WITH THE BIG GREEN TEAMS

SOMEONE threw a live chicken, painted red, on the ice. The freshman hockey manager skidded over, outstared the chicken, and threw it back into the stands. Then a large fish was tossed into the rink. The uproar continued for five minutes. Dartmouth had gone ahead of Harvard before a packed house in Davis Rink and was headed towards its seventh straight hockey victory and undisputed possession of first place in the Ivy League.

As January came to a close, Coach Eddie Jeremiah's hockey team was the big sports news on campus. Injuries had wracked the young basketball squad. Skimpy snow had brought the ski team almost to a standstill. The swimmers looked at least a year away from being title challengers, and track lacked depth.

But the hockey team, after a slow start, was back at its '64 championship pace. In fact, it was even more exciting because it had "the overtime habit."

During one mid-January stretch of five victories four games went into overtime. It was a fantastic streak. Jeremiah said he never saw it happen before at Dartmouth or at any other college. Two of these "sudden-death" victories were on the road at Yale and Princeton. Coupled with that Harvard triumph it put the team into a one-game lead over Brown in the Ivy chase. The squad also had a chance (by beating Jack Riley's Army team January 23) to equal the Green's longest hockey winning streak (eight straight) since 1949.

The stars were many. Captain Jim Cooper, first-line wing from Rochester, Minn., is the hustling, dogged type who always returns to the bench exhausted and serves as an example for all. His center, Doug (Chip) Hayes of Ann Arbor, Mich., still lacks top speed but he has great hockey sense, poised moves and a scoring touch. Barring injury, Hayes should become the 13th Dartmouth hockey player in the Century Club, membership based on scoring 100 points during a varsity career. Chip had 87 before midseason.

There are a couple of Minnesota boys sparking the squad, too: wings Dick Larson of Minneapolis, who scored the overtime goals against both Yale and Princeton, and Dean Mathews of Edina who notched four against Harvard alone and was tied with Hayes for scoring honors.

At defense lanky Charley Stuart of Princeton, N. J., is realizing his potential. He is 6-1 and uses his reach to poke check or swing up ice on occasional rushes. And Stuart is durable on the ice, as is another Princeton boy by way of Andover, sophomore Bill Smoyer, who lost two teeth midway through the Harvard game, came back on ice and scored the tie-breaking goal. Stuart should be an All-America candidate next year if not this.

Finally, of course, there is goaltender Budge Gere of Clinton, N. Y. He had been All-Ivy last season and probably the most significant factor in the team's rush to the league championship. How- ever, for the first couple of games this winter Gere almost went back to the form of his freshman season when he'd been the alternate goalie. Against B.U. four goals went through him in a seven-minute span of the first period and senior Terry Guiney of Canton, Mass. finished up.

But Gere began to come round after Christmas. He replaced Guiney in the nets late in the New Hampshire game, the first of the overtime victories, and he's been there since.

Actually the hockey team faces a tougher stretch than last year's. Brown is much stronger and so is Cornell. The February 3 match at Brown will be an important one. Yet this team has won its first three league games; it has nice balance. And it has that winning touch . . . especially in overtime games.

If the hockey team attracts good luck, the basketball team seems to be surrounded by bad luck.

The Green hoopmen came back from that Christmas trip to Ohio State, Dayton, and Kentucky with three resounding defeats, but their chins were up. They are a young group and they had learned a lot.

Then rookie Jack Lockhart, the 6-7 center from Connersville, Ind., who had been leading the team in both scoring and rebounding, developed a fever which bothered his leg joints and was tentatively diagnosed as rheumatic fever. At any rate he was out for the season.

And in rapid succession Coach Doggie Julian lost four guards with assorted leg ailments, including starters Steve Shaffer of Haverford, Pa., and Bill Engster of North Haven, Ct. The latter had been instrumental in the team's second victory over New Hampshire but was injured 15 seconds before the final buzzer.

When the team headed for Harvard in mid-January, Doggie had only eight varsity players along. Still they were 65-all with six minutes remaining, then began to tire and lost by 12 points. "There must be someone somewhere making little dolls that look like us and then sticking pins into them," moaned Julian.

The skiers just didn't have enough snow to get the proper January conditioning before the February carnivals. All Alpine events were washed out, but Nordic competition managed to hang on.

Coach Al Merrill was smiling about his cross-country runners as they placed second to an Olympic-tinged Lebanon team in the Eastern relay championships. The Indian quartet was made up of Captain Dick Durrance from Aspen, senior Sel Hannah from Franconia, junior Brian Beattie from Lyndonville, Vt., and sophomore Ned Gillette from Barre, Vt. They led till the final lap on this 40-kilo-meter relay race but then Olympic veteran Larry Damon caught Gillette and went on to victory.

"I don't know what to say about my jumpers. Maybe the best guess is that we have good depth," said Merrill. A different Dartmouth jumper had been tops on the team in each of the first three competitions. Undoubtedly the best in February will be sophomore Jim Speck of Bethesda, Md., by way of Lake Placid. He is the first Class A jumper at college in 15 years. But another newcomer, Fred Henry of Aspen, leaped ahead of the Durrances, Beatties and Hannahs in the Hanover Invitational in late January, posing some lineup problems for Merrill when potent Middlebury comes in for the Carnival competition Feb. 12-13.

BIG GREEN BITS: Freshman cap- tains elected recently are Joseph Colgan of Larchmont, N. Y., in basketball; John Meehan of Reading, Mass., in hockey; and John Ziegenhagen of Hopkins, Minn., in swimming. . . . Those freshman swimmers, incidentally, put on "the greatest day of swimming in Dartmouth history" in the words of coach Karl Michael. The occasion was a meet at Harvard in which the Green yearlings, led by Ziegenhagen, Brad Lindeblad of Hollywood, Fla., and Mark Battin of Elyria, O., established four College records and seven freshman marks. .. . The varsity swimmers beat Williams and Cornell, then bowed to Harvard, but still looked promising for later in the season. . . . Track was handicapped by lack of conditioning (the three-term system seems to hamper indoor track especially) and lost at Cornell, then finished in the middle in a triangular meet with Colgate and Holy Cross, won by the latter. . .. Freshman pole vaulter Dave Boyle of Lincoln, N. H., set a yearling mark of 12'10" in his specialty and also is a noted competitive skier. . . . Another freshman note: quarterback Gene Ryzewicz, sparkplug of that first-year football team, recently received an academic citation in Introductory Calculus. He had the best examination average in all sections (total 249 students) of this course. Gene also scored 51 points in an intramural basketball game. But he says he will concen- trate on football and baseball at the intercollegiate level.

Dave Blaine (22) grabs a rebound in theHarvard game. Also shown: Capt. VicMair (11), Steve Shaffer and GunnarMalm (24). Harvard won 98-80.