Hockey

Although it wound up the season with an overall record of five wins and 18 defeats, the 1956 Big Green hockey team finished strongly with victories over Williams, Boston University and an Alumni All-Star team and an overtime loss to Princeton in the final Ivy contest. Other losses since last month's report were to Army, Brown and St. Lawrence.

With eleven sophomores on this year's squad, Coach Eddie Jeremiah is content to chalk this up as a training year and is already looking ahead to the 1957 season. He reports: "The season record is poor. Injuries hampered us severely, especially the loss of the inspirational leadership of Captain Ab Oakes, but the team finished in a strong fashion which bodes well for the future. The team had high morale and plenty of fight right through to the end of a long, tough schedule. They had to have it to beat a top-notch alumni squad 12-11 in a real, slam-bang contest. I heard one sophomore remark late this season, 'I thought when I came here I knew how to play hockey, but I found college hockey a lot tougher than I expected, and I know I'll do a lot better next year with this experience.' And the answer to next year's team lies largely with such sophomores."

Certainly the most exciting and hotly contested game of the season was the final one played against an Alumni All-Star aggregation, with proceeds going to the Timothy Wright Ellis Memorial Fund. The Big Green edged the Alumni 12-11, but had to collect ten of these goals in the final two periods to win. Captain Ab Oakes got the Indians away to a fast start when he tallied in the first minute of play on an assist from Dave Tonneson. However, Dick Rondeau '44 took a pass from Bill Riley '46 to tie the score one minute later. Then with their line of Ralph Warburton '47, Bruce Mather '47 and Cliff Harrison '51 going all out, the Alumni pulled ahead to a 5-2 first-period lead. Warburton and Mather collected three goals each for the evening and Harrison tallied twice to account for eight of the ten alumni goals.

In the final two periods as age began to tell, the varsity roared back with Dan Goggin, Dave Chapin, John Strong, Charlie Sprott, Dave Tonneson and Ron MacKenzie all scoring. Tonneson broke his leg at the final buzzer as he crashed into the goal, and this coupled with a head injury last year makes him the team's "hard luck player."

An innovation introduced this year was a between-periods game among sons of alumni (ages 6-15). The "Greens" won out over the "Whites" by a 5-4 count.