Sports

When Neil Putnam learned that his son had been accepted at Dartmouth, he could hardly contain his pride. That was the father in him. A day later, his son's name was just one of many recruits as Putnam made a checkmark next to it on the chalkboard in the football office. That was the Dartmouth football coach in him.

Neil Jr.'s application to enter the Class of '90 was still pending when his father became the newest member of the football staff last February. The elder Putnam, who was the head football coach at Lafayette from 1971 to 1981, was named offensive line coach, replacing Dick Maloney, who left to become the offensive coordinator at Penn.

"I came on board at the end of recruiting, " said the elder Putnam. "We'd be sitting around the table discussing the recruits, and my son is one of them. I was like an expectant mother. I feel it's a great school for him; he fits into this type of setting. As a father I'm extremely happy. But as a coach I look at him as another player. Yes, there are emotional ties, but I have to evaluate him as a player."

It shouldn't have come as a surprise, but Putnam was delighted anyway when he heard that his son had his heart set on attending Dartmouth. The younger Putnam, a six-foot, 210-pound middle guard, had been hearing about the school constantly while growing up in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The first college job that Coach Putnam had was as a member of Bob Blackman's Dartmouth staff. He was assistant line coach and linebacker coach from 1962 to 1964, with the Big Green producing a 22-5 record and an undefeated season in 1962. "The feeling at Dartmouth was tremendous at that time/" said Putnam, "and I hated to leave the security. It was a great program arid we had a corner on the market on players because Coach Blackman was the first to recruit in the Ivy League. It was a great learning experience."

Putnam has come under the influence of some of the greatest coaches in the country Carm Cozza, Ara Parseghian, John Pont but he doesn't hesitate to call Blackman the greatest organizer he has ever known. But it was a different lesson that he learned from Blackman which has proved invaluable now. "Coach Blackman's son Gary was on the team then/' said Putnam, "and' I can look back on it and recall the experience. Gary was not the number one player on the team and he didn't receive any favors from any of the coaching staff. He wasn't the coach's son. On the field he was Gary Blackman, and his ability was judged by the coaches just like any other player's.

"Now, are the guys gonna kid him (Neil)? I'd be surprised if they don't. But he can handle it. Sometimes if you're the coach's son, people expect you to be a great athlete. Well, I wasn't a great athlete, why should he be?"

Putnam left Dartmouth in 1964 and spent six years with Carm Cozza at Yale. He left New Haven for the head coaching job at Lafayette, and most recently he was offensive coordinator at Youngstown State. But he never forgot Dartmouth.

"I had heard so much about the school from my father," said the younger Putnam. "I'm happy I was accepted and I know that he was happy to get the job. He likes it up here as much as I do. I'm happy for him." Young Neil spent the summer lifting weights a couple of hours a day at Dartmouth and working on a construction job for Tom Schlenker '71, a local contractor.

Meanwhile, his father prepared for the 1986 season by renewing some old friendships from his days as an assistant on the Dartmouth staff. One of his friends from those days was a young assistant from Penn State named Joe Yukica. "Coach Yukica and I had been friends on the staff here," said Putnam, "and throughout the years we've always sat down and talked at coaches' conventions and so forth. When this opening occurred, I was immediately interested for two reasons: I wanted to get back to experience this kind of coaching and the Ivy League atmosphere again, and I thought of all the great times and great success that we had had up here."

While -there has been plenty of time to reminisce, Putnam is well aware that times have changed and so has Ivy League football. The Big Green opens with four killer games, and that may provide the key to the season. Penn visits Memorial Field for the season opener, September 20, followed by New Hampshire. The Big Green then takes to the road for games with Navy and Holy Cross.

"We have our work cut out for us," said Putnam. "We open with the Ivy champs and then play against three athletic scholarship programs in a row.

"There are cycles in football everything must be together, everything has to fall into place. Everything has fallen into place for Dartmouth before, and it will again. I'm excited about it and I'm excited to be under Coach Yukica, whom I respect tremendously. I want to do well. All of us coaches have a tremendous responsibility. This is not our football team. It belongs to the students and the College."

On a hill in Norwich, Vt., former baseball coach Tony Lupien has created , his own "hot corner." On the porch of a shed beside his home, Lupien sits and talks baseball with his friends. Atmosphere is provided by seat number 7 from the old Yankee Stadium, above which hang several pictures and a plaque. One of the pictures, now fading, shows the 1970 Dartmouth baseball team, and next to it is a plaque proclaiming Tony Lupien Eastern Coach of the Year for the 1970 season by Coach and Athlete magazine.

"I don't think a lot about that," said Lupien. "It's the players who make the coach. If you have 'em, you're smart; if you don't, you're not. I'm not trying to be humble but that's the way it is. It's the players who do it."

The players certainly did it that year, advancing to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. It is the only Dartmouth baseball team to have made the final eight since the series started in 1947. And the faded images of that team picture on the porch came into sharp focus once again last June.

While the campus was humming with reunions, the 1970 baseball team quietly held its own reunion at Tom Dent cabin. Half of the 20 players returned to Hanover to swap stories about one of the greatest baseball teams in Dartmouth history.

"I was disappointed that a lot more players didn't get there," said Oz Griebel '71, a pitcher on the team and the reunion instigator, "but there were conflicts with distance and several babies being born. To me personally, all four years of baseball the people I met during that time, the people I played against put in its entirety is the most singular experience I've ever had. That 1970 season had a significant effect on me personally, and the fact that there were 10 players there, and most of the others called to say they wished they could be there, shows that I wasn't the only one. I'd like to do it again."

Griebel and Lupien had been talking last winter, and naturally the subject of the 1970 team couldn't be avoided. "Oz said we should do something," said Lupien, "since so many guys would be back for their 15th reunion. A lot of baseball nuts in the area showed up to pay us tribute. It was a lovely time, a family type thing."

While the reunion went smoothly, the 1970 baseball season certainly didn't. The team returned from its southern trip with a 3-8 record and, as Griebel said, "everyone was beginning to think that the bottom had fallen out." The bottom hadn't fallen out; it had only been established.. Dartmouth went on to win its next 21 games, a school record, and didn't lose again until the second game at Omaha against Florida State.

"I remember we played those teams down in the Carolinas," said Lupien, "and those people could knock your head off. When we came back and started playing in the Ivy League, well, those teams were lambie -pies in comparison. Pitching is the thing that can carry anybody in baseball, and we had more than any other team in the league. You don't often get a pitching staff of five guys in this part of the country. Pitching was the thing."

Five players from that team signed professional baseball contracts and four of them were pitchers. Pete Broberg '72 was the first draft choice of the Washington Senators and signed after his junior year, pitching ing in the majors for Washington, Texas, Milwaukee, and Oakland. Chuck Seelbach '7O signed with the Tigers and pitched in the American League Championship Series: Charlie Janes '72 pitched in the minors for Pittsburgh, and Griebel had a brief fling with the Cardinals. Outfielder Bruce Saylor '7, who led the team with a .359 average and 33 RBIs that year, made it to Class AA ball with the Cardinals.

"It was just one of those freaks of nature," said Lupien. "I didn't recruit; I never believed in that. I just happened to have those people. This place always had a tradition of pro players (Jeff) Tesreau, Red Rolfe and I let the scouts do my recruiting for me. They'd say 'So you want to go to an Ivy League school? Why not go to Dartmouth then and play the way the pros play it.'"

After winning 17 straight, including 11 in a row in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League, the Big Green swept through the District I tournament in three games to earn the trip to Omaha. It was the District I tournament which produced the most stirring memories of the 1970 season and showed that it takes a loose team to be successful in baseball.

"The games blur with me," said Lupien, who spent six years in the major leagues and 21 years as coach of the Big Green. "There have been so many of them. The interesting thing about that season was the 21 straight wins, but what I'll remember most, and humorously, were the district playoffs.

"We were the host for the tournament and the NCAA, in its wisdom, made us the road club. We weren't even the home club on our home field; the powers that be decided that. So for the hell of it, I decided to hire a bus from A 1 Abbott, who owned the White River Coach Line he's a Dartmouth grad (Class of 1939) and I told the players to please be an hour early. They showed up and I told 'em to put on their road uniforms. They thought I was nuts, especially when I told them to get on the bus, we had to go on the road. So we got on the bus and A 1 drove us around Lyme until I said, 'Well, looks like we better get there and take hitting.' We come off the bus and go to the ballpark and there were some NCAA guys there watching us. We showed them. The kids really got a kick out of it."

The Big Green went out and bombed Providence after their brief road trip. In the second game, against the University of Connecticut, there was a rain delay in the fourth inning with the Huskies batting. "That really sticks in my mind/' said Griebel. "Broberg was pitching and they had the bases loaded and no outs in a close game when it started to rain. There was a delay of about an hour and when the rain stopped, Broberg came back and struck out the side.

"The other game I'll always remember was the first game at Omaha (a 7—6 win over lowa State). Saylor hit a home run in the top of the eighth or ninth to win it. I'm sure Bruce remembers that one."

Dartmouth lost its next two games, 6-0 to Florida State and 6—l to Southern California, to finish fifth in the country.

"It was a fine experience," said Lupien, and the people treated us wonderfully. There were a lot of Dartmouth people out there who took great care of us. A base hit here, a base hit there and who knows? But that's the way baseball is."

The 1970 team wasn't the only one to produce pitchers that went into professional baseball, and the best may be yet to come.

Mike Remlinger '88, from Plymouth, Mass., has been accumulating honors at a rapid rate. As a freshman, Remlinger was named to the Baseball America freshman All-America team and was among the nation's strikeout leaders. Last spring, the lefthander was a first team All-Ivy selection and second team All-EIBL while finishing with a 1.59 ERA. He pitched both years in the New England Collegiate All-Star game in Fenway Park.

His most recent accomplishment was making the traveling squad of Team USA in tryouts held in Millington, Tenn. in early June. Team USA is a collection of college players who are expected to form the nucleus of the 1988 Olympic baseball team. That leaves Remlinger with a tough choice: whether to fulfill his dream of playing professional baseball or to stick around and play in the

Remlinger is certain to be drafted when he becomes eligible after his junior season next year. But that was far from his mind last summer. Remlinger was the leading pitcher for Team USA, compiling a 5-0 record and a 2.97 ERA through mid-July when the team played a series of games in the U.S. and Canada, many against the Japanese national team.

Team USA had a 22-1 record before leaving for the World Baseball Championships at the end of July in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

Remlinger wasn't the only member of the Dartmouth community taking advantage of athletic opportunities for world travel. Tiffany Boyd '86, of Edina, Minn., was Selected to play for one of the four Athletes in Action international tour teams. Boyd, a co-captain of last year's Ivy League women's basketball champions, was a member of a clinic team traveling to Fiji and the Philippines.

Dana Chladek '85 and Bob Fisher '89 spent the summer in Italy, France, and Spain competing for the U.S. in the Europa Cup, the World Cup of white water kayaking. Chladek had already competed in the Europa Cup twice and once in the World Championships (the two competitions are held in alternate years) while Fisher had raced in Europe for the past four years with the Junior National team.

"Sure it's unusual for two people from one school to make this team," said Fisher of the 12-member squad. "In the olden days maybe 10 years ago Dartmouth used to be the whole kayaking team, but the sport has diffused a lot since then. Today there are a lot of good kayakers from North Carolina and the Washington, D.C., area."

In addition, three track athletes represented the United States at the World Junior Championships, which were held July 1920 in Athens, Greece. Brian Lenihan '89, from Avon, Conn., qualified by winning the 2,000-meter steeplechase at the Junior National TAC Championships in Towson State College in Towson, Md. in late June. Tom Paskus '89, from Terryville, Conn., qualified by placing second in the 10,000 meters at the same meet. The top two finishers in each of the 30 events in the Junior Nationals qualified for the World Championships. Dan Ford '89, from Sanford, Maine, placed third in the hammer with a throw of 166-6, but was selected as the third Dartmouth representative on the team because one of the top two finishers had a schedule conflict and could not compete at the Worlds.

One Dartmouth team that accepts international competition as a matter of course is the rugby team. But actually, it's not officially a Dartmouth team and competing is not necessarily its international claim to fame.

The rugby team is a club team, even declining financial support from the College a few years ago. And until last spring, it was perhaps best known for the incident in Bermuda in 1976, when several members were briefly jailed, for streaking and other offenses, until Bermuda officials could dispatch the offenders on a plane out of the country. But while such lore is sure to remain a part of the rugby club, especially around postgame and practice kegs, there are more spectacular and savory events to talk about now.

The Big Green posted a 17-0 regular season record in the U.S. to earn a berth in the Final Hour of rugby, held over the weekend of May 3 in Monterey, Calif. The Big Green routed Air Force, 18-4, in the semifinals, earning the right to meet the University of California-Berkeley, the defending champion, in the finals. Cal-Berkeley had won five of the six previous national championships, and the Big Green finally stumbled. The Golden Bears took a 6-0 lead at half time and held on as Dartmouth fought back. The Big Green narrowed the score to 6-4, but had a try called back on a penalty and missed several penalty kicks in the closing minutes.

The women's lacrosse team was more fortunate. Remembering a bitter loss to Harvard for the Ivy League championship in 1983, the Big Green came from behind in the championship this season to take the title, 10-9. The revenge was doubly sweet against a Crimson team that had won the past five Ivy League lacrosse titles. The Big Green was ranked fifth in the nation and finished the regular season at 12-2 and 60 in the Ivies before losing to the University of New Hampshire in the ECAC playoffs. Allison Barlow '86, of Chadds Ford, Pa., was named Ivy Player of the Year,

C° Capons: Linebacker Rusty Gardner 'B7 (left) and Quarterback Dave Gabianelli 'B7 willlead the Big Green eleven this fall in a ten-game schedule that opens at home September 20against Ivy League champion Pennsylvania.

The new boathouse for Dartmouth crew is structurally finished and bears the name of TheFriends of Dartmouth Rowing, who conducted the fund-raising effort that made the facilitypossible. Although interior appointments were incomplete, the boathouse and its shells werein use for summer crew.

Three Games on TV At least three Dartmouth football games will be seen on television this fall. The Ivy League and season opener against Penn on September 20 will be shown on PBS as the Ivy League Game of the Week in 18 cities nationwide. PBS will also broadcast the Dart- mouth-Columbia game from Hano- ver on November 9. Both PBS games begin at 1:00 p.m. The Harvard game, which will take place in Hanover on October 18, is scheduled for a special closed-cir- cuit broadcast in conjunction with Dartmouth Night weekend. It will not be seen in New England, how- ever, because of PBS's exclusive rights for the Ivy League Game of the Week. The television event, spon- sored by Dartmouth and Harvard clubs, will be shown by satellite in 30 cities, from Miami to Anchorage.