Triple Threat

THE player's first experience with soccer came during her one year at Phillips Exeter Academy. "It was my senior year and I was just playing in the phys. ed. program," recalled Cinda Fernald, of Wellesley, Massachusetts. "My coach was also the jayvee coach and he asked me if I wanted to play for the team. My first game was as a sub for the jayvees and my final game was as a starter for the varsity against Andover, our big rival. It was pretty exciting."

Fernald, a senior, is founder, manager, and co-captain of women's soccer at Dartmouth. She also is co-captain of the women's ice hockey and lacrosse teams. She is an A student.

The soccer club was started last fall. Fernald recruited the women's ice hockey coach, Lou Panella '78, to coach the team, put up a meeting notice for interested players, wrote a constitution for the club that was submitted to the Dartmouth College Athletic Council, and set up a schedule. "And that was it," she said. "My dad loaned me 15 balls we had at the house, and at the end of the summer I brought all of the stuff up to Hanover in case it worked. And it did."

Even though the club was organized late, Fernald and Assistant Director of Athletics Agnes Kurtz were able to line up six games for the 1977 season. "Our first game was against Smith and we had only been practicing for a week," Fernald remembered. "So we were all kind of nervous. We rode with the field hockey team on the bus down to Northampton and we tied them, 2-2, so we came out feeling pretty good." In its first year the soccer team posted a 2-3-1 record, not bad for a beginning effort and good enough to build enthusiasm.

This season the 25-member club has an eight-game schedule. Yale, Harvard, and Williams are the new opponents. The squad downed Smith, 2-1, after losing to an experienced UMass team, 5-0, in the opener. The team will also participate in the Ivy League tournament at Brown University and last month held a plant sale to raise money for the trip. As manager of the club, Fernald is in charge of scheduling and meets opposing teams to make sure they have a place to change and store valuables. The Fernald family also seems to be providing most of the equipment. "My father donated a set of socks last year," she said.

She has played hockey for three years at Dartmouth and is a right wing on the second line. Her hockey experience was similar to her first taste of soccer. "A couple of my friends at Exeter talked me into going out for the hockey team when the season was half over," Fernald said. "I'm sure if I hadn't played there I wouldn't have played here." Last winter the hockey club posted a 7-7-1 mark, the best record ever. "I don't know how many goals I scored, possibly four or five, but I remember I had about as many penalties as goals."

Fernald had played lacrosse at Wellesley and Exeter before coming to Dartmouth. "I played in the tenth grade at Wellesley, but in the 11th grade I was cut from the team and that was very depressing," she conceded. Fernald is a defense wing on the Dartmouth team, which posted a 7-9-1 mark last spring.

A math-social science major, Fernald carries a 3.72 average on the four-point grade system. "Oh, you're not going to put that in, are you?" she asked. "I think it helps to play a sport because you budget your time better and you don't goof off as much. 1 had my worst term ever when I didn't play a sport during the summer of my sophomore year." She spends about five hours a day with the books. "It's inflated this term because I'm taking a computer course and that takes more time." She also runs every day to strengthen the leg she broke last August in a collision with the opposing goalie in a summer soccer league game.

Three-sport captain Cinda Fernald, with the tools of her trades, at the Old Pine.