Consider the Source

THE geographical distribution of the men's varsity hockey team is pretty predictable. The bulk of the squad comes from Massachusetts, usually from Metropolitan Boston's ring of suburbs. This year's team is no exception. The Bay State is home for a dozen of the Big Green players. Five members of the 27-man roster are from the state of New York. Minnesota and Canada have three representatives on the team. Carey Gandy, the team's starting goalie, is from Huntsville, Alabama.

Carey Gandy is also black, the first to play regularly for the Dartmouth varsity and the first to start regularly at goalie in the E.C.A.C. People seem to find this less surprising than his coming from Huntsville.

"I've lived there all my life," said Gandy, a sophomore. Huntsville, a city of 200,000 people, has had an ice rink and an organized hockey league for about 25 years. About 300 players participate in the system. "I started playing when I was eight years old," said Gandy. "I've always played goalie. A friend of mine was a goaltender. He was a couple of years older and since there was a shortage of goaltenders, I decided I'd try it out, too." After a decade of playing in Huntsville, Gandy headed north. He enrolled at the Pomfret School, a preparatory school in northeast Connecticut. "The main reason I went was because of hockey. I wanted to get into a good school and I thought that going to a boarding school would better my chances. People never get to see you play in Huntsville."

Gandy attended the Pomfret School for two years. In his first year he was named all-league goaltender in the four-team Southeastern New England Hockey League. "We were kind of isolated. It was hard for teams to get down from Boston, so most of the games were played outside of the league," he said. As a senior, Gandy captained the football, hockey, and baseball teams. He was a tailback and linebacker in football and a catcher on the baseball team. Gandy applied to five schools, and Dartmouth was his second choice. "I looked at the academics and I looked at the goaltending situation. Dartmouth's program was first rate," he said.

He didn't take the campus by storm during his freshman year. In fact, Gandy played only two periods of hockey during the entire season. He played 40 minutes against Boston College in a junior varsity game and yielded six goals while stopping 20 Eagle shots. "We knew he was coming to Dartmouth, but he was not highly recruited," said head coach George Crowe. "He was not really a walk-on, but he was one of five freshman goalies last year. He was literally. the fourth- or fifth-string goalie."

How was Gandy able to move from the fifth string as a freshman to starting goalie as a sophomore? "Coaching, said Crow with a laugh. "Actually, he is very coachable. I think he's a very good athlete. He's quick and a great competitor. He's one of the best athletes on the team. He was just doing some basic things very wrong last year. He corrected some of these things when he worked at a hockey school for ten weeks during the summer. When he came out this fall he looked good, but we didn't know how long it would last. He started the first two J.V. games and looked super. There was no question that he was going to play for the varsity. He started the third game and has played ever since."

"I worked petty hard," admitted Gandy. "I knew I had some things to correct. It was just a case of smoothing out some of the rough spots. I knew I had as much talent as anyone else. I just had to work it out." During the summer, Gandy worked at the Canadian-American Hockey Camp in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. He said it was a good way to make money and stay in shape at the same time. "I just tried to improve as much as I could. I concentrated on standing up and not going down for the puck, getting used to the faster play, and working on my concentration."

Gandy was in the net against R.P.I, and Harvard in the season's first two junior varsity games and then earned his starting shot in the third varsity game of the year. "That first game, when I started against McGill, was a dream come true," admitted Gandy. Dartmouth defeated the visiting Canadian team, 6-3, to give the young netminder his first victory. On New Year's eve, in the Auld Lang Syne tournament, the 5-foot 6-inch, 155- pound government major was named the all-tournament goalie. "Winning the tournament was a great feeling," said Gandy. And our next game was a 4-3 win against Boston University. That was our first E.C.A.C. win."

Through its first 16 games, Dartmouth had an overall record of 8-8. In Division I the Green had a 4-7 mark. Dartmouth was 1-2 in the Ivy League, with most of the league contests scheduled for the tail end of the season. John Donnelly, a junior center, was the team's leading point-getter with four goals and 18 assists. Senior wing Shaun Teevens had 12 goals and eight assists while Mark Ardagna, a junior center, had six goals and 14 assists. Gandy had played in 14 of the games and had been on the ice for 840 minutes. He yielded 67 goals while stopping 458 shots, for a .872 save percentage. He was allowing 4.78 goals per game.

Gandy, also shown opposite in repose, deflects a slapshot safely over the goal against Brown