High Spirits

Winningy League basketball championship almost cost women's coach Chris Wielgusa dip in icy Long Island Sound. "They were under orders not to throw me in the shower because I had all my good clothes on, and I later talked them out of throwing me into the Sound because there was a lot of ice in it," said Wielgus. The nine members of the team did get to drink some champagne and sing a medley of Dartmouth songs after defeating Yale, 74-57, for the league championship at New Haven on March 3. It was the first Ivy basketball championship for the Dartmouth women in four years of competition.

It was a comeback victory for the Green. Dartmouth had defeated Cornell, 71-26, and Princeton, 63-47, to reach the final against Yale, a 66-60 victor over Dartmouth in an earlier meeting. Dartmouth held a six-point lead with five and one-half minutes left in the first half when star center Gail Koziara picked up her third personal foul. Wielgus brought Koziara out for the rest of the half and juggled her lineup, but Yale held a 39-29 lead at the break. Dartmouth restructured its offense and defense during the second half and sank 59 per cent of its shots en route to the victory. The Green ran off ten straight points in a three-minute spurt midway through the third period and kept pouring it on. "Everybody was scoring for us, but the score is a bit deceiving because it was a very close game," said Wielgus. Freshman Ann Deacon was the leading scorer with 17 points. Koziara had 16 points and was named the tournament's most valuable player. Deacon and Linda DeRenzo received all-tournament honors.

"The kids went crazy after the game," said Wielgus. "They were jumping all around, drinking champagne and pouring it on each other. Then they started singing all the Dartmouth songs. It took some time for them to pass out all the awards, and then they started the Dartmouth songs again." The players were still in high spirits at 2:00 a.m. when their bus returned to Hanover. "I'm surprised the whole town didn't hear us," Wielgus said.

The women finished with a record of 9-1 in the league and 16-9 overall. "The quality of basketball has improved tremendously," Wielgus said. "I think it'll be tougher and tougher to win as the years go by. But there's a lot of camaraderie among the teams at the Ivy tournament it shows all the positive things about competition. It's a showcase for the Ivy League and women's sports."

Koziara: led Dartmouth to the Ivy title.