Big Green Teams
FOR the record: The premier performers of the spring are led by Ken Norman and his mates on the mile relay team, plus Dartmouth's lightweight oarsmen, and pitcher Jim Beattie. Others have been good, but these folks have been very good. Particularly Norman, a junior from Orrville, Ohio, who has proven to be the finest quarter-miler in Dartmouth track history. He lowered one of the oldest Dartmouth outdoor records (set by John Hoffstetter in 1936 and equaled by Tom Holzel in 1962) when he won the Heptagonal crown in the 440, and he took it down again, to 47.3 seconds, when he won the New England title.
He needed to reach 47 seconds to qualify for the NCAA meet and his chance came in the IC4A meet at William & Mary. Leading into the final turn, Norman lifted his head ever-so-slightly to check the field. He was caught by Pittsburgh's Karl Farmer and after the judges took nearly an hour to assess the finish photo, Norman found himself in fifth place with a time of 47.6 seconds.
There was no second chance to qualify for the NCAA meet, but there was still the mile relay. Elected a co-captain of the 1976 track squad with javelin thrower Rusty Gapinski, Norman has also been impressive as the anchor of a quartet that won the indoor Heps championship and kept on going to outdoor titles in the Heps and New Englands. His outdoor mates have been Torch Coburn, Dan Tagatac and Rich Nichols, and when Norman took the baton from Nichols for the final leg of the IC4A relay, Dartmouth was within striking distance of favored Seton Hall.
Norman's goal was to atone for the 440 performance and he did just that - his time was 45.8 seconds - and while Dartmouth didn't quite catch Seton Hall, the Green finished second in 3:09.5. It's the fastest time ever run by a New England college team and it put Dartmouth into the NCAA meet field. It was one of two superb performances by Dartmouth in the IC4A competition. Skip Cummins won the javelin championship with a throw of 226 feet-plus, conspicuously short for him but, then, everyone was badly hampered by atrocious field conditions. (Northeastern's Duane Johnson broke Cummins' New England record a week earlier with a throw of 248 feet but was under 210 feet and in sixth place at the IC4As, and Gapinski, who qualified for the NCAA meet earlier in the season, didn't place.)
In 1972, folks got excited about Dartmouth's lightweight crew that came on well to finish fifth in the Eastern Sprints, made sounds of better things and a possible trip to Henley - but didn't quite pull it off. The 1975 lights, performing with greater efficiency than any Dartmouth crew since the 1970 heavies, are in the process of making the ultimate dream come true.
Not since 1955 has a Dartmouth lightweight boat made it to Henley. Well, 20 years later, a crew composed of four seniors, two juniors, and three sophomores is going to put the Green shirts on the River Thames. Led by Mike Winer and stroked by sophomore Charlie Hoffmann, the lights have beaten everyone except Harvard's Eastern champs this spring. After trailing the Crimson by nearly nine seconds in their first race of the season, Dartmouth charged through the spring and was matched with Harvard again in the Sprint championship final. They couldn't quite catch them, but the margin was 2.4 seconds. It was the best performance by any Dartmouth crew since the 1970 heavies finished fourth in the Sprints and third in the I.R.A. championship.
Late this month, Jim Beattie will be in the midst of making a most difficult decision. The powerful junior, who was most valuable player on an improved basketball team last winter and elected co-captain for the upcoming season, also ranks among the nation's outstanding collegiate pitchers this spring. On a 20-20 team that put forth good pitching and defense (a New England record of 39 double plays) to offset mediocre hitting - the team batting average was .219 - Beattie has been the outstanding man on the mound. In compiling an 8-3 record and a 1.41 overall earned run average and leading the Eastern League with an earned run average of 0.50 (two earned runs in 36 innings), the righthander from South Portland, Maine, has demonstrated the speed, control, savvy, and size (6-6, 200) to make him the most likely professional prospect at Dartmouth since Pete Broberg made the move in 1971. If he is drafted, Beattie must decide whether to turn to baseball and the pros exclusively or wait until next year and, in the meantime, contribute to another Dartmouth basketball campaign. He's demonstrated that he ranks alongside Reggie Williams, Tom Fleming, and Skip Cummins in a list of the most versatile athletes in the Class of '76.
These are a few of the more conspicuous names that have come to the fore during the spring. Not to be overlooked is Andy Oldenburg, captain of tennis, whom Coach John Kenfield regards as perhaps the finest doubles player in the East. For three years he reached the finals of the New England doubles competition, each time with a different partner, and in four years he has won more matches in singles and doubles than any previous Dartmouth player. "He has one of the quickest racquets at the net of any player I've seen," said Kenfield, whose team finished 10-11 overall and second to Harvard in the New England tourney.
Hopscotching around, again for the record: The best performance of the spring belongs to the rugby club which swept three final matches from Massachusetts to finish 14-3. Returning from a spring trip to England where they tied three and lost three, the DRFC defeated Yale for the Hartford Cup and accomplished what only one other team at Dartmouth (baseball) was able to do this year - beat Harvard. While the lacrosse team had a 4-8 record and lost in overtime to Harvard for the third time in four years, the women's lacrosse team came through with a classy 7-2 record. The dual record in track, 4-2, was enhanced by a tie with Army for sixth place in the Heps as both collected 24 points. The heavyweight crew failed to muster the finesse generated by the lightweights and made its strongest showing in the Cochrane Cup races on the Connecticut River, finishing within two lengths of Wisconsin and M.I.T., both outstanding eights. This was the first full season of competition for the women s crew coached by Bill Pickard, bow oar of the Green heavies from 1969-71. Pickard directed his oarspersons through a schedule capped by a nine-second win over M.I.T. - not bad for a 2,000-meter pull.
In golf, the only guy to put things together - and it took him most of the spring - was Jerry Daly, a junior who set the pace in a 6-6 season and qualified for the NCAA tournament in late June at Ohio State. In women's tennis, Dartmouth was 3-4 and, on the frosh-jayvee scene, Dartmouth came through with winners in five sports: baseball, golf, lacrosse, tennis, and track. The women's lacrosse program is already robust enough to support a subvarsity team and it, too, was a winner.
So it goes through a capsule recounting of the rustle of spring, the final season in the 1974-75 calendar that is marked by honors for Reggie Williams (all-everything in football, All-Ivy in wrestling) as Dartmouth's outstanding athlete of the year (Watson Trophy), and for Chris Peisch who won the Kenneth Archibald Athletic Prize as the outstanding senior all-around athlete with regard to high standing in scholarship (he is a two-sport captain, Dartmouth's latest Rhodes Scholar, and valedictory speaker at Commencement). This also is the final chapter of a year when Dartmouth teams in 18 intercollegiate sports compiled their poorest overall record since 1967-68 (100-131-2) and the lowest record against Ivy League opponents in ten sports since formal competition began in 1956 (29-58-1). Only five teams had overall winning records, and the best the Green could do was break even in two leagues sports. The dual record for eight women's teams was on the plus side (36-26-2), and all of this does not include championship performances in rifle and skiing.
Depending on which of the interested constituencies he talks to, an observer will probably get a different reason (maybe more than one) for the course this year has run. In fact there isn't one reason; it's a combination of factors contributing in varying degrees and at different times. Then, too, it's the first time in six years that the records have dipped into the red on so many fronts. Maybe it's just an off year and things will turn around in 1975-76. Maybe....
Consider some of the more obvious concerns: budget cuts, staff reductions, year-round operation, the mounting expense of Ivy League education, and the Dartmouth Plan. These are the more conspicuous targets in a picture of transition. While our subject is athletics, the dilemma can apply as easily to the glee club, WDCR, drama, The Dartmouth, and numerous other areas of interest at the College, curricular and otherwise. The period of transition is progressing, and the folks in athletics are just like everyone else - trying to sort the facts and struggling for answers.
An issue that has come to the fore, rivaling the known and potential budget reductions, is the impact of the Dartmouth Plan on students who compete in sports during three terms. While the total number is perhaps less than in the old days, there are still more than a few students who compete in the fall and spring, or winter-spring, or even fall-winter-spring. While attempting to realize athletic goals and coordinate these goals with the primary objectives of education, the student has to make a decision that can only be described as difficult. Jim Beattie is one example. Jackie Brennan (hockey and lacrosse), Greg Cronin (hockey and baseball), Tom Parnon (football and lacrosse - he's a co-captain of both next year), and Tom Fleming (football, hockey, track) are others.
These are a few of the three-term athletes now at Dartmouth. In order to compete, they have been enrolled in schedule patterns that give them nine complete terms through their junior year. Each needs only two terms in residence during his senior year to meet the eleven-term, 33-course degree requirement. Unless some form of special consideration is resolved, their desire to compete in sports during the coming year will require them to take a 12th term at their own expense. It's a problem that presses hardest on the spring term sports By the final term of a four-year, 15-term cycle, any student can develop an enrollment pattern that meets degree requirements in advance of the spring term of his senior year. While a solution is being sought, none has surfaced so far; and the failure to come up with an answer can well mean that Dartmouth won't see student-athletes like Beattie, Fleming, Cronin, Brennan, and Parnon in years ahead.
It's a case of trying to retain an element of compatability, continuity, and understanding during these times of transition. Through it all, teams and individual athletes will survive, but the point to be made is that the ability to be competitive is questionable. Maybe 1974-75 is an exception, not the beginning of something that will be difficult to digest. Maybe things will turn around next year. At that, a review of Dartmouth's performance in head-to-head and overall competition with the Ivy colleges shows that the Green has been no better than fourth among eight during the past 15 years. It's not a matter of win, win, win. It's simply a case of being competitive, and while people like Ken Norman, Jim Beattie, Andy Oldenburg, Reggie Williams, and Skip Cummins provide moments in the sun, for the most part they are the exceptions.
For many, the experience of participation is sufficient. For just as many, the desire to participate with success is more gratifying. It's a perplexing situation that confronts the people in Dartmouth's toy department these days. Be it budgets, the Dartmouth Plan, or whatever, it adds up to difficult times. For all the seeds of optimism, wishful thinking, and blind faith that things will be better, there is as loud a cry for answers in the world of socks and jocks as there is in any other corner.
Bright spots in a dim season: junior pitcherJim Beattie; runner Ken Norman, greetedby teammate Rich Nichols at the finish - with Harvard 30 yards behind; and AnnWitsil, at left, in Lacrosse action.
Bright spots in a dim season: junior pitcherJim Beattie; runner Ken Norman, greetedby teammate Rich Nichols at the finish with Harvard 30 yards behind; and AnnWitsil, at left, in Lacrosse action.
Bright spots in a dim season: junior pitcherJim Beattie; runner Ken Norman, greetedby teammate Rich Nichols at the finish with Harvard 30 yards behind; and AnnWitsil, at left, in Lacrosse action.
