Early Predictions for the 2024-25 Season

Editor’s Note: These predictions were written in August 2024, but were lost until this week. We have decided to publish them despite their current tardiness.

It’s never too early to guess the success of our marvelous Mammoths, so here are some of my predictions for Amherst College sports in the 2024-2025 season. As an experienced and skilled sports analyst, I strongly believe that all of these predictions will come true by the time the 2024-2025 season comes to a close.

Starting in the fall, it’ll be a big year for soccer. The women’s soccer team looked really promising last season, and it’ll easily transfer over into this season. I predict that they’ll face a few hiccups, probably tying somewhere around six games overall and losing one match. Charlotte Huang ’25, Mika Fisher ’24, and Ella Johnson ’26 will play and start in every game for the Mammoths. I know for a fact that this team will go all the way to the NESCAC Championship and, after a tightly contested match, will win the whole tournament. In terms of who will lead the squad, the seasoned veteran Abby Schwartz ’24 and rookie Caroline Coletti ’28 will tie for the most goals on the team.

For the men’s side, glory is theirs to claim this year. After a disappointing loss to St. Olaf’s College in the NCAA Championship, they will find the character and determination to bounce back. There will definitely be some bumps in the road, potentially losing to opponents like Williams and Tufts. The season will not be dictated by that, though, as Mohammed Nuhu ’27 will have an insane season, leading the Mammoths in goals and assists. Amherst will have a sad loss in the first round of the NESCAC Tournament against a team like Connecticut College. The team, as determined as ever, will use the loss to propel themselves through the NCAA Tournament. They will reach the final and face off against Conn College. The team will enact their revenge by winning the championship in penalty kicks, with an experienced player like Simon Kalinauskas ’25 stepping up and slotting the winning goal into the back of the net.

Besides soccer, there will be many successes for each team. Harrison Dow ’27 will have another dominant season on the men’s cross country team, performing the best out of all the Mammoths. As an expert, I predict that he’ll place 47th in the NCAA Championships and lead Amherst to place 20th overall in the nation. For the women’s cross country team, I have a feeling about first-year Flora Biro ’28. She will make her presence known on the cross country scene, becoming the top finisher for the team in the NCAA Championships and placing around 45th.

Everyone’s been asking me: Joey, how is the football season going to go? Well, let me tell you. They will begin the season with two dominant wins, Luke Harmon ’26 will get five interceptions and three sacks on the year, and Marek Hill ’28 will get to start for the Mammoths in the latter half of the season. No basements or walls on campus will be destroyed during the season. Many successes that the team can build on.

Field hockey and volleyball will have decent seasons, but will have struggles against teams like Tufts, Bates, Bowdoin, and Williams. Field hockey will make the NESCAC Tournament, but the evil Tufts will use dark magic to win against Amherst. Molly Donegan ’26 will lead the team in goals without recording an assist on the season. Sam Maynard ’25, on the other hand, will lead the team with six assists. Olivia Tennant ’27 will become an Assistant Opinion Editor. Volleyball will have a mixed bag of in-conference results, but the individual performances will be grand. Charlotte Rasmussen ’25 will record roughly 192 kills on the season, while Renee Liou ’26 will garner an absurd amount of assists, something around 687 if I were to guess.

For some winter predictions now, I’d say the women’s hockey team will be even greater than this past year. We’ll definitely have some losses against maybe Colby College and Middlebury College. Like the men’s soccer team, however, they will come with some vengeance come time for the NESCAC Tournament. We will come in as the first overall seed, make quick work over a weak team like Connecticut College, and then get an impressive win in the NESCAC Championship against Middlebury. In the NCAA Tournament, it’s clear that we will come up against Colby and make them look like amateurs, winning the game 4-1. We will demolish Middlebury once more this season in the NCAA semi-final match. In the NCAA Championship, Amherst will play the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and rookie Bea Flynn ’28 will score.

The men’s track & field team will set multiple program records, as first-year Gavin Schmidt ’28 will dominate the shot put, Alec Kuzyk ’27 will pole vault over 4.75m, Cody Pierce ’26 will run the 200m dash in less than 22 seconds, and Jordan Harrison ’26 will have a sub-seven-second 60m dash time. Piper Lentz ’26 of the women’s track & field team will also set a new record for the 600m, and Héloïse Hughes ’27 will run the 200m dash in a program-record sub-25 seconds.

For the other teams, I will provide bits and pieces of their success that advanced metrics have shown me. Both basketball teams will have overwhelming wins over Williams. Maeve Kelley ’27 and Sydney Bluestein ’25 will be First Team All-Americans in their respective swimming and diving competitions. The squash teams will be nationally ranked. Nothing all too surprising.

With that, these are my predictions for the upcoming 2024-2025 season. I will need more time to analyze the potential outcomes for the spring season, but I know my fall and winter analysis should age well as we grow closer to the beginning of the year. Let me know how I did once the seasons pass, and look forward to my spring analysis coming in a few months.

Editor’s Note: This is a satirical article written for April Fool’s.