Women's Lax on a Roll

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Wednesday, April 16, 1997

The Dartmouth women's lacrosse team has, over the past two weekends, surged to the top of the Ivy League standings and into the national top ten. Wins over nationally ranked Princeton and Penn and a hard fought non-conference loss to national power Penn State have left the Indians on top of the Ivy League with a 3-0 record and ranked tenth nationally in the latest Brine coaches poll.

The Indians opened the season with a series of awe-inspiring results, overrunning the nationally ranked Princeton Tigers last Saturday.

For the past three years, Dartmouth and Princeton have been the unchallenged titans of the Ivy League; the Tigers brought home conference titles in 1994 and 1996 and the Indians in 1995. Dartmouth therefore looked forward to playing its first game against Princeton at home; a victory there would establish the Indians as the conference power.

The notorious Hanover Winter, however, would not oblige. With snow and mud rendering Chase Field useless, the Indians had to travel all the way to Medford, Massachusetts, to borrow Tufts University's field for their 'home' game.

Despite the locale, the Indians came out as if they had the unmitigated strength of a roaring crowd of thousands behind them. Captain Kim Mendelson '97, last year's leading scorer, opened the scoring just 48 seconds into the game, beating Princeton goalie Laura Field. Attackers Kate Graw '00 and Julia Morrill '98 each banged home a goal before Mendelson added her second of the afternoon as Princeton looked on, stunned.

The nation's eighth ranked team was losing to Dartmouth, and losing big.

Just as it looked as if Princeton had regained its composure and some control of the game, Tiger Casey Coleman brought the deficit down to three. The Indians re-extended the lead, with Captain Kelly Hannigan '97, a defender, and Heather McNulty '99 doing the damage.

It was clear Princeton needed something, anything, to happen to change the game's momentum, and Tiger coach Chris Salier provided it, substituting in goalie Amber Mettler for Laura Field, who was clearly not having her best day.

As Mettler turned away shot after Indian shot, the Princeton attack discovered its ballyhooed form, striking no less than six times before Dartmouth could get on the board. Early in the second half, the momentum of the game had clearly shifted, and Princeton commanded a 7-6 lead.

Dartmouth's captains had been through three years of war with the Tigers of Princeton, and they refused to allow their title hopes to go sliding away into mid-table mediocrity.

Hannigan stemmed the roaring Princeton tide with twenty minutes to go in the game, scoring a goal to tie the game up at 7-7. Minutes later, after a series of spectacular saves by Dartmouth goalie Sarah Carlson '99, the captains struck again. Andrea Krumholz '97, captain, passed to Mendelson who beat Mettler to put the Indians ahead permanently.

Morrill quickly scored twice more to ensure the victory. Although Princeton pulled one back, they never looked dangerous after Mendelson's third goal; Dartmouth had won 10-8.

Dartmouth's record stood at 4-0 after the Princeton win, and that victory boosted the Indians to a number nine ranking nationally.

This past weekend, the Indians faced perhaps their two toughest opponents yet, and faced them in brutal succession.

Dartmouth left Hanover early on Friday to travel to the southern extremity of the Ivy League, Pennsylvania, to take on the thirteenth ranked Quakers of Penn on Friday night and the Penn State Nittany Lions (ranked number 11 nationally) on Saturday.

Despite that afternoon's brutal trek, Friday night's game did little more than confirm Dartmouth's dominance over the rest of the Ivy League.

After a sloppy Indian start yielded an early 1-1 tie, Dartmouth spurted free with an exuberant stretch of brilliant play, scoring seven goals in the remainder of the first half for an 8-2 lead. Indian attackers Morrill and Mendelson had two goals apiece while McNulty stepped up from the Dartmouth backfield to notch her sixth and seventh goals of the season. The Indians had control of the game.

From that point on, Dartmouth cruised. Although the Quakers threatened early in the second half, at one point closing the Dartmouth lead to five goals, the Indians responded, with Morrill scoring two more goals to lead the Indian effort. Jen Greene '98 contributed two goals and a team-high four assists. The defense, led by goalie Sarah Carlson '99, held strong, and Dartmouth scored the last five
goals to come away with a 16-6 victory.

On Friday, Dartmouth saw the advantages it could gain from establishing an early lead. On Saturday, in College Park, they would see, firsthand, how hard it is to come from behind.

Despite goals by Jacque Weitzel '00 and Weze Shorts '99, the Dartmouth attack, hampered by the absence of leading scorer Morrill, did not look quite as effective as it had in recent games. Dartmouth trailed at the break by 7-4, with Penn State's potent attack breaking down the travel-weary Dartmouth defense.

The Indians tried to fire back into the game, and seemed on the verge of closing the gap after late second half goals from Krumholz and Greene, but the Nittany Lions struck quickly back with a pair of late goals to give Penn State a 12-9
victory, although they were outshot 27-26 by the Indians.

Despite the loss to Penn State, the Indians are still ranked tenth in the nation, although they have yet to play a home game. Dartmouth also sits atop the Ivy League standings with a 3-0 conference record.

The Indians will take a break from the rigorous Ivy League schedule with a home game (their first of the season) against UMass.

Baseball

Indian Baseball has opened its Ivy League schedule with a burst of enthusiastic success, lacing the dirt of Red Rolfe Field with the luminescent gleam of unbridled optimism.

Dartmouth opened its Ivy League schedule with a pair of double headers on the road this past weekend, facing off against rival conference foes Penn and Columbia. The Indians came away from the weekend assured that their preseason work had not gone to waste, as they swept the Lions on Sunday after splitting with Ivy power Penn on Saturday.

Last year, Dartmouth had fallen to the Quakers by the scores of 17-4 and 9-0, so the Indians were only cautiously optimistic heading into the matchup against Penn on Saturday afternoon.

The optimism taken from the previous week's success against Babson College was further dampened by the knowledge that, in the first game, the Indians would be facing one of the Ivy League's most intimidating pitchers, Penn's Armon Simonian.

Simonian lived up to his considerable billing, holding the potent Dartmouth offense to only a solitary run over the game's seven innings. Penn's offense was effective, and the Quakers cruised to a 6-1 victory.

In the second game, however, the Indians refused to let the game slip away from them in the first few innings. Early RBI singles from Mike Conway '99 and Brian Nickerson '00, both candidates for Ivy League Rookie of the Year, gave the Indians an early two-nothing lead.

Although starting pitcher Peter Sellers '98 had held the Quakers at powerless bay for most of the game, he tired in the sixth, and the Quakers came back to tie the game at 3. In the seventh, however, Dartmouth's batters came through. After first baseman Aaron Meyer '00 singled and moved to second on a Nickerson out, Mike Armstrong '97 scored Meyer with a bloop single to win, 4-3.

On Saturday Dartmouth traveled north to Columbia to take on the Lions, and once again, it was the Mike Armstrong show. In the second inning, with the game still close, Armstrong, who had struggled at the plate for most of the season, hit his first home run of the year — a grand slam shot into the blazing New York sky.

The grand slam ignited a rally that saw the Indians score nine runs in four innings to blow the Lions out of the water. Although Columbia would close the gap, Conor Brooks '00, a freshman from Massachusetts, came on in the seventh to save a 10-7 win.

Brooks started the next game, and held the Lions back throughout his first collegiate start. The Indians — led by a 5-RBI performance from Eric Anderson '99 — put eleven runs on the scoreboard. Although Columbia kept coming back, Brooks shut them down when it counted, and Dartmouth escaped with an 11-7 victory.

Indian Baseball made an inspired return to the Northeast the previous weekend, crushing Massachusetts' Babson College 9-6. The victory boosted Dartmouth's non-conference record to 4-6, not nearly as shabby as it appears given the fact that the first few games were all against teams from the south and west who had been playing all fall and winter.

After a slow start, the game really got going when a Dartmouth scoring rush in the third inning brought in four runs, including two batted in on a double by Meyer. However, victory was also largely due in part to the standout relief pitching of Dan Godfrey '98, who kept Babson off base for the last 2 1/3 innings of the game.

The Indians returned from the traditional season-opening trip to California over Spring Break with a better-than-usual record of 3-6, and the win against Babson has strengthened the team's resolve. Leading the Indians at the plate has been freshman shortstop Nickerson, with a batting average of .400

The victories at Penn and Columbia put Dartmouth's Ivy League record at 3-1, a game behind Brown and Yale. The young stars of the team (Nickerson, Conway, Meyer, Brooks) have established their leadership and as they continue to develop, so will the team.

Women's Lax on a Roll

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