Big Green Teams
Basketball and Hockey Clubs Remain in Title Fights Underdog Ski Team Wins Glory in Carnival Meet
THE MAN WHO huddled in the corner of his home and expectantly waited for his roof to fall down on him in one piece had nothing on the Dartmouth sports fans this past month. With each contest Indian fans have placed both hands above their heads to ward off the falling debris of collapse from championship standings, but so far only a few rafters have conked us on the head and the thrill of suspense remains.
One of the major beams that landed with a thunderous thud was Dartmouth's loss to Princeton in the Davis rink immediately following the long examination layoff. The Tigers gave it to the Indians, 7-3, in masterful fashion, and the near-capacity throng went out into the cold night thoroughly convinced that they had witnessed not only the downfall of Dartmouth's history making record of 15 consecutive Quad League victories, 13 of them under Jeremiah's coaching, but also the finish to the Green's aspirations for a 1940 title.
Seven days later the Green bounced back with a Carnival win over Harvard that left hockey fandom speechless and also in a quandary as to what to expect for the remainder of the season. As a matter of fact, the Princeton game was the easier of the two contests to understand, for it takes no hockey wiseman to see that Jerry is limited in material this winter. Against Harvard the Green looked like the Bruins, or the Rangers depending on your citizenship papers, and Captain Danny Sullivan was, to use a new word, sensational. He personally accounted for five of the Green's eight goals, four of them scored without assists. The Crimson foe, beaten by Dartmouth earlier in the campaign, 5-4 in an overtime, either collapsed momentarily or Dartmouth played up to its traditional brilliance before a Carnival house.
Perhaps, if one wished to be technical, some explanation could be derived from the fact that Harvard attempted to send four men down the ice when short handed and five men down the ice most of the encounter after Fred Maloon's opening goal. It proved to be poor strategy, or maybe just costly strategy. Anyhow, when the Green, with Sullivan doing most of it, sneaked jumps down the ice, the Crimson defense lacked the speed to recover, and Dartmouth and Sullivan scored. Nor do we wish to convey the impression that men in the penalty box led to the Crimson route, for the Green scored with Indians in the cooler. Sophomore Ted Lapres, whose goaltending has been a major factor in the stiff fight the Jeremiahmen have put up to stay in a League that seems over their heads this winter, took the ice out from under the Crimson time after time with a performance that slates him to be another Wes Goding with another year of experience. Jeremiah has also developed his sophomore line of John Brooks, Pete Keir and Doug Riley into a sound defensive unit that appeared to be capable of holding the opposition with close checks while Sullivan, Maloon and Mai Cross rested the Dartmouth scoring punch on the bench.
With two games with Yale remaining and a return match with Princeton ahead, the prospects for a championship look doubtful, but not beyond hope if the Harvard tilt was a true indication of the Dartmouth team.
On the basketball court the Big Green has improved to the point where the fans are comparing the 1940 team with the crown-winning quintets of 1938 and 1939. Certainly at the outset of the season any comparison of this sort would have been the height of foolishness, but now it has its points. Today the Green has four of its first team members in the top six scorers of the League, and if that ain't balance then we never saw a seal bounce a ball on his nose. Gus Broberg leads the League and his mates in scoring with 82 points. Tied for second with Bennett of Cornell at 62 points is center Jim Sullivan, in third position with 59 points is sophomore Stubby Pearson, and in sixth place stands another sophomore, Bill Parmer, with 51 points. This is not only a fine individual record, but the team tally of five wins and one setback has put the Green out front in the championship struggle.
There are so many angles to the basketball situation that it rates several feature articles all by its lonesome. The story of Sullivan's comeback is one of them. Rated as a top performer as a freshman, out of basketball his sophomore year and a bench warmer behind Moose Dudis as a junior, Sullivan was not considered too highly in December, nor could he be, for he was a senior rookie. Once back in harness as a regular, Sullivan has reached stardom far above the fondest dreams of the fans. It is interesting to recall that Ossie Cowles said earlier in the campaign, "I think that Sullivan needs confidence in himself more than anything else, and the only way I know to foster his confidence is to put him in the first lineup, leave him there come what may, and let him work it all out for himself." It surprised many people hereabouts when Sully kept ahead of Pearson for the first-string center post, but then Cowles juggled his few men about to make room for Pearson in the lineup at left forward, and the act was no sooner done when Pearson broke forth with a rash of scoring that made him look much more capable as a forward than he had ever looked as a center.
This coaching move also gave the team balance up forward that it had lacked following Vin Else's injury during the Christmas vacation. Incidentally Else is now back, carefully strapped and ready to go as a substitute, so that the Green is once more blessed with reserve strength.
Parmer's varsity career has likewise been one of the surprises of the present season. Unable to make his first freshman team, Parmer has held down the right guard position as Captain Bob White's partner from the opening game, and he's done all right, thank you. The best set shot in the League for my money, his 51 points from deep court have been pure gravy. The season has also proven that it does not pay the Dartmouth opponents to spend so much of their time and energy watching Bro- berg. Columbia beat the Green in New York through its policy of ignoring the scoring punch of all but Broberg, but after one lesson the Indians have scalped and otherwise trimmed those opponents who have adopted the defensive policy of "stop Broberg." Even this has not been too successful, since the big Swede is out in the lead for scoring honors and will, with luck of any kind, break his own mark of 159 points as a sophomore.
At this time we would also like to put in our dime's worth about the practice now going on among the officials of showing their courage by calling fouls right and left on Gus and tossing him out of the games with a great show of impartiality. Nobody ever questioned any E. I. L. referee's honesty as far as we know, so why they have to go out of their way to prove it by calling personals on Gus that no other League player would be called for, is more than we can understand. Gus, of all the players in the League, is a scrapper, a team player, and as rugged as they come. But his play is clean, if fast; sportsmanlike, if competitive; and if the officials desire to take all contact out of the game, all well and good. However it should go for all concerned and not merely for one individual who has probably done more for Ivy League basketball than a carload of those who can commit mayhem and get away with it. Furthermore, we have a lot more respect for opponents who try their best to guard Broberg well and thus stop him, than we have for opponents who feel that by getting Gus tossed out of a game on fouls, Dartmouth can be beaten. We could amplify this in more detail, but it is probably plain enough as is, and pointed enough, we hope.
As much as the quintet has surprised its followers, the victory of the Dartmouth ski team at Carnival matches it for dark horse performance. The meet itself will go down in the books as the best intercollegiate ski competition in the three decades of Dartmouth's famed winter sports event, as well as the Dartmouth ski team's first uphill fight in the underdog role.
For two days the Big Green skiers swapped skill for skill with McGill and New Hampshire, and when the fourth competitive event, the jumping, took place on Saturday afternoon, the Green could claim a lead of only 11/2 points. Here was pressure skiing of the like that intercollegiate skiing seldom presents, and never could present in recent years when the Green overpowered its rivals with a roundup of the best talent in America.
The largest crowd in Carnival's history gathered at the big jump not only to witness the skill and courage of the competitors, but also to be in on the team outcome that hung in the balance. Together the two attractions gave a spice to college skiing that is all to the good of the sport. What is more, the final results proved that Dartmouth can be expected to go right on winning its share of meets with or without all of the top stars.
On Friday morning, at the end of the downhill, it was obvious that the 1940 Carnival was going to offer intense rivalry. Bobby Clark of New Hampshire won the downhill on Moose Mountain, andMcGill, with Doug Mann second, Bob Town send fourth and Fred Moore ninth, won the team score. Dartmouth, three points behind, finished in third place behind New Hampshire, thanks to Charlie McLane's sixth, Bob Skinner's seventh, and Chappy Wentworth's eleventh.
In the long 81/2-mile cross-country test around the slopes of Balch, over the top of Oak, around Fullerton's hill, and back to the golf course, Dartmouth condition and Dartmouth stamina as developed by hard work and Walter Prager's coaching skill enabled the Green to show its heels to the pack. Captain Percy Rideout burned around the course for first place in a fraction over one hour flat. Behind him Cris Mamen of McGill placed second, McLane third, and Bill Halsey fourth. McLane, veteran langlaufer, turned in a run that was far from unexpected. Halsey's feat ranks as an all-time highlight of Dartouth skiing. Here was a lad who learned his skiing in the few years that he has been in college. Here was a boy whom Prager developed from scratch, and here was at least one example to prove that making the Carnival ski team can be the reward for long hours of practice, hard work and ambition, and that it is not true that only the boy fortunate enough to have skied as soon as he walked can hope to make, the Green team. On the next afternoon he was to prove even more worthy of the honor Prager bestowed upon him-but we'll get to that in due time.
As the officials and the press duly recorded on Friday night, Dartmouth led McGill at the end of the first day and the first two events by .2 of a point. The langlauf had removed the slack from the downhill results, but it was either team's win from there to the finish.
On Oak Hill before a record throng of spectators, Mann of the Redmen put up a typically gallant McGill fight by taking the event with two fine exhibitions of controlled skiing. It was then the turn of Ed Little to put his oar in for the Green cause. Disappointed on Friday because he had fallen in the downhill and placed his teammates in a dangerous position, Little more than made up for his accident by taking second in the slalom. Townsend of McGill made it a catch-as-catch-can event by placing third. McLane kept the McGill-Dartmouth order going by winning the fourth post, but Skinner broke up the combination and annexed the fifth spot for Dartmouth. With it went a slight team win that nosed the Green out front by ½ point as the competitors left for the jumping.
The Green had one "unknown" in the event, sophomore Roger Simpler, who was placed on the eight-man team purely as a jumping specialist. Dartmouth knew he was good, but this was his first Carnival appearance, and his first test under such circumstances. When Simpter had finished the partisan Dartmouth crowd took a deep breath and Simpter took second in the jumping. Rideout, veteran jumper and ace of the combined men in college ranks, completed his two jumps successfully, and al-though it was not known at the time that he had finished fifth, it was known that he had done well. Two men out of the way and three to go. McLane relieved the pressure of any mishap to the team scoring when his second jump was concluded and Dunford served as insurance against any great upset in the combined when he concluded his jumps with fair enough points to win a good combined ratin?
Finally, as the last of the competitors concluded their second jumps, down the runway and out into the air came Halsey and as he landed well down the hill and coasted swiftly out to the end of his landing run, the crowd roared its approval. For Halsey had combined his first jump a great second performance that gave him third in the jumping behind Gignac and Simpter and afforded him fourth place in the combined behind Rideout, Mamen of McGill, and teammate McLane. With Halsey's jump went all fears that the jumping or the combined would go to McGill, and Dartmouth wound up with 486.7 points to McGill's 468.2. Riding back on the bus from from the jump with the McGill team we couldn't help seeing their disappointment, nor did they try to conceal it. As one of their members said, "We have been hoping for many years to defeat Dartmouth, and this year with Durrance, Howard Chivers, John Litchfield and Ed Wells all gone, we came down here with our hopes higher than usual. We had never heard of Halsey or Simpter, and Little surprised us in the slalom. But the I. S. U. meet next month will be another story, wait and see."
There is one thing to be said about skiing. Dartmouth couldn't ask for finer fellows to have a rivalry with than those from McGill. In all sports, major and minor, Dartmouth meets no better opponents year after year than the men McGill sends out to represent her in skiing. Dartmouth's ski team will always do its very best to defeat McGill in skiing, but it will never fail to have respect for McGill's ability or McGill's ambition that will some day be realized, possibly at the coming I. S. U. meet.
During the Carnival Dartmouth lost only one varsity competition—to Princeton in swimming, 38-37. That Karl Michael has brought his team up to the point where any one of the Big Three has trouble beating Dartmouth is a great feather in his cap and a much longer tale that we have room for. Nevertheless, Karl has made a tremendous start this year and we salute his job wholeheartedly if necessarily briefly.
Baseball has also started for the pitchers and catchers. The Quadrangular track meet will be history by the time you read this. Dartmouth's annual invitation track meet performers will soon be announced and a brilliant card it will be, too. The greats in track will all be here, and Harry Hillman promises more records will fall some place along the line. Spring football is around the corner; squash, gymnastics, crew, fencing, boxing, and wrestling are all at full swing. Otherwise, Hanover's a very quiet place—swell place to sit back and relax as the boys say, but not in athletics.
DARTMOUTH'S LEAGUE-LEADING BASKETBALL TEAM Standing, left to right, Gus Broberg '41, Captain Bob White '40, Jim Sullivan '40, StubPearson '42, Bill Parmer '42; front row, Bob Fitch '42, Vin Else '41, Jack Horner '41,Bud Pogue '42, Lou Young '41.
RAISING STANDARD OF DARTMOUTH SQUASH PLAY Members of Coach "Red" Hoehn's varsity squash team which is having a successful sea-son include (front row, left to right) Bob Raclin '40, Powell Holbein '40, Captain JohnCrandell '40, Nick Turkevich '40, Dick Remsen '42, (back row) Coach Hoehn, RogerSands '41, Art Hills '41, Bill Squier '40, Chet Jones '42, and Art Leopold '41.
