Teamwork

Athletics do more than teach—they help forge a college community.

THIS PAST MAY I went down to Boston for the Wearers of the Green celebration. Put on by the Dartmouth Club of Boston every five years, the dinner provides us with the opportunity to celebrate our student athletes. I shared with them my sense of the place of athletics at Dartmouth and would like to expand on those comments here.

I came to Dartmouth in 1969—the era of Bob Blackman (football), Ab Oakes (ice hockey), George Blaney (basketball), Tony Lupien (baseball), and Ken Weinbel (track). The first football game of the season saw a 42-6 win against Boston College and we lost only one game all season. We were cochampions of the Ivy League—along with Princeton and Yale—and the freshman squad was recognized as the best team in New England. Tony Lupien's baseball team won 23 games and won first place in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League. It was a great introduction to Dartmouth.

In the 30 years that I have been at Dartmouth, intercollegiate athletics have changed enormously. We have watched with admiration and pride the growth of women's athletics, and the expansion of access to our universities and colleges to a greater range of students. We have also seen a growing divide between a group of schools who play in a competitive national arena and the rest of us. Too often college athletes face pressure to perform at the preprofessional and even professional levels, and athletics are more of a big business than ever. This is the context within which Dartmouth and the other Ivy schools compete.

Organized college athletics began in the 1860s. Dartmouth's first game of baseball was played in 1866 against Amherst. Unfortunately we lost that game, but the sport of baseball nonetheless won an important place at Dartmouth. The first iteration of football here involved freshmen providing a football that the whole College then kicked and fought over. Not surprisingly the games often resulted in broken windows, broken bones, and other damage. The faculty banned the game in 1868, only to reintroduce it a couple of years later.

Not only was football controversial, it was also dangerous. In 1908, 33 players died in the U.S. as a result of football mayhem. President Teddy Roosevelt was so concerned that he summoned the presidents of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton to the White House. Save the game but eliminate the violence, he told them.

While there were questions about college athletics, there was also a recognition from the very beginning of what they could accomplish. Sports can teach the importance of teamwork, the need sometimes to subordinate one's self for the greater good of the team, the importance of hard work, patience, and discipline, the recognition that losing is not necessarily fatal, and that die best of us learn from losing.

Perhaps most importantly, athletics can help us as we try to forge a college community. John King Lord, a nineteenth-century Dartmouth faculty member, noted that baseball "did much toward breaking down the separation of the classes and worked for the unity of college feeling." I know that the same is true today for all sports.

Athletics are an integral part of the Dartmouth experience. Dartmouth is one of a handful of schools in the nation that have fully met their commitment to Title IX and we are extremely proud of all that our women's teams have accomplished. We field 34 intercollegiate teams—16 men's teams, 16 women's teams, and two coed teams (riding and sailing). Last year, women's teams were Ivy champions in soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. Threequarters of our students participate in sports, be it intercollegiate athletics, intramural games, or one of the recreational or fitness programs. Some 3,000 undergraduates play in intramural games each year and 500 additional students play in club sports. Today about 25 percent of undergraduates participate in a varsity sport. These are impressive statistics for a school whose students excel in so many different areas.

Over the past year I have affirmed that what happens outside of the classroom is very much part of the educational experience. Dartmouth is a community of scholars, learning together, learning from each other. The out-of-classroom experience at Dartmouth is an important part of that learning. The interactions that our students have with other students and with their coaches can teach

them much about themselves, about their responsibilities, and their limits. I have told the coaches that I think of them as teachers—and they are a remarkable group of teachers whose lessons can be among the most valuable some students learn about life.

I have initiated discussions on how we can encourage more students to attend athletic events. I would like them to enjoy these special times as Susan and I have enjoyed them, and I would like to encourage what John Lord called "the unity of college feeling." Our community of athletes can help the entire Dartmouth community forge our common bonds.