At Season’s End

Fall was a successful season for other Dartmouth varsity teams: The soccer squad advanced to the New England regional playoffs of the NCAA championship; the unbeaten women’s tennis team won the New England intercollegiate tournament; the field hockey team was seeded seventh in the three-day, 16-team Eastern championships; and the men’s cross-country team, defeated only once in dual competition, produced the first Ivy League cross-country champion in Dartmouth history.

“We’ve made a lot of progress, for sure,” says Dartmouth soccer coach Tom Griffiths, whose team posted a 7-5-2 record before losing, 2-1, to tournament- experienced Brown in the four-team NCAA regionals at Providence. The soccer team's records have improved dur- ing each of Griffiths’ four years at Dart- mouth and the 1977 record was the best since 1964. “This is the first time that a Dartmouth team achieved national ranking,” says the coach whose teams were nationally rated 17th and 13th during the season. At one point the squad was ranked first in New England.

“To improve, it’s imperative that we im- prove our scoring output,” says Griffiths, who will have an experienced group return- ing next year. The only graduation loss will be co-captain Kent Pierce, a sweeper back on the 25-member squad. Griffiths says the high point of the season was a 2-1 victory over Connecticut. “It was a tremendous win over an incredibly good team,” he says. The rise in popularity of soccer at Dartmouth is apparent by the number of people who have been watching the games. Griffiths estimates that some 2,000 to 3,000 fans attended some of the Saturday morning encounters on Chase Field.

Coach Chris Clark played two years of tennis at Rutgers’ Douglass College before deciding that sport had a bad program. She quit the team and went out for lacrosse in her junior year. Clark doesn’t plan to let anything like that happen at Dartmouth. “Someone once told me there couldn’t be a successful tennis program at Dartmouth,” she quips. She dispelled that notion by guiding her tennis players to a 9-0 season and the New England championship this fall.

Clark’s active recruiting efforts have paid off. Four of the members of the un- defeated team are freshmen. The number one player is Pam Banholzer, a five-foot, 95-pound freshman from Milwaukee. She won the singles title at the 47-team New England Tournament and was unbeaten in singles, play until a loss in the final dual match against Williams. “My best team victory was by far the team cham- pionships,” says Banholzer. “There was just a good feeling on the team after we won it.”

Jody Awad, the third singles player, and doubles players Sue Podolsky and Nancy Hunter are the other freshmen players. Thayer Wendall and Karen Loeffler, both juniors, were undefeated playing at the second and fourth spots. Clark feels the successful fall campaign will be a boon to further recruitment efforts. “The strength of your program certainly helps,” she notes. “It really does make recruiting a lit- tle easier and the players will publicize your program, too. It’s like a ball that gets rolling.”

The coach is already looking forward to the spring season. There will be a tougher schedule because Dartmouth will be play- ing more Ivy and Seven Sisters institutions than it played in the fall. “But I believe we’re going to be strong and equally com- petitive in the spring term,” predicts Clark. “I will always try to have better and better teams.”

The Dartmouth field hockey team made it to the tournament quarterfinals at Har- vard before bowing to Massachusetts, 2-0. The squad had advanced to second round by defeating Cortland State, 3-2, on goals by freshmen Holly Burks, Annabelle Brainard, and Liz Eldredge. Coach Mary Corrigan’s team, which posted a 5-3-3 mark during the regular season, bowed to St. Lawrence, 1-0, in the consolation round of the regional tournament.

Dartmouth’s cross-country captain Dean Stephens of Thomaston, Connec- ticut, became the first wearer-of-the-green to win the Ivy League individual cham- pionship at the Heptagonals in New York City. Dartmouth finished fourth in the Ivy League and sixth in the Heptagonal stand- ings. Stephens finished second to an Army runner in the race.

The Dartmouth cross-country team had recorded a five-meet win streak during the fall until it was outrun by Northeastern. Stephens finished third in that meet behind the all-America brother duo of John and Bob Flora. It was the second year in a row that the cross-country team’s unbeaten season was spoiled by Northeastern.

The team finished eleventh in the IC4A championship in the final meet of the year. Stephens’ fourth-place finish was the highest Dartmouth has finished since Ed Spinney won the race back in 1943.