Big Green Teams
Spring Teams Produce Highly Successful Sports Record; Golf and Lacrosse Titles Taken, Tennis Strong
FOR JUNE ALUMNI MAGAZINE copy there is always the double surprise that (i) another copy deadline has sneaked up from behind, and (a) that it is the last fullfledged effort of another college year for the sports section.
The athletic calendar that will soon be placed away in the files until next September- when a fresh start will be made—the war situation willing—has had more than its share of high spots and the usual number of disappointments and failures.
Some of the teams hit both extremes. The gridiron loss to Franklin and Marshall was a stunning reversal of expectations, the Cornell victory one of the most gratifying in football history from a Dartmouth standpoint. In between these two poles in results was a seventh straight victory over Harvard, a heartbreaking defeat to a really outclassed Princeton eleven, and a last game win over Brown through the medium of a brilliant first-half scoring spree.
Players who made football news for 1940 were Captain Lou Young Jr., ends Bob Krieger and John Kelley, tackles Monty Winship (whose late season presence in the lineup had much more to do with the change in fortunes than many fans realize) and Bob O'Brien, guards Dan Dacey (whose submarine charge on the goal line stopped Cornell's third running play a foot short of victory) and John Guenther, backs Don Norton and Ray Hall, and a handful of sophomores and juniors who have one and two years remaining to write their whole accomplishments into Dartmouth football lore. The fall also produced a strong cross-country squad led by Lee Trudeau and a capable soccer team captained by John Gidney.
Winter brought with it a fourth consecutive championship basketball quintet paced by Gustave "Swede" Broberg, a man who undoubtedly did as much for his athletic specialty as any man has ever done for a single sport in the history of the College. Gus was everything that an outstanding athlete could possibly be and his name will be connected with Dartmouth basketball talk as long as the sport survives. Three sophomores: Jim Olsen, Stan Skaug and George Munroe, were also leading lights. These men have even brighter individual futures ahead of them, as has junior Charles "Stubby" Pearson, captain-elect of football, captain-elect of basketball, Senior Fellow, and what else would you like listed in the way of honors and accomplishments?
Swimming under Coach Karl Michael continued to show improvement, with the close score of the Princeton meet indicative of the general advancement. The natators were not successful in realizing their burning ambition to beat Harvard in the water, but the gap is narrowing gradually and will soon disappear entirely, since it more than serves its purpose as the inspiration and goal of Big Green swimming in this sports era. Individuals who emerged above the average were Captain Dick Potter, who was one of the East's best in the 200 breaststroke; Jim O'Mara, who placed fifth in the backstroke in a quality field in the National Collegiate Championships; Dick Martens, whose third in the individual medley in the Easterns stamps him as one of the best all-round swimmers in the Ivy League; and Larry Noble, Rollie Wilhelmy, and Jack Storrs, all of whom aided the Indians as relay and freestyle competitors.
With material at its lowest ebb in his four seasons at the helm, Coach Eddie Jeremiah sat in the players' box while both Yale and Princeton downed his stickmen. The Dartmouths were a match only for Harvard in the Quad League, a far cry from the glory of three and four winters back when the Indians sped through the circuit with twelve straight League triumphs. However, a good freshman sextet headed by a brilliant forward line gave promise of better things for the future, so an outgoing tide was viewed calmly with the thought that once more high tide would return to Dartmouth hockey.
Indoor track made a comeback during the months of snow and a Hillman-coached squad swept through Bowdoin, Harvard, and New Hampshire in dual competition and placed well up in the indoor IC4A's at New York. Don Blount was the Mr. Big of the tracksters, scoring a double win in the high jump and broad jump to stamp himself as one of the top-notch stars of amateur track. He, with Andy Hunter, amassed the Big Green's total of 14 points at the intercollegiates.
With the arrival of an unusually early spring, prospects for a good season were expected. The results now in show that this was to be far from an ordinary season.
After a slow start that apparently dealt them a knockout blow in so short a competitive campaign, Coach Tommy Keane's varsity golf team reached undreamed-of heights when they gathered themselves together after a defeat from Harvard on May 3 and continued on undefeated through Yale, Williams, Holy Cross, a play-off tie with Harvard and Yale for the New England championships, and finally on Saturday, May 17, through Princeton, southern division champions, to the Eastern Intercollegiate Golf Association title. The final victory over the Tigers was decisive, 6~i/2 to 21/9. For Tommy and his boys it was the great thrill of bringing this cup back to the Davis Field House for the first time since 1918, and before commencement time local sports fans will properly fete Captain Bill Clark, Mel Figley, Harry Maxwell, Bill Martin, Bill Remsen, Stan Calder and Coach Keane for their uphill battle and ultimate success. For Dartmouth sports followers the victory was doubly enjoyable because Tommy Keane has long been considered one of Dartmouth's most likeable, least publicized and most talented mentors and everyone locally has realized for some time that a good spring would find Keane ready and waiting to surprise the College.
Another Tommy, this time Tommy Dent, gave this season another sparkling chapter when his lacrosse team trounced Yale on May 17 to win the New England League title. Nor was it just one championship0 that made the accomplishment so marked, for this is now the fourth straight year the Dartmouth lacrosse team has been found on the top of the roost, a feat that compares with the basketball titles won by the men of Coach Ossie Cowles. Coach Dent will not concede that this was his best of four title arrays, but a glance at the scores, 12-3 over Williams, 15-7 over Springfield, 12-0 over Tufts, 14-3 over Harvard, 13-3 over M. I. T., and 16-8 over Yale, would indicate that it must certainly be ranked the greatest offensive team of the golden years of Dartmouth lacrosse. What Gus Broberg was to three of the four cupsnatching quintets, Joe Wilder '42 and Doug Riley '42 have been to the last two lacrosse teams. In every one of the highscoring trouncings of league rivals, they have managed to put in four, five and even six goals consistently, and these products of the Maryland hotbed of lacrosse now belong among the select all-Americans of this old and roughest of all intercollegiate athletic get-togethers. No sport demands more stamina from its players, and few sports require greater physical ability to "take it," so lacrosse has gathered its following here in Hanover of recent years and as the public gets intelligent about the game it becomes more and more enthusiastic.
The tennis team under Coach "Red" Hoehn and Captain Stacy Hill has had a major hand in making this a highly successful spring season. After the spring trip, on which the Green netmen defeated V. M. I. and lost a close match to Navy, "Red" abandoned his usual caution and admitted that he wouldn't be surprised if Dartmouth had one of the best tennis teams in years. And that is just what happened. Aside from the 5-4 defeat at the hands of Joe Hunt and his Navy mates, the Indian netmen lost only to Princeton, 7 to 2. Between those two matches they swept through Harvard, Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, and Pennsylvania, and then resumed their victory march with wins over Columbia and Army to end the season. Those of us who have known about the wonderful job that "Red" has been doing in Hanover are pleased that his season turned out so well.
The disappointment of the spring has been the track team. It was expected on the basis of the winter meets that the Indians would be some pumpkins out of doors. A Harvard track squad that had received its worst pasting in track relationships between the two institutions in a February meet, turned around on May 10 to defeat Dartmouth, to 58%. There is only one outstanding explanation of this turnabout in track fortunes, it being the necessity on Hillman's part of asking for the suit of one of his best men, a sure tenpoint winner in dual meets and a scratch performer in invitation meets. It was a blow that smacked the Indians right in the mid-section and one that Hillman had the coaching maturity and judgment to make even though he knew at the time at what cost. Blount has continued to beat all comers in the high and broad jumps; his friend and closest competitor, Hunter, has followed with his valuable seconds. Sid Bull has been even better in the two miles than he was indoors, and Captain Dick Howard has come up to advance notices in the middle distances, but the loss of two firsts to the opposition has been an insurmountable handicap.
To balance this state of affairs, a Dartmouth nine that was considered a middleof-the-road aggregation has put its spikes deeply into the Ivy League baseball race with the possibility that the Commencement game with Cornell will settle the league race. Cornell, current leader, has two games remaining, both with Dartmouth. The Big Green nine that opened the season losing two of the first three league contests to Columbia and Princeton, only to turn around and lick Yale, Harvard and Columbia to reach a 4-and-2 victory rating, has Harvard at home and Yale at New Haven left on the schedule as well as a double header with Penn. Naturally, Dartmouth is still struggling uphill and Cornell has practically arrived, but the Indians have been playing far better than its fans had any right to expect and a continuation of this type of baseball will keep the Tesreaumen pressing the Big Red right to the finish wire. Dartmouth, if it defeats Cornell at Ithaca, will have the margin of one more defeat to set the stage for a chipsdown fray before the reuning alumni. Certainly no setting for a crucial college baseball contest could be more appropriate.
Spring football also entered and departed the spring scene with encouraging results. The final game scrimmage between the freshmen and the varsity ended in a 6-0 victory for the upperclassmen. The spectators who scattered through the cement stands to view the windup encounter will be perfectly satisfied if every game next fall packs as much interesting football. The varsity points came from a 65-yard runback of an intercepted pass by Ray Wolfe, who seemed to be taking up where he left off when Cornell was the opposition and he was toting back kickoffs and punts. Otherwise, honors were very even. First downs were split, eleven for the varsity and nine for the freshmen, John Krol for the varsity and Tommy Douglas for the yearlings held each other at bay with their punting skill, and passing honors in yardage went to the freshmen by a slight margin. Most pleasing to the gathered sideline quarterbacks was the unexpectedness of many of the strategic moves made by both sides. Freshman right halfback Merryl Frost first shocked the fans out of their complacency when he took the ball from center on a long punt-formation lineup and scampered 45 yards to safety man Ray Wolfe before he was halted. Dartmouth's basic new backfield-men-in-motion attack also made a hit with the undergraduates. "Something doing all the time" best sums up the reactions of those present.
If there were some way of knowing at this moment what the general state of affairs will be next fall, then it would be safe to make a spring prediction on football at Dartmouth for next fall. However, if we could do the former it would be much more valuable than for its athletic interpretation, so we'll wait until next fall to cover the strength and weakness of the autumn outlook.
Give Coach Tuss McLaughry the men who participated in the final game, and some who were sidelined by injuries, and the Big Green would cut a rather handsome path come September or we don't know a football from a golf ball. Which we probably don't!
DARTMOUTH SPORTS LEADERSGathered in the Memorial Field baseball dugout on a warm spring afternoon are, left toright, Coach "Jeff" Tesreau; Harry R. "Rip" Heneage '07, former Supervisor of Athletics; and William H. McCarter '19, present Director of Athletics.
FOUR IN A ROW Coach Tommy Dent of the lacrosse teamhas joined basketball's Ossie Cowles in the"four straight" club this spring. His highscoring team captured Dartmouth's fourthconsecutive New England lacrosse title.
END OF A STRENUOUS AFTERNOON ON THE RIVER 7 he Dartmouth varsity crew heads bach to the boathouse with its new shell after a workout on the Connecticut. Under Coach Jim Smith the Green rowers have had one of themost successful seasons of their revived history.
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, COACHES AND A GUEST (JIM PICKEN '27) ENJOYED AN OUTING AT ROSS MCKENNEY'S CABIN Front row, left to right: Karl Michael, Red Hoehm, Dick Cassiano, Dr. Kingsford, Bill McCarter, Harry Hillman, Ellie Noyes, TomDent, Eddie Jeremiah, Curly Sadler, Chick Evans, Bob Veres, Whitey Fuller, Charlie Ewart. Back row: Jimmy Picken '27, Pat Kaney,Ozzie Cowles, Bill Bevan, R. J. Delahanty, John del Isola, Jeff Tesreau, Sid Hazelton, Joe Pollard, Tuss McLaughry.
