Yeomen Basketball Looks

Yeomen Basketball Looks Ahead to 2021–22 Season

Fourth-year men’s basketball player Wolf Moser dribbles up the court. Courtesy of GoYeo

John Elrod

Contributing Sports Editor

On Tuesday, Nov. 9, the Oberlin men’s basketball team will play their first game of the season against Waynesburg University. The Yeomen are coming off a successful 2019–20 season where they went 15–12 overall — the team’s first winning season since 1992 — but the squad has seen significant turnover since then. Players have transferred in and out of Oberlin and many first- and second-years will begin their College basketball careers this year. Out of the 20 players on the team, only four were on the 2019–20 team.

The team has just two fourth-years, Wolf Moser and Darien Knowles, both of whom were not originally in the class of 2022. Moser changed classes after taking a gap year and Knowles transferred to Oberlin in 2020. Head Coach Isaiah Cavaco recognizes the work Moser and Knowles have put in to be leaders for the young team.

“They have done a great job being positive role models for our younger players,” Cavaco said. “Their approach to practice has been a great example to follow, and their attention to detail will prove to be extremely valuable.”

Knowles, a local of Amherst, Ohio, embraces the challenge of being one of the few experienced players on the team.

“I feel very comfortable stepping up to lead this year,” Knowles said. “We have a lot of young guys who are eager and hungry to learn and grow as players, and I feel like I have the knowledge and experience to help guide that process.”

Moser gives credit to all of his team members for their strong display of leadership during preseason and emphasizes the squad’s team-centric attitude and will to win.

“We want to be the best team in the conference and we want to win the conference championship,” he said. “That is where our heads are at as a team. We don’t care about personal accomplishments. We want to win as a unit and we want to win every time we step on the court.”

Cavaco echoed the importance of this mindset.

“For a lot of the players, it’s easy to feel like you have to prove something as an individual at this time of year, but we’re trying to redirect that focus to be a dependable part of a greater group,” he said.

Cavaco, whose basketball résumé includes four years as a player for Yale University, will enter his 17th season as head coach of the Yeomen. He is excited to continue helping players lead successful lives while they are at Oberlin and after they leave.

“It’s great to see their hard work be rewarded on and off the court, and even though we don’t always get to see the results on campus, [hearing] the stories of how being here at Oberlin helped former players down the road is the best form of winning,” he said.

Cavaco is looking forward to the Nov. 20 home game where the College will recognize Oberlin High School Boys’ Basketball Coach and 2022 Ohio Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell. Cavaco also noted the Nov. 30 game against North Coast Athletic Conference rival, The College of Wooster. The team will give away t-shirts to the first 100 Oberlin students who show up to cheer them on.

The Wooster game will likely be a tough, competitive matchup for Oberlin. The Fighting Scots have won 18 NCAC championships since the conference’s inception in 1983, most recently in 2019.

On Jan. 3 and Jan. 29, the Yeomen will play Wittenberg University, another team that will be a challenge for Oberlin. The Tigers, ranked 22nd for NCAC Division III this season by d3hoops.com, have won a total of 13 NCAC titles and are the defending champions of the conference.

Moser is looking forward to playing these tough conference opponents.

“It is always fun to play Wittenberg and Wooster because they are usually nationally ranked, so it’s fun to get a chance to knock off a ranked team, but all of our conference games are equally important to us,” he said.

This week, the focus is on the first game at Waynesburg. The team is looking forward to the return of competition in front of a crowded gym.

“It doesn’t even seem real that we are less than a week away from our season opener,” Knowles said. “We are excited, though! The crowds bring so much energy and life into the game that we’ll be able to feed off of.”

Oberlin Baseball on Team Culture

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“Accountability allows individuals to learn from their actions and grow as a result,” he said. “This involves having the individuals understand the consequences of their actions and working to ensure there are no repeats, as well as making space for those who have been harmed by players on this team. It’s important we acknowledge the survivors and understand their emotions.”

Anastasio says that as the team moves forward in trying to repair its reputation on campus, it’s important to note that the team has been having this conversation since he got to Oberlin in 2018.

“We’ve known our reputation has been a problem for years now,” he said. “We’ve always addressed it; even three years ago when I was a first-year, this was something we talked about actively and often. That being said, it shouldn’t take getting blasted on social media for us to want to make a change and hold each other accountable.”

Norris says that in an unofficial capacity, the team is working on building trust in the community each day and interacting with those outside of the athletic sphere.

“The actions of the few cannot outweigh the many, and it is our goal to repair and build on relationships with the student body at large,” he said. “This year Yianni and I were Title IX ambassadors for our team, and as a group they showed great engagement and willingness to learn about how to reduce harm in this community. I was very encouraged by their responses.”

Gardner points out, however, that due to the Title IX process and constraints, the team is not allowed to take any action against individuals who have perpetuated harm unless a formal process ends in the office stating an individual deserves consequences. Gardner promises the team is working hard and diligently to make sure violence is not tolerated or perpetuated within the baseball team.

“The Title IX office definitely limits what we can do as players, which is frustrating because we want to do everything we can to resolve situations and hold people accountable,” he said.

When a report is filed against a player, the team is not made aware of the allegations as per Title IX regulations and the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

The Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion website reads, “The Title IX team handles all matters professionally and discreetly by sharing information only with those who need to know and by informing participants of those disclosures. The Title IX team maintains the privacy of student records in compliance with the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.”

College third-year Emma Hart, one of the leaders of Survivors of Sexual Harm & Allies, believes that the most important thing for players to do is to support survivors.

“We need to believe survivors, and the default should be to believe survivors,” she said. “It should not be to make excuses or question a survivor’s story. The focus should be to believe and reflect on what the survivor needs.”

While Hart is encouraged by the recent dialogue by the baseball team, she asserts that accountability should always be about the survivor and not the team image.

“I’m glad that [the baseball] team is talking about it, but it’s less so about the team’s image and more so that [the players] should be asking themselves the question, ‘How have we enabled harm?’” Hart said.

Norris shares similar sentiments with Gardner and says due to the fact that the team has been given minimal power to enact consequences, it is doing its very best to ensure that anyone on the team who perpetuates harm goes through a process in which they will grow and acknowledge their actions.

“From that process, we hope to ensure that no further harm is caused here at Oberlin or in the world beyond,” he said.

IN THE LOCKER ROOM Susan Robinson-Cloete, Field Hockey Forward and Student-Researcher

Susan Robinson-Cloete is a second-year forward on the field hockey team and scored the winning goal in the last game of the season. After playing goalie her entire career before Oberlin, Susan was moved to forward, a field position. The game against Transylvania University was the team’s first win this year. Off the field, Susan is interested in studying Neuroscience and Spanish. Whether she’s volunteering in labs, playing as a forward on the field, or spending time with the team, Robinson-Cloete balances it all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kayla Kim

Congratulations on your first win! How did that feel, and what role did you play?

I scored the goal, which was a really exciting moment, but I think a large part of it was our defense. I named them “the brick wall” — second-year Abby Patchen and fourth-years Julia [Vincent] and Lea [Watkins-Chow]. They just held it down there for us, and they’ve always been like a back support. We’ve had a really good season, but we hadn’t won any games before this one. Winning a game just made it that much better and that much sweeter. Getting to be in the middle and all the way up there when everybody started to jump up and hug was a really exciting moment.

How did your losses before this motivate you guys to do better?

I think, from each loss, we learned how we need to get better as a team and identified places where we were struggling or didn’t have support for each other. I think for this last game, we all knew what we needed to do. If we really wanted this, then this was the time to listen to all the things that we’ve been learning from each loss and put them all together. If you saw the game or saw clips of it, there was a high level of communication, trust, and cohesiveness between all of us on the field. It was like a synthesis of all of our losses. I think that it’s corny, but we learned a lot from losing games and learned a lot about the level of play. At this game, we played to our fullest potential.

How have your captains been guiding you through all this?

They all just work so well together. They’ve been really good at giving pregame talks, making sure that our heads are in the right space before we

Second-year field hockey player Susan Robinson-Cloete competes on Oberlin’s home turf. Courtesy of Amanda Phillips

go on the field, and just being there to support us. Lea has always been a force of nature on the field, and just as a defensive player, she’s always been really supportive. She makes sure that the back is taken care of because they do so much work, and she makes sure that they’re being respected. This was my first season on the field and third-year Vanessa Baker’s too — we were both goalies before playing field positions — and we had a lot of really new movement up there. I think that fourth-year Bonnie Wileman, a senior member of this team, just gave us a sense of calmness up there, and she provided a really cool presence.

How was the adjustment from not having a season last year?

It was interesting. In the past season, we had only ever been practicing. So for a lot of us, the main exposure we had to this sport was playing our own team. When we started playing actual games — I won’t speak for the whole team but for me personally — I was like, “Whoa, there is a different level of play out there.” Our team is fantastic, but there’s a different type of energy when you’re trying to beat somebody versus when you pass together. This season, I got to spend time with the team in a really different way — in the locker room and on buses together. My favorite part of the transition from practice to an actual season was getting to know my team and feeling like I actually have a lot of friends.

How have you guys been bonding off the field?

Well, I think a lot of the bonding happens in the locker room after practice. We’re so chatty. I like to joke all the time, “We need to talk on the field — think about how chatty we are in the locker room or during practice.” When Stevenson Dining Hall was open during preseason, that was a really big thing. We would have team dinners after every single practice. You’d just change, shower, go with a group of people to Stevie, and know that there was gonna be a big field hockey table sitting there. In those first few weeks, we got to talk as a team more than we ever did over the entirety of last year. We do other things like trips to Volunteers of America, which is a thrift store in the area, and we’ve planned some apple picking, a team Thanksgiving, and a team dinner at our coach’s house. But we don’t just bond through organized team events. I love this team so much, and they have been incredibly supportive through some tough times in my life. They are some of my best friends, and I’m very lucky to have them in my life.

What other extracurriculars are you doing at Oberlin right now?

I’m the art coordinator for The Synapse, the science magazine. Right now we’re in the middle of issue 30 and wrapping up issue 29. I just recently started working in Associate Professor of Neuroscience Gunnar Kwakye’s lab, which has been quite interesting. I like being exposed to all these different opportunities. I was doing some work with El Centro Volunteer Initiative, which is part of the reason why I’m taking Spanish this year. I would like to come back in the spring, once I have a little bit more free time, and be a really competent English tutor. Coach [Jess West] has always encouraged us to find things that are outside of field hockey and be well rounded.

How do you manage all of the extracurriculars and your time as a student-athlete?

I’ve had to be really, really honest with myself this year about things that I wanna do, and if I have time to do it. Google Calendar has been really important. I have a terrible memory, so whenever I get something, I just throw it in the calendar. I think about doing things that I really, really love doing. I love The Synapse, and I love spending time in Kwakye’s lab. I haven’t signed up for anything that I wanna do begrudgingly, and I invest time in making sure that I can do each of my extracurriculars well.

Students Conceal Athletic Identity

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was nice for a change.”

Second-year women’s soccer player Mattie Rie feels similarly about the misconceptions about athletes, noting how they’ve found it discouraging at times to feel the need to hide their identity as a soccer player.

Rie says they do not present much as an athlete, but recently they’ve finally felt comfortable showing their pride.

“I consider it a big part of who I am and who I’ve been,” they said, looking to the welcoming environment at Oberlin as a source for this strength. “The sports teams at Oberlin, especially on the women’s side, are unlike any other sports team I’ve been on — in the best way possible. I don’t mind being perceived as an athlete because I love this team so much.”

Payne added that athletes should learn from the stigma that does exist and work to continue to change the image of athletics on campus.

“My team takes steps to ensure that we create a good environment on our team that will benefit us and others,” she wrote to the Review. “As a women’s team on campus, it feels that we are lumped with the men’s teams, and we try so hard to create our own identity as a team and create change on this campus. I know a lot of really great athletes that are trying to change the reputation of the Oberlin Athletic Department, and my team fully supports this and needs more people to be a part of the change.”

For the most part, the athletic and non-athletic communities of Oberlin remain profoundly separated by their own stigmas of each other, but by opening the door to conversation, there is hope that each will see that there is so much more to a person than their outward identity, whatever that may be. Some athletes remain harmful propagators of the stigmas of athletics and the complexes it brings, but it’s clear that the majority in Division III participate in sports out of love, making academics and athletics a priority.