away from his last college final, the best of Lombardi’s artistic work is on display in the senior showcase at the Hopkins Center.

This year, he also made secondteam all-Ivy and was named the athletic all-star at the Greek Letter Organizations and Societies awards two weeks ago. He was one of 30 candidates, nationwide, for the Senior CLASS award which aims to identify student athletes who are making positive impacts as leaders in their communities.

Lombardi has been a starting varsity athlete for four years and slugged .399 for his career.

As a child, Lombardi was always creative, his mother Donna Lombardi said. If he had a bad baseball game, he would “disappear into his room” with the door closed and draw. He was the type of kid to construct the Millennium Falcon out of Legos or spend an afternoon digging out the backyard with his brother to build a putting green.

The pair started many projects that dissipated into incompletion over time. The putting green project, Nick Lombardi said, only lasted about three hours.

“My brother and I, we were dreamers,” he said. “In the process, though, you learn little things over time and that’s how you start to know. You put together the frame for a minibike but never put the engine in or put the brakes system or wheels or tires or anything on, but you learn how to weld.”

When he first came to Dartmouth, Lombardi planned on

studying engineering. After struggling through a term of physics, math and chemistry, he abandoned the hard sciences in favor of the fine arts, learning “10 times more” in his studio art classes than he ever did in his other classes.

“I thought about whether or not all that stress and headache was really worth it,” he said. “In the end you have something tangible that you’ve created instead of halfheartedly sitting in class, cramming for a midterm… You can’t cheat in studio art. It all comes from you.”

Lombardi said he spends many nights pulling all-nighters, except now in the company of the few other brave studio art majors.

Jordan Craig ’15, another studio art major, said Lombardi is “untraditional in the studio art department” and brings a positive energy to the studio by being open to making friends with all the people he meets. When tasked with dressing in any outfit that represented him as a person, Craig said Lombardi showed up in a full suit, hair slicked back.

“He’s serious, but he’s always going to have fun with it,” she said.

Lombardi has another love in life — fishing. Most people in his hometown had speed boats, but his family had a fishing boat. Fishing was always his dad’s “thing,” and the people “came and went” while the fishing trips remained constant — an experience his dad could share with the people that he loved. When he has his own family, Lombardi said, he’ll introduce his love for the sport to them, all the way from the wake-ups before sunrise down to the sometimes fruitless hours spent on the water.

“The things I like in life are a

testament to that I enjoy failing because of how rewarding it is when you don’t fail that one time,” Lombardi said. “You have so much more appreciation for something that’s not so easily obtained. It’s like baseball. You fail so often, and it’s not easy.”

Lombardi claims that there is no deeper meaning to his art. He makes what he thinks “looks cool.”

The crown jewel of his senior showcase is the hood of a 1957 Impala that he painted black and pin-striped with intricate flares of color that rise and fall, disappear and reappear in waves and swirls that unfurl across the hood, which Lombardi found rusted and cast aside in a junkyard.

The curator of the senior exhibition, studio art professor Gerald Auten, decided to put the piece in the forefront of the exhibit so that passerbys might be drawn in by its dark contrast and coloring, wondering, as he did, what exactly it is that they’re looking at.

They’re looking, in one sense, at Nick Lombardi’s life.

While there may not be layers upon layers of intricate meaning — commentaries on the nature of human interaction in the technological era or subtle criticisms of public policy — there are themes in Lombardi’s work.

A pop-out book frames an angler fish in a jagged-toothed cave.

A painting he entitled “Family Portrait” depicts an abstract series of reflections of a 1967 Fastback, a 1957 T-Bird and a 1969 Challenger — the favorite cars of his dad, his grandfather and himself, respectively. The inspiration for the pin-striping on the hood, he said, was a sea anemone, and the

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2015

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

second-team all-Ivy, majors in studio art

SW 3

THE

RUNDOWN Baseball SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

COLUMBIA DARTMOUTH PENN CORNELL HARVARD BROWN YALE PRINCETON

16-4 16-4 16-4 9-11 7-13 6-14 6-14 4-16

29-15 21-22 22-15 13-27 18-24 11-28 15-23 7-32

IVY

OVERALL

16-4 13-7 13-7 10-9 8-12 7-13 7-13 5-14

25-16 23-21 22-20 18-24 17-24 13-21 16-28 11-23

Softball KATE HERRINGTON /THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Nick Lombardi ’15, a studio art major, displayed several pieces of his work in the senior exhibition at the Hopkins Center.

love of cars taken directly from his paternal family line. He paints what he likes, but what he likes is inexorably tied to who he is, where he’s from and the people who have given shape to his life.

Having suited up for his last game in the Green and White, too, gives him a perspective on his life’s passions.

“I enjoy [baseball] for what it teaches, but that is kind of a formal understanding,” he said.

Even for a player as decorated as Lombardi, though, the game doesn’t always go as expected, and there’s a bump in the road for every player. In retrospect, he said, it can be hard to remember why you would continue with the game for so long, or why you keep going when you’re tied and it’s a long practice.

“I think it’s the people that surround the game nowadays — your teammates… I don’t think any of us even realizes how much fun we’re having now, and we won’t realize until five, 10 years down the road,” he said.

Teammate Matt Parisi ’15 called him a “truly genuine person.”

“He’s a meathead — you can put that in there,” Parisi said. “He’s a big kid, and he uses it. He plays with a lot of passion…. He’s not going through the motions every time. He always has a feeling when he’s playing.”

There are few people in this world — fewer Ivy League students — that breathe in days like Nick Lombardi does. He fears complacency, attaches a “so what” clause to the things he chooses to spend his time on. He doesn’t pick apart lofty theories or have grand intentions of running for political office. He’s not bothered by a lot and doesn’t take offense to much.

After graduation, he wants to experience the world — see Italy and “bum around” Montana. To Lombardi, meaning in life comes simply from enjoying the things you do, and art, he says, is whatever you want to make it.

He trailed off during his interview to draw attention to a painting on the

wall.

“Look at that painting. What do you think about it?” he asked. “There’s no pressure. That’s the thing about art.

You can’t be wrong. You have your opinion and you stick to it. Whatever that is, you’re good.”

What makes him a rare breed goes far beyond the athlete-artist dichotomy that first nabbed the attention of The Dartmouth during baseball season.

Nick Lombardi, surrounded by Ivy League students who spend sunny days in the stacks and have their paths to Wall Street mapped to the nearest half-inch, loves what he does — every at-bat, every dip of his brush, every long afternoon spent in the warmth of the sun with his friends at the river.

He might put 100 casts out and bring no fish in. The only thing that will be coming back to campus with him might be the memory of just being there on the water with people who matter and the chance to push off tomorrow and try again — and that still will be, every time, enough.

SCHOOL

DARTMOUTH HARVARD PENN

PRINCETON CORNELL BROWN COLUMBIA YALE

Men’s Lacrosse SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

BROWN CORNELL PRINCETON PENN YALE HARVARD DARTMOUTH

4-2 4-2 4-2 3-3 3-3 2-4 1-5

12-5 10-6 9-6 6-7 11-5 7-7 5-8

Women’s Lacrosse SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

PRINCETON PENN CORNELL HARVARD DARTMOUTH YALE BROWN COLUMBIA

7-0 6-1 4-3 4-3 3-4 2-5 1-6 1-6

16-3 14-5 9-7 8-8 3-11 7-8 7-8 5-10

Women’s Tennis

KATE HERRINGTON /THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

For his primary piece, Nick Lombardi ’15 painted the hood of a 1957 Impala and pin-striped it with flares of color.

SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

PRINCETON DARTMOUTH BROWN COLUMBIA CORNELL PENN YALE HARVARD

6-1 5-2 4-3 4-3 3-4 3-4 3-4 0-7

12-9 19-6 11-9 12-8 9-9 9-8 9-11 7-12

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

SW 4

SPORTS

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2015

MONDAY LINEUP

No athletic events scheduled

The D Sports Awards: Yamahata ’18 voted best freshman

ELIZA MCDONOUGH /THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Swimmer Taylor Yamahata ’18 was voted best freshman athlete of 2014-2015. She collected 63 percent of the votes.

B y henry arndt The Dartmouth Senior Staff

After releasing our nominees for The Dartmouth Sports Award for best freshman athlete on Friday, readers submitted more than 500 votes for their favorite freshman. At noon on Sunday, swimmer Taylor

Yamahata ’18 was crowned as the Big Green’s best freshman athlete of the 2014-2015 year. Yamahata won the vote by a solid majority, collecting 321 of votes for 63 percent of the total.

Yamahata’s percentage of the votes was the second highest of this year’s D Sports Awards after

Madison Hughes ’15 collected 64 percent of the votes for best male athlete.

In high school, Yamahata was a four-year varsity letter winner at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, California, and was awarded the Capital Athletic League Champs Most Valuable Player, while

also qualifying as a scholastic AllAmerican. She brought this same success to Dartmouth in the pool and in the classroom, where she plans to study either psychology or biology.

Although she just completed her freshman season with the Big Green, Yamahata’s career as a swimmer began long ago. In an One-on-One interview with The Dartmouth in February, Yamahata said that she “was actually 18 months old when [she] first started swimming.” It was only five years later when Yamahata joined her first competitive swim team. As she grew older, Yamahata focused her repertoire of sports down from swimming, gymnastics and tennis to just swimming to prepare to compete at the collegiate level.

Throughout her first season for the Big Green, Yamahata swam well in her three main events — the 100yard backstroke, the 200-yard backstroke and the 200-yard individual medley. In her first meet swimming for the Big Green and the team’s first meet of the 2014-2015 season, Yamahata competed in all three of those events, placing seventh in the

100-yard backstroke, fifth in the 200-yard backstroke and eighth in the 200-yard individual medley against swimmers from Harvard and Cornell Universities.

In the final meet of the regular season, Yamahata showcased the progress she made over the course of the season, competing in the same three events but taking first in the 200-yard backstroke, second in the 100-yard backstroke and third in the individual medley against Columbia University.

Although the women’s swimming and diving team struggled this year and finished eighth at the Ivy League Championship, Yamahata’s victory in the votes serves as a testament to her high level of performance this season, potentially indicating a higher level of success for the team in seasons to come.

Yamahata won the best freshman athlete award over four other nominees: baseball’s Patrick Peterson ’18, basketball’s Miles Wright ’18 and tennis players Ciro Riccardi ’18 and Kristina Mathis ’18. Last year, Nordic skier Patrick Caldwell ’17 was named the best freshman athlete.

The D Sports Awards: Rumley ’15 no-hitter wins best moment B y henry arndt

The Dartmouth Senior Staff

In a year of moments for Dartmouth sports that included a last-second layup that ultimately knocked the Yale University men’s basketball team out of qualification for its first NCAA tournament since 1962 and the only shutout victory of the season over the then-No. 1 men’s hockey team in the nation Boston University, one moment ultimately stood above the rest to the readers of The D. After we released the nominees for The Dartmouth Sports Award best moment of the year last Friday, readers submitted 123 votes and named the no-hitter thrown by Kristen Rumley ’15 the best moment of the year. Rumley’s all-time great softball performance earned 54 percent of the total vote.

No-hitters do not happen very often. The Dartmouth softball program has only recorded five in its entire history, three of which — including Rumley’s — have

come against Columbia University.

No-hitters are so rare because they require the combination of a flawless team defense and a deadly pitcher on the mound performing in perfect sync.

This year, the softball team had both of those ingredients and got the recipe just right against the Lions in the first game of a Saturday afternoon doubleheader on March 28.

In a game that the Big Green won 8-0, Rumley struck out nine batters across six innings. More than 75 percent of Rumley’s pitches on the afternoons were strikes, and she allowed only one base on balls — a walk that cost Rumley a perfect game. The team backed Rumley up in the field with no errors on the afternoon.

The same recipe for success that led to the no-hitter on that afternoon was demonstrated over the course of softball’s entire spring season — one that saw the team win its second consecutive Ivy League title and Rumley her

FAITH ROTICH/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Kristen Rumley ’15, three time Ivy League pitcher of the year, threw a no-hitter against Columbia University.

third Ivy League Pitcher of the Year award.

Rumley’s no-hitter won out over the other nominees, which included the men’s hockey team’s upset win over then-No. 1 BU, the

men’s basketball team’s late upset over Yale, the football team’s late touchdown for the win over Yale and the women’s tennis team’s first ever NCAA tournament win.

Last year, the football team’s

home win over Princeton University in its season finale was voted the best moment of Dartmouth sports for the 2013-2014 season after it collected 38 percent of the total vote.