Two basketball players and a basketball coach reached milestones by the halfway point of the season.
Sam Poulis, a senior forward from Clifton, NJ., scored his 1,300th point, moving him into fourth place on the all-time scoring list. Poulis was averaging more than twenty-two points a game and twice scored thirty-seven. Only eleven players have scored more than 1,000 points in their Union careers.
Andrea Pagnozzi, a senior guard from Cresskill, NJ., who averages eighteen points a game, became the second woman to score more than 1,000 points. By early February, her total was more than 1,200. She trails only Robin Romer '92, who scored 1,738 points.
Both Poulis and Pagnozzi had been named to the Upstate New York weekly honor roll several times by midseason.
Coach Bill Scanlon became the thirty-sixth active member of the Division III 300-win club when his Dutchmen beat Utica, 82-69, on December 12. Scanlon, in his twenty-second year of coaching at Union, had a record of 304233 as of early February.
Hockey
If one word could characterize a sports season, the word for the hockey team might be “frustrating.”
Despite outplaying opponents regularly, the Dutchmen had difficulty scoring and went through a 0-7-1 stretch in December and early January.
But when Union did break out of the slump, it picked a great time to do it, beating RPI 5-2 before a delighted home crowd and
out shooting the Engineers, forty-one to sixteen.
Later that month came
wins over Dartmouth (6-5) and St. Lawrence (6-0), a tie with Vermont (1-1), and a close loss to nationally-ranked Clarkson (42).
The Clarkson and St. Lawrence trip was especially heartening, coming only a few days after sophomore star Troy Stevens, of Coon Rapids, Minn., stunned his teammates by suddenly leaving college to sign a professional contract. Coach Bruce Delventhal said he was surprised by the player's decision and expressed “disappointment that he is forgoing his college education.”
Swimming
Both the women's and men's swimming teams continued to pile up wins.
By early February, each team was 6-2. Under Coach Susan Bassett, the women are 62-10 in dual meets and won two state championships, while the men are 41-20 and finished second and third in the last two state meets.
The major point scorer for the men has been sophomore Kevin Makarowski, of Washington Mills, N.Y., who twice this season won three races in a meet. Sophomore Jackie Crane, of Danville, Pa., won two races in four separate meets.
Track
Senior Rich Pulver, of Hudson Falls, N.Y., led the track team with impressive performances in the shot put. With a throw of 51' 10″, he qualified for the NCAA meet in March; last year he finished ninth nationally.