ABBEY D’AGOSTINO’S RACING SPIKES
D’Agostino ’14, perhaps the greatest female athlete in Dartmouth history, wore her size 7 New Balance spikes at the 2013 NCAA Cross Country National Championship, where she won it all by running a 6- kilometer course in 20:00.3. The shoes were only a week old for the event—a coach overnighted them to D’Agostino between regionals and nationals after she realized one of her older shoes had developed a hole. The most decorated student athlete in Ivy League history, D’Agostino has won five national championships and has the most individual titles of any Ivy League student athlete in any sport. In 2013 alone she won four championships, two more than any other Ivy League track athlete has ever won in a career. She’s the latest in a long line of female athletes since the arrival of co- education in 1972. Aggie Kurtz launched five teams that year, all on a budget of $500: field hockey, squash, basketball, tennis and lacrosse. “We had limited money so we were given the choice of uniforms or equipment,” says Ann Fritz Hackett ’76, a member of the inaugural field hockey and tennis teams. “We used the money for equipment. The field hockey team was the most motley-looking crew. We all had to wear white tennis skirts—of course, none of them matched.” Women now participate in 16 NCAA Division I women’s sports and on two coeducational teams.
