Big Green Teams
There's nothing in athletics to compare with winning, although for many the experience of participation can produce its degree of personal reward, and Dartmouth's overall ledger in intercollegiate athletics has proven a winner for the third straight year.
In 17 sports where team scores provide the measure, Dartmouth compiled a record of 121 wins, 100 losses, and four ties during 1971-72. Eleven teams had winning records and two others broke even, and the performance against Ivy League opposition, 40-39-2, while barely on the plus side, is the best effort against league foes since 1960.
If there is a conspicuous athlete on the Dartmouth spring scene it's Lloyd Ucko, the co-captain of tennis who closed an outstanding career with a pair of championships that weren't expected but were richly deserved.
A senior from Packanack Lake, N.J., Ucko plays the game with his left hand—and plays very well. If he weren't the lead man on John Kenfield's tennis team, it's likely he'd be setting the pace in golf.
But a tennis pacesetter he is this spring and he came into his own in the New England and Eastern intercolle- giate tournaments as the season drew to a close, winning the singles champion- ships in both events and taking the final 12 singles matches he played to bring his record for the season to 24-5, a performance unequalled in Dartmouth tennis annals.
In the Eastern tourney at Rochester, Ucko entered as the second-seeded singles player and proceeded to whip through six opponents including the defending champ, John Peckskamp of Cincinnati, to complete his sweep and get back to Hanover in time to receive his degree.
It was the high point of a gratifying season for Coach Kenfield's team which finished 11-7 in dual competition. He had a fine group of players led by Ucko and Brian Williams (winner of the first Clarence Davies '34 Trophy for contribution to Dartmouth tennis) as well as freshman Andy Oldenburg, sophomore Rick Woolworth (winner of the Occom Bowl for improvement in tennis), the new co-captains, Bill Kellogg and Mark Harty, and sophomore Kevin Chee.
While the tennis team was collecting kudos, Tony Lupien's baseball team demonstrated that it has promise that's perhaps only a year away.
The Green entered the final week of the Eastern League season at the top of the standings but after leaving 16 men on base at Yale and losing a 13-10 horror show and then splitting a pair at Brown (a 4-1 loss with 13 more men stranded, then a 3-0 win) it would have taken a mathematical miracle to push Dartmouth through the back door.
Harvard took the title in a playoff with Cornell (which won five games in three days to vault into the picture) and Dartmouth, 9-4-1, finished a half-game behind in third place.
"I'd figured we were a fourth-place team when the season began," said Lupien. "We did a bit better than that with a team that included eleven sophomores." Overall, the final record was 17-16-1.
The brightest lights were Captain Frank Mannarino who hit .331 and set a season record for runs batted in (37) plus career marks for doubles (33) and games played (99) along with sophomore centerfielder Rick Klupchak who led the Green with a .346 average. Not far behind was soph rightfielder Bob Whelan who hit .333 in the stretch and was even sharper in the field.
The pitchers were paced by Jim Metzler, the captain-elect from Lake Worth, Fla., who posted a 6-1 record including four wins and a pair of saves in EIBL action. Close behind was Charlie Janes, the senior from Hurley, N.Y., who finished 4-5 but showed the form that prompted the World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates to draft him into the pro ranks along with former teammates Chuck Seelbach (now with the Detroit Tigers) and Texas Rangers' fastballer Pete Broberg.
Lacrosse coach Dudley Hendrick will be the first to tell you that the margin between winning and being competitive is virtually immeasurable.
The Green finished with a 5-10 record but five losses were decided by one goal, including the three final losses that preceded a closing win at New Hampshire. Among the setbacks were a 10-9 decision in sudden death overtime at Harvard and an identical result in regulation time to Princeton.
Led by Scott Anderson, the co-captain-elect from Ithaca, N. Y., who scored 43 points, the Green doubled their goal production over the 1971 campaign.
In addition to Anderson, who gained All-Ivy mention, the big honors in '72 went to Co-Captain Bob Bassett from Fayetteville, N.Y., an All-Ivy second team midfielder and a member of the North all-star squad for the post-season game with the South stars. Mitch Whiteley, the goalie, from Towson, Md., also won All-Ivy mention while senior defenseman Tim Smith from Wallingford, Conn., won the Tom Dent Award for contribution to his team.
Dartmouth's golfers had to scramble in the final ten days of the season for a 5-5 record but the most gratifying win came four days after the Eastern Intercollegiate Tournament (where the Green placed 18th and were disappointing).
The scene was Hanover Country Club and the opposition was Harvard. Led by George Bayrd, a junior from Rochester, Minn., and "sophomore Paul Dixon from Aurora, Ont., who shot 72 and 73, Dartmouth topped the Crimson by six strokes after trailing the same team by 27 strokes in the EIGA tourney.
"One match doesn't make a season," said Coach Bill Johnson, "but the Harvard win gives us something to think about for next year."
In both track and crew, it was a season that never really got going.
In track, Dartmouth had to settle for ninth place in the Heptagonal meet but had good performances by Tom Shiland from Cambridge, N.Y., who was second in the three-mile run (14:04.1), senior Eric Potter from Clinton, N.Y., who was third in the steeplechase, and shotputter Wayne Moody who was fourth with a toss of 56 feet, 2 inches.
The dual season finished at 2-5.
The new co-captains of track, succeeding decathlon standout Tom Byron from Delmar, N.Y., who boosted his college record to 6735 points, are Clark Judge from Woodbridge, Va. (brother of Wade, captain of squash last winter, and son of Clark '46) along with shotputter Mike Shiaras from Dixon, I11.
In crew it was a season of disappointment. The rebuilding Green was 12th in the Eastern Sprints and 14th in the intercollegiate championship. The lightweights fared better, placing fifth at the Sprints and missing fourth by one-tenth of a second.
The lightweight success caused Coach Pete Gardner to move a couple of oarsmen from the light boat to the heavy eight but then illness caused Gardner to juggle his lineup when veteran seven oar Bob Olson caught a bug.
"We rowed a poor race in the trials at Syracuse," said Gardner who now is working with Harvard Coach Harry Parker (leader of the U.S. Olympic crew effort) in developing the United States eight which will compete at Munich in late August.
The repechage race wasn't much better but Gardner feels his crew's performance in the reserve final of the IRA regatta was the best of the year. "I liked the way they never gave up in that last race," he said. "It bodes well for the coming year."
The selection process for the Olympic crew, incidentally, is being conducted on the Connecticut River with Dartmouth serving as the host for the five-week battle among the nation's best oarsmen. It's enough to make Gardner's mouth water.
The new captains of crew for 1972-73 are Charles Arnold from Farnham, Surrey, England, who will lead the heavies, and Brad Little from Marblehead, Mass., who will pace the lightweights. George Buesing from Westwood, N.J., the departing heavyweight captain, won the Thad Seymour Award as the outstanding heavy oarsman. Peter Easton from Indianapolis, Ind., won the Breer Cup as the top light-weight oarsman.
BROTHER ACT: Wade Judge '72, captain of squash, with Clark Judge '73, cocaptain of next year's track team. Theirdad, Clark Judge '46, was a track man.
