FOR REAL
Last spring Dartmouth sent a surprise message to the changing world of women's lacrosse.
THE MID-ATLANTIC SUN beats down on teams that are supposed to be here. This is the end game the national championship—and this is familiar ground. The ball-carrier wears the red and black of the University of Maryland. Her defender, crouching and waving a distracting stick, bears the orange and blue of Virginia. A third unit, the Dartmouth women's lacrosse team, plays from the bleachers. "Watching that final I was thinking that it should have been us out there," says Jacque Weitzel '00, who led the Big Green this season with 62 goals.
Two days before, on May 15, Dartmouth had been ousted by top-ranked Virginia, 10-7, in the semi-finals of the NCAA tournament. The loss ended an extraordinary run for the Big Green, a season that finished with 13 wins and just three defeats. A season that earned them something less tangible than a title yet just as important: recognition, in the small world of elite women's lacrosse programs, that Dartmouth had finally arrived.
A YEAR AGO, COACH Amy Patton was skeptical about the prospect of accompanying her charges to the Final Four. As spring sports teams at the College so often are, Patton's team was plagued by the D-Plan last autumn. With much of the junior class absent and eight freshmen thrown into the mix, Patton didn't know what to expect. Leaders appeared reluctant to emerge. "We were so far away from the season that it was hard for us to see it materialize," explains eventual tri-captain Dune Thorne '98.
"Our team dynamics were struggling," Patton recalls. "It's interesting looking back at how this team changed to being one of the best I have coached from a dynamics standpoint."
On a blustery Hanover afternoon in November, the Big Green piled into two vans and headed to Washington, D.C., for tournament games with Loyola and host Georgetown. Both of Dartmouth's oppnents had been practicing with a full complement of scholarship athletes for eight weeks. The Big Green carried the burden of Ivy rules which prohibit athletic scholarships and allow just 12 fall practice dates.
"We came out competing with them at the same level," Patton recalls. "That time spent in the van was a big step in the team's bonding."
Ranked 12th in the nation in March, Dartmouth's regular season began on an uncertain note against defending national champion Maryland, already five games into its schedule. Patton's squad played admirably for the first 30 minutes and displayed flashes of brilliance before falling, 16-7. Weitzel emerged offensively, scoring five of Dartmouth's goals, and Jen Greene '98 dished out the first three of her season-record 39 assists. Patton was cautiously pleased, but knew the next game, on an even playing field versus Yale, would be a more telling test for her crew. Two last-minute goals earned Dartmouth the win. "I told the team it wasn't our best game but we played well enough to win," says Patton. "When you are able to do that, it is the sign of a championship team."
Over the next ten games, Dartmouth trounced the competition with a display of offensive potency, including a 20-11 win over Brown, a 23-7 victory over UMass, and a 20-7 thumping of Harvard (sweet revenge for us alums who were used to seeing the opposite outcome). Weitzel scored consistently, and Patton found offense from Greene and fellow captain Julia Morrill '98, sophomores Kate Graw, Emily Fenwick, and Melissa Frazier, and freshman LizMerritt. Gaining a reputation for talent, unselfish play, and grittiness, Dartmouth rose steadily in the rankings throughout the winning streak.
The players, sensing the potential this team had, pushed themselves in the weight room, and pushed each other in drills. "In practice we would go so hard against one another. It was incredible," says Morrill.
Not surprisingly, the Ivy League championship came down to Dartmouth and Princeton. Two times in the past five years, under similar circumstances, Dartmouth had jumped out to early leads only to see them slip away in overtime losses to Chris Sailer's Princeton team. This year there was a sense of even higher stakes. In that final week of April Dartmouth was to play at Princeton for the title, then return to Hanover for its first-ever home games against Athletic Coast Conference powers Duke and North Carolina. The momentum of Dartmouth's overtime Ivy championship clincher against Princeton carried over to a 10-8 defeat of tenth-ranked Duke and a narrow 12-13 loss to number two Carolina two days later.
Dartmouth awaited its NCAA seeding announcement at the home of associate athletic director Josie Harper. "I remember thinking how we were watching the TV to see if we'd receive a bye—not if we were going to make the tournament," says goalie Sarah Carlson '99.
During its 11-game winning streak, Dartmouth had outscored opponents by an astounding 175-79 margin. It set school marks for wins in a season (13), goals per game (15.21), and total goals (229). In the scoring frenzy, seven players topped the 20-point mark. Weitzel and fellow '00 Melissa Frazier would be named first-team All-Americas, while classmate Kate Graw would be a second-team selection. Dartmouth won all seven of its Ivy League games, earning title honors for the third time in four years.
But gaining the favor of the NCAA tournament selection committee has never been easy for Dartmouth, despite its presence as one of the top five winningest programs since 1992 (76-2 8). While Ivy rivals Harvard (1990) and Princeton (1994) have won the national championship in recent years, Dartmouth has been overlooked in favor of schools with more storied lacrosse history and larger student bodies. Its appearance in the 1995 Final Four, which ended quickly with a loss to Princeton, was considered by some insiders to be a fluke. "We got to the tournament," recalls Patton, "but I'm not sure the team felt it really belonged there."
The landscape of women's lacrosse, also, is rapidly changing. Since the inception of the Title IX equal-opportunity act, the NCAA has cultivated women's sports. Lacrosse, with its relative low equipment costs and high participation numbers, has been one of the larger beneficiaries. In the past three years alone, 37 new varsity women's programs hav been born at U.S. colleges, bringing the total to 140. The new contenders are led by the North Carolinas and Dukes—schools with name recognition and reputation spilled over from other sports. The lacrosse explosion has forced the NCAA to expand the national tournament from six teams to 12. Fledgling lacrosse programs at scholarship schools have intensified recruiting. The fear is that the traditionally strong Ivy League may take the biggest hit.
"It makes our jobs more difficult. But the Ivies have a great product to sell and that's the education," says Princeton's Sailer.
ON MAY 4 THE NCAA ANNOUNCED its pairings. Dartmouth was given a fourth seed, a bye in the first round of the tournament, and its first-ever home play-off game, versus fifth-ranked Loyola. On a windy, overcast day, in front of a thousand fans encircling Chase Field, Dartmouth found itself trailing Loyola 50 at the break. Refusing to sag, the Big Green scored the next seven goals to gain a 7-5 advantage. Loyola evened things at 77, sending the game into overtime. Dartmouth saved its best for the final seconds of the second overtime period.
"Inoticed that no one was guarding me. Jacquesaw me open and I fired it in," says Melissa Frazier of the goal that sent her team to the Final Four for the second time in school history. "That proved that we had the heart to come back and, that, together as a team we could do anything," adds Liz Merritt.
In Baltimore, an intense but mirthful atmosphere filtered down from the coaches. During the team's practice in preparation for the semi-final game against UVA, Patton and her assistant coaches feigned a strategic meeting and caught the team off-guard with squirt guns. "I couldn't imagine any other team breaking into a water fight at the Final Four," says Merritt.
In the wheel of the team's ritual pre-game huddle, no spoke was stronger than Amy Patton. Those who have played for her admire the sixth-year coach's ability to change her style to fit the sport's nuances, her dedication to the program, and her uncanny ability to get the best out of each player. Says Morrill, "We never feel outcoached,"
A former All-America, Patton had played her lacrosse at Maryland. She understands and expects success. Because of the unavoidable turnover rate at colleges, though, success often moves in cycles, beyond a coach's control. It is difficult to predict fortunes from one year to the next. But one thing this year became clear. "The perception in the lacrosse world now," says Patton, "is that Dartmouth is for real."
All but three players from Dartmouth's Final Four team return for 1999. Having been to the NCAA brink, returnees will carry that experience with them and history is on their side. Keep in mind that the talented '00 class enrolled at Dartmouth on the heels of the Green's other Final Four appearance in 1995. If the pattern repeats, the '03 class could be among the program's best ever.
Remember, too, that in the elite world of women's lacrosse, where the top programs are often separated by the barest of margins, the intangibles of teamwork and dynamics play a crucial role. And according to Patton and her players, the incoming class of 2002 has already made its presence known. A large contingent of Dartmouth recruits spoiled Princeton's alumni weekend with wild cheers, cow bells, and massive cakes sporting big "D"s at the Ivy championship game. Several of the prospects led a psych-up e-mail charge throughout the season that often boosted Dartmouth's spirits.
"Nextyear's class is pretty connected," admits Patton. "Their blood's already green."
Amy Patton, above, coached her team to the Final Four. Sixty-two goals in a season made Jacque Weitzel '00, right, a first-team All-America.
The 1998 Ivy League champions. The national spotlight and the nation's best teams followed them to Hanover. Fans were treated to a first ever NCAA tournament game.
Jana Friedman played midfield and defense at Dartmouth from 1991 to 1994. She has written about the sport for Swing Lacrosse Magazine, where she is the women's lacrosse editor.
