1987

For this special athletics issue, let's hear from some classmates who were team captains back in 1987: Ellen O'Neil, cross-country: "My Dartmouth athletic experience must have impacted me more than I thought, for I decided to return to Dartmouth five years after graduating to serve as the coach for the distance runners at the College. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for this decision, but I believe I was ready for a challenge. During the mid-eighties, I witnessed the many successes of Dartmouth's male distance runners, as their cross-country teams garnered numerous Ivy tides, as well as the runner-up spot at the NCAAs for two consecutive years. Though the women were successful in their own right, as they, too, earned bids to the NCAAs in the late eighties, it was never quite to the level of the men's teams. When I accepted the job here, I was committed to helping the women of the nineties feel the same sense of accomplishment as their male counterparts did in the eighties. We're getting there, but we still have a way to go!" In November Ellen was named Northeast Region Coach of the Year. This fall she led the Dartmouth women to their fourth straight Heptagonal Championship, setting a record for the largest margin of victory ever. In the District 1 NCAA qualifying race, Ellen's team upset nationally-ranked Providence and Boston College.

Phil McCune, rugby: "The most obvious impact of playing rugby at Dartmouth is the lasting friendships that developed through participation in the DRFC. The DRFC was, and is, a fiercely loyal and devoted group of people who hail from every conceivable walk of Dartmouth life. The bond created through common exertions at rugby permanently links people who otherwise would not have crossed paths at Dartmouth. The best rugby memory I have is a general one. Senior year the DRFC had only the motley remains of the previous year's national finalists (me) and one true star, Jon Bigelow. We were projected to finish at the bottom of the Ivy League and pundits questioned whether we would even reach the New England playoffs, the first of many steps to the national finals. With nothing more than an illogical faith that we would win every game (many were excruciatingly close), a determined work ethic and the help of great athletes, like Al Dekin (a future National Team player), Al Golub (a future musician), John Hamlin (who played one game with four broken ribs), John Jakiemiec, DaveSilke, Charlie Markwalter '86, VicTrautwein, Eric Wicksten, and others, we made it all the way back to the final four. Actually, my most vivid rugby memory is the amount of blood involved in Dave Silke's groin injury, but he asked me not to relate that to you. I quit playing rugby regularly when my daughter, Emma, was born. Founding a medium-sized Seattle law firm and trying to keep up with my wife, Joey, who is pregnant again, insures that the only rugby I play is a once-a-year mercy selection to a Dartmouth alumni team in Montana during an annual fourth of July tournament." Thank you, Ellen and Phil, for sharing those memories.

Dartmouth Night update: it was a small but enthusiastic group of '87s who marched in this year's alumni parade on Halloween. Roseanne Wood, Janet Raiffa, HollyTaylor, Lynn Mahoney Easterling LaurieLopes, and I were the few, the proud. I later ran into Bill Martin at the bonfire. He and wife Corrie '90 and their three kids have bought a home in Hanover, just down the street from Tom Kannam and Heather McCutchen.

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