As our 2023 Wesleyan Varsity Football came to a close, unsatisfied, the players who the 2024 team would consist of, began looking at the daunting first two opening games of the next season. The 2024 football campaign started off with Wesleyan playing two of our division rivals: Middlebury & Tufts. With a general sense of uncertainty, the team ended up traveling five hours up to Vermont and blowing out the defending champs at their school to send an opening statement. In the subsequent week, we played the Tufts football team as our home opener, dominating the game to put the NESCAC league on notice that Wesleyan was a top contender. Feeling pretty much on top of the world, the next week and game against Bates ended up being a different story.
In week three, playing against Bates, a team we hadn’t lost to in over fifteen years straight, we ended up losing horrifically to a team we were clearly better than. Lack of preparation, care, and focus resulted in us losing and “almost”, throwing away our chances of winning a NESCAC championship. To elaborate, for football in the NESCAC, generally, you only really have a solid shot of winning the league if you only lose one game or go undefeated. Losing two games and winning undisputed is unheard of.
So, with our one loss only three weeks into the season with the better half of the league ahead of us, the team and each player had to make a decision: give up on our hopes of winning the league, or tighten our bootstraps and, with our backs against the wall, play the next six games to perfection. The captains brought our team together the next week after the loss, and articulated that our goals were still ahead of us; nothing had changed. The captains and the team’s determination and newly found focus, from then on, ended up carrying us to an undisputed championship for the first time in Wesleyan history.
