1983

I don't think I realized how athletic a school Dartmouth was until I arrived on campus freshman week and met my two roommates, Joanne Taplin and Amy Cunningham. They both, I soon learned, played something or other year round, starting with field hockey in the fall. Jo then moved on to basketball and lacrosse, Amy (who, sadly, transferred to Yale after freshman year), squash (she came back from practice one day with the imprint of a racquet on the back of her legs) and tennis. I played., .nothing. To this day, I believe Jo is convinced I never studied. Jo you can get a lot of studying done between 3 and 6 in the afternoon. Let me tell you, there was nothing social about the '02 Room or the Reserve Corridor during those hours.

But this month's column is supposed to be dedicated to Dartmouth athletes, and with that in mind I gave Pete Lavery a call. Pete, as you might recall, was an amazing athlete. He, too, played three sports at Dartmouth baseball, hockey, and football and varsity in two of them freshman year, which meant he got to go to the NCAA finals in hockey. "It kept me busy, says Pete. No kidding. (Pete was also active in Aquinas House and, senior year, Casque & Gauntlet. Today Pete is an insurance broker with AON Risk Services and lives in Maiden, Mass., with his wife, Diane, and two daughters who are now (if you can believe it) 12 and 8. He still plays hockey a couple times a week, and almost always makes it to the alumni hockey game at Dartmouth every winter. He says, however, that most of his time goes to youth sports. His daughters between them play basketball, Softball, soccer, hockey, and gymnastics. Why am I not surprised? And a bit of Pete Lavery trivia: our senior year, there were three Laverys on the Green baseball team, as Pete's two younger brothers went to Dartmouth as well. "Those were," Pete laughs, the four most enjoyable years of my life."

Says Dave Neslund, co-captain of our football team senior year, "When I go to games now, those kids playing, for the most part, they're studs compared to us." Dave, who lives in Pennsylvania, tries to get to one or two games a year, and usually runs into classmates and former teammates like RickStafford and Rich Lena. "Everyone's pretty much in the same boat. We have our kids with us, and we want to watch, but they basically just want to run through the bleachers." Dave, a business banking officer with Farmer's First Bank, has, with wife Mary Ellen, three children: Phillip, 6, Bridget, 3 1/2, and Patrick, who was born just last August. "My daughter," he says, "is probably the more aggressive one." But an athletic life can take its toll. Dave has already had one knee repaired. Then again, that was due, not to college football, but church league basketball. "It was the classic weekend warrior syndrome," says Dave, who plays volleyball now. He occasionally runs into other Dartmouth athletes who live in the area, including our old women's basketball star, Laura Stephens Robinson, who lives in Doylestown, Pa., and (as Dave put it so gracefully, I thought) works at home with her three daughters.

Enough about physical exertion. I'd like to move on to contortions of another sort. I don't want to sound paranoid, but I'm starting to believe that someone (and I'm not saying it's Ted Demopoulos, oh, no) has initiated a letter-writing campaign on behalf of Ted. I recently received yet another missive, this one from Rick Bercuvitz '82: "I thought I'd write you to set the record straight. Ted Demopoulos is actually one of the funniest and most off-the-wall people I've ever known. His exploits have always been legendary. At Dartmouth we in Phi Psi knew him as 'Pope Ted.'" Funny? Off the wall? I don't doubt it. But pope? Because he has far-reaching influence? Because he wears hats? You tell me.

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