Sports

The Luther wrestling team placed fourth at the IIAC tournament Tuesday, Feb. 16, with five wrestlers qualifying for the NCAA Division III National Championships.

Among them are Jason Pyle (‘11) and Allyn Plattner (‘10) who won the individual championships at 149 lbs and 285 lbs., respectively.

A missed last second 3-pointer ended the women’s basketball team’s chances of upsetting Wartburg at home on Saturday as the team fell just short against their arch rival.

In the back-and-forth game, Luther (8-16) was never able to regain the lead after falling behind with nine minutes left to play.

I spent this past weekend, along with many other Chips staffers, in Minneapolis at the Best of the Midwest Journalism Convention.

While we received great advice from experienced journalists, we were also told the grim realities surrounding careers in journalism (which some of us are pursuing) as newspapers around the country are failing and businesses are pulling their ads from print.

The Luther men’s basketball team held off a late 8-0 Wartburg rally on Saturday, Feb. 11, defeating the Knights 54-52 in front of their largest crowd of the season.

The Norse (11-11) used an impressive shooting performance and a 15-2 run to end the first half to keep the Knights (14-10) at arms distance for a majority of the game.

Men’s tennis kept rolling this weekend, posting four victories in two different locations. The four wins brought their season record to a perfect 6-0 and 2-0 in conference play.

Half the team travelled to Pella, Iowa, where the Norse downed Simpson College (Iowa) 9-0 and then Central College (Iowa) 6-3, in a more competitive match.

The Luther men’s basketball team used a trip north to heat up their offense and end a two-game skid. After tallying only 51 points in each of their last two games, the Norse’s offensive erupted en route to a 70-50 rout at North Central College (Minn.) last Saturday.

Luther alumnus Matthew Busche (‘07), now a professional cyclist, has soared to the top of the sport, becoming the newest hire on Lance Armstrong’s team RadioShack, one of the world’s most closely watched teams.

The Luther College Men’s Swimming Team is no stranger to success. For the past six years, the Norse have been the Liberal Arts Champions, and have had the Men’s IIAC champion during the same span.

As the weather cools, things are heating up for the Luther College wrestling team. While this year’s squad is fairly young, Head Coach Dave Mitchell has a positive outlook for the season.

It has been a year of firsts for the women’s volleyball team, as Head Coach Jane Gibbs was named IIAC Coach of the Year while leading her team to their first ever appearance in the NCAA Division III National Tournament.

After many of the home football games this fall, the field has looked more like a mud hole than a playing field. With deep ruts and stomped out and faded yard lines across the field, it is a wonder that the field is transformed back into a playable surface for the next home game. Due to an unusually wet season this fall, the grounds crew had to maintain the field more than past seasons. How is the field nursed back to health and who brings the field back to life for each home game?

Fall 2009 has proved an exciting time in the world of Norse athletics with three teams finishing at the top of the conference so far. Already Luther’s fall sports teams have posted conference championships in women’s tennis, women’s soccer and men’s cross country, all three teams attributing their success to a strong group effort by each member of their team.

Soccer players Ashley Meirick (‘10), Dani Meirick (‘12) and Adam Pyzdrowski (‘10) were all named ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District VII as first-team and third-team selections. Sisters Ashley and Dani were placed in the third-team selection, while Pyzdrowski earned first-team selection, which is chosen from eight regions and then moves onto the Academic All-American ballot.