TENNIS
John F. Kenfield Jr. is completing his first year on the Dartmouth coaching staff. He started it with a squash team that compiled a 2-10 record and a conference cellar spot and he is ending it with a tennis team that could win a conference championship.
Basis of the optimistic feeling is that Captain Charles Hoeveler '67 of Southport, Conn., is playing the best tennis of his career and could wind up with the Eastern singles crown.
"He is a fine athlete and a great competitor," Kenfield says of Hoeveler. "He and Bill Kirkpatrick make one of the best doubles teams in the East." Kirkpatrick is a senior from Kalamazoo, Mich.
Hoeveler won the 1966 ECAC Singles Championship at West Point last fall. He lost to Jack Waltz of Yale in early April, 5-7, 6-3, 11-9, in which Hoeveler was at match point in the third set before going down to defeat. Hoeveler and Kirkpatrick won their doubles match later, but they had to survive eight match points against them before winning. Yale won the day 5-4.
"That was a touch-and-go day," Kenfield said. "And that's the way it might be all season long throughout the league."
He explained that any one of five teams - Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, Princeton or Penn - could win the title. "Any of those teams is capable of beating any of the others, and I don't expect anyone to go undefeated this year."
Kenfield judges his players from the vantage point of 17 years' experience as a coach and tennis pro. As an undergraduate he was a tennis star at the University of North Carolina. He then coached at North Carolina State from 1949 until last fall and spent his summers since 1954 as the professional at the Lake Shore Country Club at Glencoe, Ill.
Coaching tennis means a commitment to teaching for Kenfield. "I came to Dartmouth because I believe in the Ivy League philosophy of athletics," he said. "I have the chance here to teach."
He said the quality of tennis playing generally is improving everywhere today because of teaching. Youngsters are learning in summer recreation programs, and more and more are interested in playing.
Kenfield has contributed much himself to this increased interest in a number of ways. For one thing he is the author of a book, Teaching and Coaching Tennis, written in 1964, and he is a frequent contributor to tennis publications. For another, he holds the Master Tennis Clinician award from the Lifetime Sports Foundation for 1966. The foundation is interested in teaching teachers, especially of tennis, golf and bowling - three sports which can be played during most of an average lifetime.
Kenfield's commitment to teaching carries with it a drive to acquire the facilities with which to teach. And in the case of tennis in the North Country, this means indoor courts.
Present facilities consist of the basketball court which is available, obviously, only when not in use for basketball. The court is far from ideal, Kenfield said, because the hard surface speeds things up so much "I sometimes think it's worse for a man's game than nothing at all."
Leverone would do nicely, "but with all the other activities that need the Field House you just can't justify tying up the big area that a court requires just so two or four people can play tennis."
Indoor tennis space may be some time in coming, but if ever there is a possibility.— such as in the present hockey rink if a new rink is built - Kenfield will be right on the spot to claim the space.
"That Davis Rink would really be ideal," he said. "We could have four courts with very little cost. Mainly the expense would be removing bleachers and putting in paving. And of course the floor would be marked so that the area could also be used for other racquet and net sports."
However, Kenfield realizes such a thing is, at best, a long way off. "In the meantime we make do," he said. "This is great country and Dartmouth students are great, so we'll get along in fine shape."
Action in the April 15 lacrosse game with Brown in Hanover, won by the Bruins7-6, shows Bill Calhoun (28) defense man, and Bill Rich (12), midfield.
Sandy Campbell '67, shown winning the Eastern kayak championship on MascomaRiver last month, is a contender for the U.S. team going to Czechoslovakia.
Wick Walker '68 was another title winner for Dartmouth, in the canoe event.
