Fund a Fencer?
DR. JOSEPH POLLARD would hardly recognize his former office on the third floor of Alumni Gymnasium. Replacing medical facilities are foils, épées, and sabers, face masks, trophies, an armorer's workshop, mats, electronic scoring devices, uniforms, clothes, and other clutter. It is the somewhat cramped home of the Dartmouth fencing team. It is also the home of Dale Rogers, the savior of fencing at Dartmouth.
Rogers, a 31-year-old graduate of Montclair State College, was coaching fencing at Columbia in 1973 when he decided he'd had enough of the city. He arranged for an anonymous donor to give a corporate gift of $18,000 to the Dartmouth College Athletic Council specifically for a fencing program. Fencing, just a club sport since 1970, gained varsity status, dependent upon continuation of the anonymous funding, and Rogers, a former member of the U.S. Olympic pentathlon team, came to Hanover as the coach.
"We've done really well in the last couple of years," says Rogers, who has 24 men and 12 women on his two teams. "This is the second year we've been in the Intercollegiate Fencing Conference, the strongest conference in the country. Three years prior to that we were only in the New England Conference. We expect to be rated high in the New England men's inter-collegiate tournament. Last year we tied with M.I.T. for first."
Despite the success of the program, the future of fencing at Dartmouth is in doubt because its existence depends upon the anonymous gift, now up to $23,000 per year. "This year's funding has been slower in coming than in the past," says Rogers. "If we had a permanent fund, our level of competition would rise because we could recruit. I've had very little success with recruiting because the recruits are not sure whether the fencing program will continue. It's taken us this long to reach this point, so I'd hate to see it fail." DCAC officials maintain, however, that the sport wouldn't have reached varsity status without the gift and that it would be impossible to fund the team from the DCAC budget. "We're in the hands of the donor at this point," says Seaver Peters, director of athletics.
Rogers calls fencing a sport that has "suddenly gone wild," and notes that his facilities are so cramped he has to have two practice sessions. About half of the team members have had no previous fencing experience and Rogers teaches them from scratch. "If they're good athletes, they can be good fencers," he observes. The fencers spend a lot of time on the road and this winter will compete in 11 matches away from Hanover. "The only way we're going to get better is to knock heads with better competition," says Rogers.
THE Dartmouth women's basketball team was a favorite for the Ivy League championship, but star center Gail Koziara was idled by a break in her right foot and was lost to the team. Bringing a 12-4 mark into the tournament, held at Yale in mid-February, the Dartmouth women lost to Pennsylvania by ten points in the opening round and then defeated Columbia and Brown to finish fifth in the tournament.
The men's hockey team saw its fortunes slide during February. The squad, at one point in first place in Division I competition, lost five of six games as their division mark dropped to 10-7-1 as of February 15.
Ed Kania, a senior, established a school track and field record with a 69-foot 11-inch toss of the 35-pound weight. He also won the event at the Millrose Games.
