With Big Queen Teams
THE seasons and athletic events at Dartmouth seemed to harmonize perfectly. Just as the winter shifted from sharp, cold days to thawing spells that brought mud under foot, so the Dartmouth varsity winter teams for the most part went from brilliant performances to mediocre, inept contests. It was an erratic season both ways.
In late February as the first faint trace of spring gusts swept across the Hanover Plain, an equally fresh and welcome sign of a new era in Dartmouth sports was detected. Speaking before more than goo Dartmouth alumni gathered for the annual dinner of the Boston Alumni Association at the Hotel Statler, Robert "Red" Rolfe, Dartmouth's new athletic director, had this to say:
"To me getting material is all-important. Dartmouth is being outhustled by other colleges for the type of athlete that measures up scholastically."
Rolfe said he intended to do two main jobs when he took over at Dartmouth on July 1. First, study the coaching situation very thoroughly. Second, and more important, improve upon the athletic enrollment situation in order to interest "high type boys" in Dartmouth.
"We've got a coaching staff at Dartmouth that doesn't have to take second place to any staff," Rolfe declared, "but we have to get them the material to work with." Rolfe appealed to Dartmouth alumni everywhere to pitch in and help make certain that Dartmouth gets her fair share of good athletes who are good students. "This is a competitive business," Rolfe concluded, "and we've got to help boys to make up their minds."
If the audience response in Boston was any indication, Red had hit pay dirt.
Beyond a dual track meet with Boston University and the Eastern and NCAA swimming championships, the Dartmouth winter schedules are completed, and before this issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE is "on the stands" the Big Green spring teams will have embarked on their southern trips in preparation for the formal opening of their schedules in mid-April.
While it has been an erratic season, nevertheless Dartmouth teams on both varsity and freshman levels have managed to win better than half their contests. The total for five varsity winter teams shows 43 victories against 36 defeats, while five frosh teams have won 28 contests and lost 14 for a grand total of 71 wins and 50 defeats.
More specifically, the varsity basketball team split 13-13, while in league play it won nine and lost five for a sixth-place berth. The Big Green hockey team also split with 15 wins and 15 defeats, but two defeats came in exhibition games with the Boston Bruins and the Alumni All-Stars. In the Pentagonal League, the Indians finished fourth with three wins and five losses. Swimming had the best overall record, nine wins and only two defeats, to finish third behind Yale and Harvard in league standings. The squash team posted a five-four record, while the track team won only one dual meet in five contests.
The freshman teams, highlighted by one of the best basketball clubs in recent years, did better than their older brethren. The '57 basketball squad won 11 games and lost only one (Harvard), while the hockey team had a 10-5 record, the swimmers divided 4 and 4, track did likewise on a 2-2 basis, and the squash team won a single match and lost two.
Looking ahead to next winter it seems safe to predict that the varsity basketball team will improve considerably, that the hockey team will be hard pressed even to maintain this year's average, that the swimming team should be almost as good, while track will improve slightly and the squash team stay about the same.
