At Season's End
ALTHOUGH the varsity basketball and hockey teams lost more games than they won this winter, the freshman basketball team, with an 11-4 record, and the junior varsity hockey team, with a 13-4 record, provided hope for a more successful varsity future. And in the future, because of a new freshman eligibility rule, Dartmouth will field a junior varsity basketball team instead of the traditional Pea Green freshman squad.
After a disheartening 0-8 beginning, Coach Gary Walters's varsity basketball players were able to compile a 10-16 record at the end of one of the toughest schedules a Dartmouth basketball team has ever played. Although defeated by such national powers as Holy Cross, Tennessee, Texas Tech, and Notre Dame, and by Ivy powers Pennsylvania and Princeton, Dartmouth put together a five-game mid-season winning streak which included victories over Davidson, Yale, Brown, and Cornell.
Senior center Sterling Edmonds, more or less a walk-on when he came to Dartmouth basketball, ended the season with 509 points and finished his three-year varsity career with 1,306 points, which places him third in Dartmouth career scoring. He is also the first Dartmouth player to be named to the all-Ivy first team in five years.
Like the basketball team, which is losing co-captains Edmonds and John Lisowski, Coach George Crowe's hockey squad is losing only two seniors — Paul Sawyer, the captain, and Doug Bradley, who played defense. In Ivy League hockey contests, Dartmouth won 5 and lost 7; in ECAC Division One play they were 9-14, tied with Vermont for 11th place; overall, the tally was 11-15. Sophomore center Ross Brownridge was the leading scorer for the team with 10 goals and 29 assists.
The men's gymnastics team was 5-2 for the season, including victories over longtime powers Cornell and Yale, and they finished second in the Ivy League Championships, third in the Northeast Championships. The woman gymnasts were 4-5, tied for third in the Ivies. In squash, the men's varsity and freshman teams were each 5-6, and the junior varsity team was 7-2. Muffy Rogers, a junior and, unfortunately, an exchange student from Trinity, was the first player on the women's squash team — which this year won 7 and lost 3 — ever to earn a national ranking; she's rated tenth.
Male swimmers fared well this winter, 6-4, and the females fared better, 9-2. The men were fifth in the EISL and the women placed third in Ivy competition. The women's basketball team also had a winning season (their first ever) with 9 wins (the most ever) and 8 losses.
In skiing, in carnival competition, Dartmouth men finished with three seconds and a third. At the recent NCAA's at Cannon Mountain and Bretton Woods, the team wound up a half-point behind third-place Vermont. Colorado and Wyoming finished first and second.
The women's ski team, after placing first through fourth in various Eastern meets finished third in the national championships in New Mexico.
