Like the Old Days

THE fact brought forth most dramatically in reviewing the 1975-76 season of winter sports is that 1958-59 was a helluva year, too. Every time something happened in hockey, basketball and, in the end, skiing, the comparisons read like this: " . . . most since the 1958-59 team," or " . . . best since 1958," or " . . . first since 1958-59."

Indeed, 1958-59 was a very good year and so was this winter season. Most of it was spent heralding the progress of hockey and basketball, teams that finished with 16 wins apiece, placed third in the Ivy League in both sports, and won recognition for hockey's George Crowe and basketball's Gary Walters as coaches-of-the-year in New England.

The guy who deserved equal acclaim for the season's biggest surprise, though, was Jim Page. He was in high school when Dartmouth won the NCAA ski championship in 1958, and he never expected to coach a Dartmouth team to such heights in the face of Western powers Colorado and Wyoming. On the same early March weekend that hockey and basketball finished their regular seasons, Page's skiers pulled another stunner by tying Colorado for the NCAA title.

What made the co-championship all the more improbable was that Dartmouth had spent all of February playing second fiddle to Vermont in the carnival series. When sophomore Dave Cleveland won the giant slalom on the opening day, the Green suddenly was in the thick of things; when the snow settled on the Maine hills three days later, five points separated the top four teams. Dartmouth and Colorado shared the top with 112, Vermont had 108, and Wyoming had 107. Said Page, "A tie doesn't bother me a bit. I'm happy."

Hockey's season was a spectacular run to the wire that saw the Green earn the sixth position (of eight) in the ECAC playoffs. The heroes abounded as Harvard was rocked, 9-2 (Tom Fleming and Kevin Johnson each scored second period hat tricks in a seven-goal explosion). Then there were dampened but hardly discouraged spirits as Brown, the Ivy champ, beat Dartmouth at Providence (7-4), then edged out an 8-7 overtime decision in the regular season finale at Thompson Arena (after Johnson had tied the game in the final second), and took its first step toward the NCAA tourney in Denver by slipping past the Green, 5-4, in the ECAC quarterfinals at Providence (again in overtime).

Fleming and defenseman Ron Dove shared All-Ivy first team spots with four Brown skaters, and the Green's most valuable player proved to be goalie Jeff Sollows, the picture of consistency who made the second team with Ken Pettit and Johnson.

In basketball, the Green played five games in the last ten days of the season. The total margin was 13 points and Dartmouth won three times, beating Columbia, Cornell, and Harvard (in overtime) before falling at Brown (in overtime by two) and by a pair at Yale. Sterling Edmonds, the sophomore center who set a Dartmouth field-goal percentage record of .596, was All-Ivy second team with high-scoring guard Larry Cubas. Senior Adam Sutton proved to be most valuable, this time for his defensive prowess rather than the scoring ability that earned him the honor as a sophomore.

The swimmers finished 9-2 overall, and then placed third in the Eastern Seaboard meet at Yale as backstroker Ted Pollard and diver John Evans won individual honors and Mark Stebbins, while not winning an event, contributed 46 of Dartmouth's total of 223 points (Princeton won with 344). Six Dartmouth records were broken in the meet, Pollard set an Eastern mark in the 100 backstroke, and Coach Ron Keenhold offered, "We got just about everything we expected we could."

In track, there was joy at the Heptagonal meet as Ken Norman won the 600 and anchored a mile relay championship, but there was dismay at the IC4A meet at Princeton as Norman and Rich Nichols were bumped out of contention in the 600 after Norman had led the qualifying runs to the final event. At the NCAA meet in Detroit, Norman was victimized by a slow heat in the 600 and missed the final, but he anchored the relay to a superb fifth place performance against the nation's best.

Elsewhere, Kevin Young retained his New England title in wrestling (167 pounds), the gymnastics team placed second in both the Ivy League and New England meets, Joel Goldfield paced Dartmouth's rifle team to a 12-6 overall record and fourth place in the New England meet, and Barbara Sands ran afoul of Yale's Liz Munson and bowed out in the quarterfinals of the women's intercollegiate squash championship tourney at Dartmouth. In fencing, Mark Manson was 9-1 to win the sabre event as Dartmouth took second in the New England regional meet.