Between Seasons
END of winter - too early to say it is the start of spring, although at this writing the exodus to assorted points south is in progress. Therefore, here is a summation of events during the final weeks of the cold season plus a couple of items into the future, near and otherwise.
There's another national champion at Dartmouth - the women's ski team, which fell heir to that mantle when Middlebury became embroiled in a legal hassle with the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. As things turned out, Middlebury was permitted to compete in the championships on an individual basis only.
Middlebury had won every other women's ski competition this winter, and in virtually every instance Dartmouth had been second. Had Middlebury's individual points been tabulated on a team basis, the Panther women would have been an easy winner. Such was not the case, however, and Dartmouth's cross-country racers were the key as the Green took this first-ever national title for women with 448 points.
While Debbi Tarinelli, a double winner at the Middlebury Carnival, was leading the way in the Alpine events - she was fifth in the slalom, sixth in giant slalom - it was a 3-6-7 performance in the cross-country race by Harriott Meyer, Caroline Coggeshall and Wendy Thurber plus a third place in the 20-kilometer cross-country relay by Meyer, Coggeshall, Thurber, and Cate Sprague that sewed up a 32-point victory over Utah.
So, as things finished on an upbeat for the women, it was likewise for the Dartmouth men in the NCAA ski meet at Winter Park, Colorado. After playing second fiddle to Vermont through the carnival season, the Green finally caught up with the lads from Burlington, thanks to Walter Malmquist, the excellent jumper. In a meet that was dominated by Colorado (co-champion with Dartmouth last year) and Wyoming, and contested at an elevation that found Vermont and Dartmouth sharing UVM's limited supply of oxygen in an attempt to stick with the Westerners, Malmquist was the only Eastern entry to penetrate the nine scoring places under a revised NCAA point system.
With Chris Berggrav removed from contention by an injury suffered a week earlier in the Eastern championships at Middlebury, the burden fell to Malmquist who responded with fourth place. That was the same position that Dave Cleveland earned in both the slalom and giant slalom - he, too, was the top Eastern finisher in those events - and it was the impetus that Dartmouth needed to edge into third place behind Colorado and Wyoming.
When Dartmouth's hockey team lost to New Hampshire at Thompson Arena in mid-February, the prospect for making the ECAC Division One playoffs wasn't bleak, it was out-and-out black. With six games to play, Dartmouth had a 6-11-1 record against division opponents and needed to win every game to have any hope for consideration in the playoff field of eight. During the subsequent 14 days, the Green responded to this challenge by winning five in a row - at Penn (9-5), at Princeton (9-3), home against Yale (6-2) and Brown (an 8-5 win that's a story in itself), then to Harvard where Dan Leigh tipped in Ron Dove's slap shot with eight seconds to play to resolve a 3-2 thriller.
All that remained was a rematch at Brown, the team that Dartmouth had blown apart with four power play goals (three by Leigh) at Thompson Arena a week earlier. The Green needed to win, but George Crowe's team also needed cooperation from other teams that were hanging by a thread in the playoff picture. Heading into the last day of the season, Dartmouth had to beat Brown while Providence had to lose to Boston University. It didn't work out. Less than an hour before the faceoff at Brown's Meehan Auditorium, the word arrived that Providence had upset BU. That clinched the eighth playoff spot for the Friars, and the Green played like a team that was out of the running at the eleventh hour. Brown won, 6-2, putting Dartmouth into tenth place in the final division standings; the Green still finished third in the Ivy League. The evening of March 1 was clearly the most memorable of the winter season for Dartmouth's basketball team. While the skaters were catching Harvard at Cambridge, the Crimson visited Thompson Arena for basketball and weren't expecting to walk away on the short end of a 66-54 score. The reason for Dartmouth's win in a season when victory was to come but four times: Sterling Edmonds.
The six-foot nine-inch junior who opted for milk shakes to get his weight somewhere close to 200 pounds this season did it all against the Crimson. He hit 10 of 12 shots from the floor, added six foul shots without a miss plus three assists and five rebounds. Among his 26 points were a pair of backwards, over-the-head dunks (hardly standard fare). Sterling was anything but silver plate during Dartmouth's final four games as he scored 35, 26, 27, and 21 points and made 60 per cent of his shots, a performance that added luster to a long season.
In 26 games, either Edmonds or Larry Cubas led Dartmouth in scoring. Between them, they averaged nearly 34 points per game. Dartmouth's next three scorers had a collective average of 12.8. Cubas won the Dolly Stark Award as the most valuable player. Edmonds will join John Lisowski, the senior guard who missed the entire season with a knee injury, as co-leaders of a team that should improve next season, helped by new faces from a freshman team that had a 10-7 record.
Dartmouth's swimmers built their season toward the Eastern Seaboard Meet at Army in early March. The dual season had been a shade better than Coach Ron Keenhold had anticipated (6-4) and the development process clearly was geared toward putting forth the peak effort at West Point. No one expected to challenge Princeton or Harvard in the duel for the top rung, but the Green figured to be in the upper echelon when it was all over.
To say that Ted Pollard and John Evans were the prime movers in the drive for sixth place - nine points behind Navy and 58 ahead of seventh-place Fordham - is an understatement. Pollard, for sure, was magnificent, as he set a meet record while winning the 100-yard'backstroke for the third year in a row and taking second place in two other events. He was worth 42 points all by himself and shared in 18 more earned in the medley relay. Evans was virtually as sharp as he retained the three-meter diving title and placed second in the one-meter event. He avenged that loss to Cornell's Paul Steck in the NCAA qualifying meet a week later.
All told, this was a fine team performance that Keenhold's collaborates produced. In a total of 72 separate swims spread over 16 events, Green swimmers came through with personal best efforts 40 times. In the process, they set nine Dartmouth varsity records and four freshman marks. Freshman Todd Taylor and sophomore Greg Dozer, two excellent freestylers, were responsible for six of the 13 record performances. Pollard, who had three marks to his credit, was the only senior involved in Dartmouth's overall scoring.
There was no question about Ken Jansson's winning distance in the weight throw at the Heptagonal Meet. Dartmouth's sophomore didn't make it close as he buried defending champion Ed Ajootian of Harvard by nearly 19 inches. There was, however, a prolonged question as to who won the 60-yard dash. Jimmie Solomon and his coach, Ken Weinbel, felt that the Dartmouth junior speedster had edged Cornell's Neal Hall, the officials studied the print from the phototimer, resolved that they couldn't get an accurate line on Solomon's chest, and awarded first place to Hall.
Hall and Solomon were each credited with times of 6.44 seconds. Hall was running in the middle of the track and Solomon was on the outside, farthest from the camera. Given Solomon's position on the track, his dark green jersey, and the dark background created by the spectators, there was no way for Weinbel to win the debate. Solomon's head was across the tape but it's the chest that counts in the dash and on that count, it went to Hall.
Jansson (he also was third in the shot put) and Solomon were the key performers as Dartmouth finished seventh at the Heps. Jansson went on to the NCAA Meet in Detroit and earned all-America honors as he placed fifth in the weight with a throw of 64 feet. It's a range that has become routine for this 245-pound muscleman.
Capitalizing on performances by Nancy Luebbert, Joe Nicolosi and Captain Randy Carroll that merited All-Ivy recognition, Dartmouth's rifle team outshot Cornell by 17 points to win the Ivy League championship, an honor it relinquished to Cornell last year after winning the title in 1975.
On other fronts, Dartmouth's gymnastics team finished third in the Ivy League meet for men while the women were fourth. The Green men then took third place in the New England League championship meet as Dave Whipple excelled in the floor exercise. In squash, Dartmouth produced a 6-5 record and held tenth place in the intercollegiate championship meet. Dartmouth's fencers compiled a dual record of 5-5 behind the strong epee trio of Frank Sommers, Scott Latimer, and Kaj Christenson.
After losing at Princeton, 9-0, Dartmouth didn't figure to be an imposing foe for the Tigers in the opening game of the first Ivy League women's hockey tournament. With five minutes to play, it was a scoreless game and then Princeton netted the game's only goal. The next afternoon, the Green played to a 1-1 tie with Yale, not a bad way to finish up the season.
UPDATING the tenth game situation for football in the Ivy League: It appears an extreme long shot that Dartmouth will add an opponent to its 1977 schedule and the matter will be moot until the 1980 season because the Ivy presidents' approval for the additional game includes stipulations that prohibit expansion in 1978 or 1979.
At least three potential opponents for next year were identified but ruled out for various reasons, the most significant being the prospect of playing a non-league game a week after the last game with an Ivy opponent and the psychological factor of scheduling a game "for the sake of playing" after the league championship has been resolved.
The most interesting idea so far involved something so outlandish as to approach fascinating reality: A proposal was received to play Grambling, the college in Louisiana with a predominantly black enrollment, in Tokyo. The proposal included payment of all expenses plus an additional guarantee. Cornell's lightweight team made the trip to Japan a year ago and played to a crowd of nearly 60,000. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was weighed by appropriate athletic and faculty committees and given a green light for further exploration. At that point, the executive committee of the Board of Trustees stepped in and called a halt to the proceedings. Their view: maybe de-emphasis was losing its emphasis.
