It’s time for a pop quiz just to make sure all the sports fans out there (both of you?) have been paying attention. Pull out the No. 2 pencils and put away the smart phones.
Question 1: The Middlebury Union High School boys’ hockey team won Division II championships in 2011 and 1996. What did the title games have in common?
Question 2: Derek Bartlett coached the 2011 Tiger ice hockey championship team. Who was the 1996 coach?
Question 3: OK, here’s a break, multiple choice. Which coach has won the most of the following:
Bill Beaney, Middlebury College, NCAA D-III men’s hockey titles.
Gail Jette, MUHS, Vermont D-I field hockey titles.
Mary Stetson, Mount Abraham, Vermont D-II field hockey titles.
Question 4: Two-part question about Gail Jette:
What is unusual about more than half of her championships?
Vermont field hockey rules were changed in part because of what happened in Gail’s final game as a coach. Why?
Question 5: What do the winning pitchers in the 2017 D-II baseball final and the 2014 D-II softball final have in common?
Question 6: Two-part question involving recently retired Mount Abraham soccer coach Mike Corey:
A. Corey and current Vergennes boys’ basketball coach Peter Quinn both coached boys’ teams to titles in 2013. What else do they have in common?
B. What do Corey’s 2005 championship team and Eagle girls’ basketball coach Connie LaRose’s 2018 championship team have in common?
Question 7: Panther women’s hockey coach Bill Mandigo has a singular distinction among his fellow coaches, past and present. What is it?
Question 8: In which sport has MUHS historically won the most titles?
Question 9: Who is the only four-time winner of an Addison Independent Player of the Year honor? Hint: This athlete won a title in a different sport.
Question 10: Another multiple Independent Player of the Year was Commodore hoop player Jesse Epstein. Epstein briefly competed for money in a different sport after his college years. What was it?
Bonus Multiple Choice Question: Bobby Orr was:
The greatest hockey player ever.
Owner of the greatest per-game and career plus-minus numbers in NHL history.
A deity walking among mortals.
All of the above.
ANSWERS:
The Tigers won both games in overtime.
Neil Sinclair. Bonus points for remembering his lucky Australian outback hat.
Jette 9, Beaney 8, Stetson 7 and counting.
A. Most of Gail’s championship games ended in ties and team were declared co-champions. As recently as 1998, when the Tigers settled for a 1-1 stalemate with Spaulding, ties were final if neither team scored in overtime.
B. Gail’s last game was a historic, seven-overtime playoff loss to Brattleboro in which the Colonels drove back to Middlebury to win in the final extra session. Rules were soon changed to create seven-on-seven overtimes followed by penalty strokes to break ties.
5. Both were Otter Valley victories, and the winning pitchers were siblings, Derek and Taylor Aines, who earned complete-game baseball and softball wins, respectively.
6. A. Both Corey and Quinn also coached VUHS girls’ teams to championships. Before Corey went to Mount Abe he led the 1983 Commodore girls’ soccer team to the D-II title. Quinn coached the 2005 and 2006 VUHS girls’ hoop championship teams.
B. Corey’s son Keil played on his 2004 championship team, and LaRose’s granddaughter Emma played on her title team this March.
7. Mandigo’s teams have won more games (541) than those of any other college women’s hockey coach.
8. Girls’ skiing, with 16. The answer probably deserves an asterisk, according to MUHS AD Sean Farrell, because in the 1970s and earlier Nordic and alpine disciplines were combined. Still, the Nordic team has won at least six outright.
9. MUHS senior Keagan Dunbar for girls’ basketball, sharing the award twice, most recently with Eagle Emma Carter. Dunbar played defense for the 2017 championship Tiger girls’ lacrosse team.
10. Epstein competed in golf long-driving contests.
11. Those who didn’t answer D flunked the quiz.