Junior Dave Albrecht isn’t exactly what you would call lucky. He is, however, the definition perseverance. For just under three years, he has sweated, hustled and battled hard, only to receive second place in every intramural event he entered. Until now.

Albrecht broke his second place “curse” in intramurals last month when he and his partner, junior Mason Lundy won the doubles racquetball tournament.

The Simpsonian talked to Albrecht last fall when he was in the heart of his losing streak. He says now that he had so many second places finishes, in fact, that he has some trouble recalling how many he had accumulated.

“Well, I stopped keeping perfect count after about a dozen,” Albrecht said. “I’d ballpark it at about 14 or 15. I picked up a few more after the last article.”

Lundy offered a little bit of insight to Albrecht’s second place curse, and also some insight to Albrecht’s competitive fire.

“I did know about his second place curse because I was actually on a couple of his second place teams,” Lundy said. “He [Albrecht] is a very competitive guy who loves to win at anything.”

Lundy continued to talk about what Albrecht was like before the championship match.

“I know Dave fairly well and I would say that he was himself, which means he was very calm and talkative just like normal,” Lundy said. “If he was nervous I didn’t notice one bit. The only time that I noticed he was getting a little bit nervous was when we were in the last game to win it all. He messed up on a shot and kept on apologizing to me because we were down to the very last points but I just told him, ‘We’re good man, don’t worry about it.'”

Albrecht talked about what was going through his head before the last game in a best of three series for the win.

“Well, Mason and I played really well the first game, and it was best of three so I knew we just had to hold out,” Albrecht said. “We lost our second game, however, and I was thinking ‘here we go again, get close and then lose it.’ Lucky for me I had a solid partner in Mase so we were able to take the third game and the match.”

Albrecht spoke very highly of the second place finishers, seniors Matt Cope and Lucas Kramer. And said there was even some friendly banter between the two teams in the last match.

“Cope and Kramer were ridiculously good at returning everything, which made every point exhausting whether we won or not,” Albrecht said. “There was no trash talking, actually more joking when one of us would whiff or someone would pull some amazing kill shot.”

Since Kramer didn’t realize that Albrecht had the second place curse until after the match was over, that left some of the nerves out of the final match. Instead, it was full of the usual tension and anxiety.

“After the match was over, Dave’s reaction was pretty subdued and I didn’t realize that this was his first intramural title,” Kramer said. “He seemed exhausted as the result of some pretty terrific volleys throughout the match.”

Lundy also talked about the competition they had to go through to get to the finals.

“We only had to play one match to get into the championship but that game was tough,” Lundy said. “I think there are a lot more people at Simpson that play racquetball than I realized. There are a lot of good players.”

Lundy said he enjoyed helping Albrecht get his first intramural win, but said it wasn’t all about the win.

“I felt very good after getting Dave his first shirt,” Lundy said. “The best part about it was just hanging out with him. He is so much fun to be around, and winning was even better.”