Spring Sports
During the final two weeks of the spring season the Dartmouth varsity baseball team won two games and lost four, winding up with ten wins against fourteen defeats and a tie for second place in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League. The lacrosse team closed out its season in late May with eight wins against four losses but won the New England Championship with a 5-0 record. The varsity tennis team swept through five straight contests in late May to post a fine 17-4 season record and take fourth place in the Eastern Intercollegiate Tennis League, while the track team won its final dual meet of the season over Colgate to record a 3-2 dual meet record and then tied for 14th place in the IC4A meet. The golf team won one and lost one in late May to end up with five victories and eight defeats.
Varsity totals for the season show 43 wins and 32 defeats.
The problems besetting Dartmouth's baseball team this spring, and which undoubtedly cost them the championship, can best be summed up by the final statistics. Only one regular, infielder Roger McArt (.348) hit above the .300 mark, with all the others under .220 except out-fielder Dick Marrone at .267. The team batting average was a rather poor .192 and only 28 hits all season went for extra bases.
A look at the Big Green pitching records is also revealing. Southpaw Art Quirk pitched more than half of the games played, including most of the league contests and wound up winning eight and losing five. Stan Drazen, another veteran, pitched five games and lost all of them, while Don O'Neill hurled four games and won two. The rest of the mound staff appeared in a season total of 31 innings among them, less than three full games.
Yet wins over Navy and Cornell, both of which were lost by narrow margins, could have given Dartmouth the league title, and this is an accomplishment in itself.
Coach Red Hoehn's varsity tennis team had a really fine season. After losing 5-4 to Princeton they went on in late May to chalk up consecutive victories over Amherst, Middlebury, Army, Colgate and Cornell to finish with a 17-4 record, one of the best in recent years.
Equally impressive was the Dartmouth lacrosse team which was rated poorly at the start of the year. The Indians captured the New England Championship and had eight wins against only four defeats.
Dartmouth's track team ended its dual-meet season by easily downing Colgate, 93½ to 46½, then settled for a 14th place tie in the major IC4A meet which wound up the season. The golf team, on the other hand, had its poorest season for some years but defeated Amherst, 4-3, and Springfield, 6½ to ½, in late May to end with five wins and eight losses.
The Big Green lightweight (150-pound) crews lost to Cornell at the varsity, jayvee and freshman levels in a late May race. During Commencement weekend Dartmouth defeated Columbia and M.I.T. in all three races on the Connecticut in a tune-up for the I.R.A. Regatta at Syracuse in late June. The Dartmouth varsity heavyweight crew, incidentally, has drawn lane 1 for the I.R.A.
LATE NEWS-Dartmouth's heavyweight crews did well in the final and most important race of the season as the varsity finished sixth, the junior varsity eighth, and the freshmen fifth at the annual I.R.A. races at Syracuse, N. Y., on Saturday, June 20. The varsity crew came in ahead of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Columbia, with Wisconsin, Syracuse, Navy, California, and Cornell ahead of the Big Green. Wisconsin was the surprise winner over favored Syracuse. California won the junior varsity race and Cornell the freshman race. The varsities and junior varsities rowed a three-mile course, the freshmen a two-mile course, on flat water against a 15-mile head wind, which made for slow times.
With spring sports ended, let's take a quick preview of the Dartmouth football prospects for next fall as the Indians prepare to defend their Ivy League championship.
Dartmouth's varsity heavyweight crew which rowed in the IRA Regatta at Syacuse in late June. L to r: Barry Sibson '60 Tim Rich '59, Captain Scott Palmer '59 (whose place was taken by Julius Torok'61 when he underwent an appendectomy), Al Stowe '60, Rick Foster '61, Mark Gates'59, and Brooks Wrightnour'60. Kneeling is Coxswain Peter Collins'59.
