Following the Big Green Teams
THIS BEING the last effort of "Following the Big Green Teams" for the college year 1937-38, your correspondent has in mind wandering through the year from September to June while jotting down from time to time highlights and lowlights, if any, of a remarkable period in the history of Dartmouth athletics.
And to my mind, it has been a remarkable year for the Indian athletic teams, a year that compares with any in the past, and a year that may not be duplicated again for many seasons to come.
First of all there was the undefeated football eleven, the first since 1925. Unheralded, unexpected, and unbeaten, as a gridiron aggregation it was terrific, tops, and tremendous.
Starting slowly against Bates, Amherst and Springfield, the Green eleven first showed signs of its potentialities in the Brown game at Providence, and on the following Saturday somewhat stunned the football world by defeating a really fine Harvard eleven by three touchdowns in a whirlpool of mud and rain. It was Mr. Bill Hutchinson who stood out against the Crimson, and in one contest the young sophomore wrote his name in the Dartmouth football book in the space saved for unusual one-man field days.
At New Haven Bob MacLeod performed the feat of the day when he intercepted a Clint Frank pass and rolled through the entire Eli defense for a Green touchdown. Sophomore Phil Dostal did no harm when he place-kicked a long field goal for the 7th-Bth-and 9th Dartmouth points. Frank to Hessberg in the dying seconds of the game likewise wrote a dramatic chapter in the history of the year even though it was against the Green that it happened.
The Green then administered a sound beating to Princeton—the first gridiron victory for the Indians over the Tigers since 1913. Cornell in another rain storm, and a brilliant comeback drive for a touchdown by Fred Hollingworth. MacLeod and Colby Howe. Determination and refusal to accept defeat tells all the story of the Cornell-Dartmouth game.
A victory over Columbia climaxed the season and showed the Green team at the height of its development from game to game.
The fall season also saw Coach Harry Hillman produce a cross-country team that was crowned champions of the unofficial "Ivy League" group.
Going into the winter months, we look back on three championship teams—skiing, hockey and basketball. A victorious ski team was not by any stretch of the imagination unexpected, but even at that the perfect 500-point Carnival victory which the lads in Green amassed against the German team was no mean accomplishment.
Now into the spring season. At this writing Coach Tommy Dent's Indian lacrosse team has yet to lose a New England League contest, and from a record of the scores the Green has made to date, nothing short of a startling upset in the last League match with Springfield can stop the Dentmen from winning the New England League lacrosse pennant in six straight victories. Lacrosse has never been a major sport attraction in Hanover before this year, but 1938 has seen the sport grow in popularity and repute until it has definitely become a sport of major proportions.
In track, Dartmouth this spring defeated Harvard for the first time since 1911. The Green did not meet the Crimson from 1912 to 1923, but the initial triumph in 16 tries was easy to take and gratifying from the standpoint of a Dartmouth track fan. The Indian spikesters also made it an undefeated dual-meet outdoor season by handily downing Holy Cross on the Saturday following the Harvard meet. The men of Coach Hillman haven't the outstanding stars in sufficient number to cut a wide figure in the Heptagonal meet or the IC4A's, but we can't see how this means so very much as long as the Green can offer a presentable array for its dual meets where effort all along the line counts so much.
LACROSSE LEADERS Fred Pickering (left) and Captain HayikMolloy who played major roles in Dartmouth's highly successful lacrosse season.Both were on the 1937 All-American team.
