UP THE IVY WALL

The toughest part about getting to the top of this hallowed structure is fighting your way through the crowd at the bottom.

There we were in Ithaca with a 5-5 season facing a team that on paper we should merely have been there to administer last rites to. It was like trying to put out a fire with a leaky bucket. Every time we got up to the flame we were out of water. A truly frustrating experience. We did everything but out score 'em, and in the last analysis, in this day and age, who besides the coach cares how they played the game?

I am, however, extremely proud of this 1960 soccer team, my first at Dartmouth, my 13th overall. By way of rationalization let me point up a few of the highlights of this 5-6-0 season.

This was the best overall record since 1955. We were 4-3 in the Ivy, which is the first winning Ivy record Dartmouth has experienced, plus the fact that it is the first time Dartmouth has finished in the Ivy's first division. We defeated defending champion Harvard and a tough Yale club both in the same season which is the first time such a feat has been accomplished since 1946. Also we had a 3 game win streak going into the final game which is the first time for 3 in a row since 1955.

The first half of the season the team and I spent getting acquainted. Finally, after the Princeton game (our darkest hour of the season) we found ourselves and began to come out with four every time we put two and two together. We stunned Harvard 5-3, dropped to Williams' NCAA contenders, bounced back to take Yale 1-0, M.I.T. 4-1 in a driving rainstorm, and a Columbia team playing its best soccer of the season, 1-0. The Yale game was our finest effort of the campaign, certainly providing the most thrills. Both Yale and Columbia were 1-0 and both scores came in the first period with 66 minutes of scoreless ball remaining. However, we took 18 shots against Yale to their 13. To contrast the two games, against Columbia we took 33 shots (our high for the season) to their 17. Yale was much more closely contested than Columbia.

I am proud of the loyalty and poise displayed by our team throughout the season. This I attribute to our captain, an outstanding leader, Larry Holden from Chatham, N. J. He did an excellent job and was truly worthy of his position. He had the complete respect of his teammates at all times.

Our fortunes for 1961 should not be any less with help from the 1960 crop of freshmen who compiled a 7-2 log. There are at least four '64s who will aid in padding the spots left by our seniors. We'll make no predictions, but enthusiasm for the 1961 season is already running high. It should be worth some ball games.

Why'd they have to schedule eleven games? We should have played Cornell by postcard — we had 'em beaten on paper anyway!