BASKETBALL CROWDS SHATTER RECORDS IN HANOVER
The following article from The Dartmouth may be of interest to alumni as indicating the estate to which basketball has grown at Dartmouth.
The crowd of 2200 undergraduates and townspeople which jammed its way into Alumni Gymnasium to witness the Dartmouth-Columbia basketball game which opened the . Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League season of 1922, established one of the: most important and interesting records of many years in college athletic circles.
The undergraduate enrollment of Dartmouth numbers 2014 men; the population of the village of Hanover, including professors and persons in the employ of the College, is a trifle over 1300. By a single bit of mathematical figuring, therefore, the bleachers in Alumni Gymnasium at the Dartmouth-Columbia contest held approximately two-thirds of the entire population of Hanover—students and townspeople, men, women and children.
In other words, unless statistics are undeserving of their reputation for truth, almost every person within the village limits was present in the gymnasium excepting only those too old or too young to walk, those under the dominion of the curfew law, those in the hospital, and those necessary to keep the home fires burning.
Just four years ago, the span of one college generation, a Dartmouth basketball team played through a schedule of 30 games and emerged with a clean record of 30 defeats and no victories, thereby capping the climax of a 10-year period in which basketball in Hanover had been so uninteresting and unimportant a sport that the crowds witnessing games in the gymnasium were scarcely larger than those attending such minor exhibitions as gymnasium meets.
There was no basketball team at Dartmouth in 1919, for following the conclusion of the war the confusion attendant upon changing the College over from a war-time to a normal basis prevented the resumption of intercollegiate athletic relations until spring.
In 1920, however, the first glimmering of a distinct change was noted. Dartmouth did not have a successful court season, nor one that could by the most optimistic undergraduate be described in any way as evenly remotely successful; but the attendance at the games was larger than in previous years and there was a noticeable increase of interest in the sport.
The Dartmouth quintet that year won five games of 25 played, defeating Middlebury, Brown, Norwich, New Hampshire State, and finally Columbia, the latter the only Dartmouth victory of the intercollegiate league. Meanwhile the freshman basketball team, upon which Coach George Zahn, who had just come to Hanover, was spending most of his time, was defeated but twice in its schedule of eight games, and reached a high spot in winning over the strong Exeter team by a score of 52 to 27.
Last year Dartmouth's basketball team was the surprise of the East, emerging after years in the cellar to battle with the strong University of Pennsylvania five for the leadership of the intercollegiate league and finishing in second place; having defeated Yale, Columbia, and Cornell each twice, and Princeton once.
Meanwhile the freshman class produced another speedy aggregation, which was beaten but once. Basketball temperature at Dartmouth jumped about 9 degrees and the huge floor of Alumni Gymnasium was crowded to the last available square by enthusiastic spectators.
Profiting by several experiences last year, when basketball crowds were so large as to necessitate the building of many additional bleachers, the Dartmouth Athletic Council has this year provided the new floor in the east wing of the gymnasium.
On all sides of the new court bleachers have been erected for spectators, and on the board running track circling three sides of the wing and 15 feet above the court have been placed additional bleachers until the scene in the east wing at the time of the basketball game is now reminiscent of last July 4 at Mr. Boyle's celebrated 30 acres. Two thousand seats were provided for the Dartmouth-Columbia basketball game, and 200 persons were forced to stand.
The seating capacity has now been increased to 2500 and can further be increased to over 3000 if that number of seats should be necessary. With such figures at hand, the place of basketball at Dartmouth as second only to football in undergraduate interest and esteem cannot be disputed, and it is the growth and development of such interest and esteem in the short space of two years that appears to constitute a new world's record.
The Dartmouth team of 1922 is a combination that is receiving considerable attention. It is a team upon which the interests in basketball development throughout the country and particularly in Hanover, may well center for it represents the first formidable quintet developed at Dartmouth in over a decade. Three members of the team are juniors and were stars of the 1919 freshman team, two are sophomores who figured prominently in the 1920 freshman season. At the same time there is being developed in Hanover another powerful freshman team, whose members will be available for the varsity next year.
