Womensports

"C'mon you guys"

"While not everyone is an avid fan of women's sports, anyone who is a Dartmouth fan should be proud that the College is doing its best to treat its women right." The words echo from 1973, recalling the dim past of Dartmouth's first year of women's sports. The author, Agnes Kurtz, now the assistant director of athletics, also admitted that "adding women's athletics to a department comprised of 97 per cent male staff wasn't as easy as adding women to an English or math class."

In that first year, a handful of women played on six hastily formed teams. Everyone who tried out made it. The records were mixed, prep schools dotted the schedule, the fans were few. Except for the enthusiasm of the athletes and the brave words of Kurtz, the full-time coach, the loudest noise generated by the games was a yawn. Now, some 400 of 1,000 women students compete on 16 teams and clubs.

There are winter teams in hockey, basketball, squash, swimming, skiing, and gymnastics, and photographer; Nancy Wasserman '77 has followed them in the locker room - where fumbling with equipment and quiet tension are the same for both sexes - in practice, and in games. The argot - "C'mon you guys" - is familiar, too.

Last year, the women s teams ran up a record of 80-49-5. They are champions in tennis and field hockey. At the middle of this season, the basketball team was winning by scores like 75-28, and in one match the gymnastics team broke its old record for points with what the coach predicted would be "our lowest score of the season." It isn't so much hope for the future anymore, it's confidence in the present.