Despite their appalling record, however, the Reefs had their first spectator of the season: the department’s beloved Bayesian Master’s student, Delaney Hicks, so enthralled by all the softball updates that she needed to see the team play for herself.
IOF loses 17-9 to Psychology
Softball. Image by Amanda Powers from Pixabay
It should be noted that the IOF softball fan club that existed in previous years has dwindled significantly, despite coach Kristen’s persistent efforts to recruit members. When asked about the lack of game attendance (by both spectators and players, to be clear), former Reefs super-fan, Ambre Soszynski commented, “maybe if you tell them it’s yet another party for Andreas Novotny, people would actually go to the game.” Luckily we didn’t though, or else player, not co-captain, Jake Lerner wouldn’t have shown up.
Despite their appalling record, however, the Reefs had their first spectator of the season: the department’s beloved Bayesian Master’s student, Delaney Hicks, so enthralled by all the softball updates that she needed to see the team play for herself.
The team was lean this week, but the nine players gave it everything they had. One newcomer, Elaine “FishBase” Chu, who hasn’t shown up all season because the team refused the Sea Around Us sponsorship this year (which came, in past years, in the form of ill-fitting t-shirts with the Sea Around Us logo), decided maybe she could make a difference in the Reef’s record (hate to break it to you Elaine, the Reefs have a semi-pro baseball player on their team, and even he couldn’t help them win).
The first few innings were tough for the Reefs, shutout after shutout, and barely anyone got on base – it seems Coach Kristen’s algorithm for setting the batting lineup isn’t cutting it, hopefully someone asks her about the model behind that in her upcoming defense. “What the El” Roocroft noted, “we’re just off to a languid start this week, kind of like my PhD…”
Like every kitchen space in AERL, the Reefs outfield fell prey to the tragedy of the commons, and the Psychotics, as bold as a gen-z intern, aimed all their hits at Haley “I couldn’t catch a ball if my life depended on it” Oleynik.
Dana “pay the” Price, the IOF’s employee of the month for saving coffee hour not once but twice when other grad students forgot to pick up the Tim Horton’s order, was still stewing about the fact that a reptile stole Quatse the sea otter’s thunder in the recent IOF bottle drive, and couldn’t catch any of the pop-ups behind home base.
Going into the last inning, the Reefs had [a very sad] 1 point. When faced with the decision to end the game early or play one last inning, Yixuan Chen, feeling as down as she does when she thinks too hard about bottom trawling, started packing up her bags. But suddenly, right when the Reefs were at their lowest, one of the Psychotics yelled out, “hey, you’re oceanographers, right?” (this was met with some hesitant ‘yeses’ but mostly murmurs of ‘not really’), “then, do you know what a Portuguese man o’ war is?” With that, a fire was lit beneath the Reefs, and they agreed to play a final, no mercy inning.
The Reefs proceeded to get run after run, scorekeeper Zeyu Zeng couldn’t tally the points up fast enough (next time the data collection tasks will go to a field scientist, not a modeler). Hsiao, who I think qualified for the 500 m dash in the Paris Olympics during his run, brought the team home. In this final inning, the Reefs scored 8 points. This windfall, akin to Anna and Jake’s latest anchovy fishing trip (these two are the only real oceanographers on the team, they’ll have you know), brought their score to a much more respectable, 9 points.
Spectator Delaney, who was illegally recruiting for the IOF volleyball team on the sideline, reported after the game, “I’d rather watch my WinBUGS model run than sit through an embarrassing loss like that again.”
Editor’s note: if you’re wondering why two weeks have passed with no softball update: it’s difficult for us to hire witty sports writers these days, we don’t have the admin budget the department seems to have…
The Reefs take on the Chemistry Beerettes next week, same time, same place!