Big Green Teams
Leslie Aucoin, Warren Cassidy, Chris Baldwin, John Macomber, Ken Pettit, Mark Stebbins, Adam Sutton. Hardly household words, except around their own houses - and Hanover. These are the people who have made the middle of Dartmouth's winter sports season interesting - and exciting.
For drama, you'd find it hard to beat the performance by Cassidy, a sophomore from Lynn, Mass., during a triangular track meet with Massachusetts and New Hampshire on the Friday of Winter Carnival weekend. More about that below.
For overall excitement, you'll have to go some to surpass Leslie Aucoin, a sophomore transfer student from Clemson, S.C., who, at four feet, 11 inches, has captured the imagination of everyone who has watched her play basketball.
That's right, Leslie is a lady. Her liability is size. Not because it limits her ability to play for Dartmouth's women's team, but because she's just the right height to catch passing elbows in the vicinity of her cheeks and eyes.
When most girls would be thinking in other directions at age five, Leslie thought basketball. She has learned to play the game extremely well. She is the spark of the women's team that won three of its first four games and gained its first elements of recognition when it played the preliminary to the varsity's 78-63 victory over Boston University. (Yes, the men have won a couple since our last offering.)
It was a game against Smith, and Leslie had eight of Dartmouth's 18 points at halftime. She earned her points with her quickness, a behind-the-back move surpassed only by Billy Raynor's, and an exceptional ability to size up her opponent and take advantage of every opportunity.
"We're a slow-starting team," says Chris Clark, the women's coach. " You can watch Leslie get mad if things are going too slowly. She takes charge, gets things going, and does what she has to do. Her father was a coach and I'm sure that helped her learn the game. She's not fazed by bigger players. Considering her size, she's an incredible player."
With Leslie controlling the ball through the final seconds, Dartmouth held on to defeat Smith, 36-34. She finished with 11 points, but her dribbling and quickness stole the show. It equaled her efforts at New England College a week earlier when she scored 24 of Dartmouth's 47 points in a 13-point victory.
Before we talk about the men's side of the basketball scene and the hockey picture which, at this point, is in the midst of a puzzling slump, let's get back to Hopalong Cassidy, the triple jumper.
There was little more than a handful of people drawn to the jumping area in Leverone Field House in the middle of that Friday evening of Carnival. The Modern Jazz Quartet, performing in Spaulding Auditorium, was the prime attraction of the moment.
A week earlier in New Haven, Cassiahad established a Dartmouth record in the triple jump - 45 feet, 7 inches - during the Green's 80-38 romp over Yale He came into his final jump against UMass and UNH confronted by the fact that two UMass contestants had surpassed his record leap already - one of them by more than a foot.
"How could you beat it for pure competitive drama?" said Ken Weinbel, his coach, after Cassidy had used that last attempt to reach a distance of 46 feet, 10¼ inches. It was two inches better than the best UMass jump and gave Dartmouth a final team score of 67 points, two more than UMass.
Chris Baldwin is perhaps the biggest reason that Dartmouth's squash team is headed toward its best record in history. Baldwin is a senior from Media, Pa., who plays the fourth position on Coach John Kenfield's ladder. "For consistency, no one is playing better than Chris," says Kenfield. "If he keeps it up, he should finish the season undefeated."
At the moment, Baldwin has a 7-0 record and the team is 5-2 with five matches remaining. Barring calamity, only Princeton should beat Dartmouth in the home stretch. If it happens that way, Dartmouth will finish 9-3 and should be ranked fourth in the national team ratings behind Harvard, Princeton and Pennsylvania (not necessarily in that order).
The squash season has been the source of obvious pleasure for those who venture into the cool climes of the Alumni Gym courts. After trying 34 times, the Green got a victory against Yale and the 7-2 margin was more than gratifying to Kenfield & Company.
John Macomber, a freshman from Concord, Mass., was the outstanding alpine racer of the pre-Carnival segment of Dartmouth's ski season. He won nine of ten races he entered, and in the tenth won the first run but fell while using a pair of borrowed skis for the second run.
Macomber, son of a member of the United States Olympic ski team in 1948. maintained the pace during the Dartmouth Winter Carnival that was a scrambled scene - cross country at Holderness, Alpine events at Waterville Valley, and the final competition at the Dartmouth jump Macomber was a decisive winner in the giant slalom after taking sixth place in the slalom over Waterville's World Cup course and it was his efforts, along with those by teammates Peter Anderson and Steve Murphy in the Alpine events, that added an unbeatable bulge to Dartmouth's team score. The team had gotten off on sound footing when Don Nielsen, Doug Peterson and Chris Nice finished 2-3-5 in ,he cross country event the day before.
Even if Petter Kongsli, the outstanding Norwegian jumper who powered Vermont to victory in the Carnival last year, had jumped clear to the river, it wouldn't have been enough to overcome the Dartmouth advantage. Behind Kongsli, solid jumps by Arne Nielsen and John Upton helped the Green.
Ken Pettit is the sophomore center on Dartmouth's hockey team that celebrated elevation to sixth place in the national rankings, a solid hold on second place in the East and the top rung on the Ivy League ladder by losing five straight games.
It wasn't because Pettit didn't try to reverse things. About the only time he wasn't contributing was when he had to get off the ice while the Zamboni took over to refurbish the surface. Joined by another sophomore, Tom Fleming (the footballer from Brookline, Mass.), London, Ontario's contribution to the Green hockey scene has done his best to fill the void created when senior Bob Hayes went to the sidelines with a complicated muscle tear in his back.
Pettit and Fleming each have 12 goals after 18 games. Hayes, whose performance was overlooked or taken for granted, had nine goals before his injury. (He was missing through the five losses and was expected to be out for future games as well.)
Mark Stebbins is another sophomore who has overcome an early-season injury in his shoulder to help Dartmouth's swimming team build toward another winning record.
Stebbins, from Manchester, N.H., ranks as one of the East's finest freestyle sprinters this winter. On the afternoon that the Green departed for Philadelphia, Coach Keenhold indicated that it was questionable whether Stebbins would be available to compete against Penn. As things turned out, he won the 50- and 100-yard freestyle races at Penn, and with one exception has been perfect in the 50-yard event this season. Marginal shoulder and all, he's been the most conspicuous of several Green swimmers who have helped generate a 6-2 record heading into the Yale meet. The only losses were to Harvard and Princeton, the teams that are clearly the best in the Eastern League in 1974.
Adam Sutton is the most consistent bright spot in an otherwise gloomy basketball picture. The 6'-5" forward from Chicago has a better-than-average shot at being named the Ivy League's sophomore-of-the-year. On a team that took a 3-15 record into a six-game home stand in late Feruary, Sutton has averaged nearly 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. He has been the Ivy League's scoring leader from the outset.
Sutton has been the Green scoring leader in 14 of 18 games and the top rebounder 12 times. He made 14 of 17 shots and had 17 rebounds during a last-second loss at Springfield (75-74) and was equally impressive against Boston University (24 points, 20 rebounds) during a win that was the best-balanced showing of this young team all season. He had another capable performance at Harvard, scoring 25 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. Despite the -28-point support by sophomore center Mark Donoghue (the individual scoring high in the Ivy League this season) it wasn't enough to stave off a 72-63 loss in Cambridge.
These are simply a few of the individuals who have made the winter season interesting. They are hardly alone. Gymnastics standout Mike Pancoe from Glencoe, Ill., has continued the performance that should make him the Ivy League champion in the still rings competition for the fourth year in succession. His teammates - Greg Hakanen, Jack Nicholson, and Bob Dray - are also leading contenders for championship recognition.
In wrestling, sophomore Rick Clark from Canastota, N.Y., has been the leader in the 167-pound combat but the Green has had limited success elsewhere - even Capt. Chuck Estin, the standout at 190 pounds has joined his mates in discovering that formal competition in the Ivy League is no bed of roses.
Tom Guidi from Salem, Mass., has been most consistent for Dartmouth's fencers who were headed toward their best season in a long while.
The women's teams, in addition to basketball, have showed promise as they progress through the second year of competition. Linda Young from Burlington, Mass., is the leader in gymnastics while Judy Geer from Darien, Conn., is the swimming leader. In squash, Barbara Sands from Lakebay, Wash., has been consistent in the lead position. Among the skiers, Mary Heller from Putney, Vt., is one of the nation's best.
On the freshman scene, two names constitute the cream - Steve Mele and Brian McCloskey. Mele, from Quincy, Mass., is the basketball guard who plays with intensity he learned from his father, the former major league outfielder and manager. He is the spark of a freshman team that can look at a break-even season as a success, considering its lack of overall size.
McCloskey is the freshman hockey cap- tain from North Vancouver, B.C. At 5'-5" and 140 pounds, he is hardly imposing. He has relied on his quickness in the past and will need it in the future if he expects to survive the next three seasons with the Green varsity. Presuming he does, he will give Dartmouth one of its most exciting skaters. In the meantime, he has been the scoring leader on a team that has also had good goal tending from Jeff Sollows (Barnstable, Mass.) while winning 12 of its first 14 games.
Leslie Aucoin: not fazed by big ones.
Tom Fleming (foreground) has joined Ken Pettit to form a pair of sophomore scoringthreats. With two games to go, Fleming was the Ivy scoring leader.
