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IT’S RAINING TENNIS BALLS Madness ensues following the first Dartmouth goal at the annual men’s ice hockey game vs. Princeton. In January, the Big Green won 2-0.
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THE NEED FOR SPEED Brian McLaughlin ’18 took a podium at this year’s NCAA Ski Championships with a third place finish in slalom.
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LEADING THE TRACKS Jaeger Civic Intern Mary O’Connell ’16 was the top Dartmouth finisher in the women’s 15K Classical race at the NCAA Ski Championships.
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QUARTERLY PUBLICATION OF DARTMOUTH PEAK PERFORMANCE & DARTMOUTH ATHLETIC SPONSORS SPRING 2016
12 BERMUDIAN TRIPLE THREAT Most know Justin Donawa as the men’s soccer player. Did you know he’s also one of the Ivy League’s top triple jumpers and a national cricket player? 14 THE COURT MEETS THE STUDIO Volleyball is making noise on and off the court thanks to Sara Lindquist’s studio albums. 16 RHYTHM AND PACE Ben Szuhaj’s name can be found on the men’s cross country roster, and the library catalog as a published poet, novel on the way.
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PEAK Dartmouth Peak Performance 6083 Alumni Gym Hanover, NH 03755 EDITOR Drew Galbraith SENIOR WRITER Bruce Wood
18 TIED UP WITH A BOW Catcher Karen Chaw ’17 and her bow business has earned her the nickname, Krafty Karen.
ABOVE: Big Green women’s lacrosse huddles up before a home game this season.
20 NO LIMITS Sophomore equestrienne Staci Mannella’s limited eye sight doesn’t stop her from following her Paralympic dreams on the ski slopes.
ON THE COVER: Senior captain Lakin Roland ended her career with 1,235 points earning her tenth on the all-time scoring list.
22 TAKE TO THE SKY Sophomore Nathaniel Johansson doesn’t have your typical part-time job.
ADVERTISING Sam Hopkins ASSISTANT EDITOR Ali Hart CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Bob Miller, Claudette Peck, Steven Spaulding, Katelyn McPherson PHOTOGRAPHY Rob Bossi, Mark Washburn, Gil Talbot, John Risley, Mike Scott, Steph Bambury Problems or Accessibility Issues? dp2@dartmouth.edu © 2016 Trustees of Dartmouth College
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CR EDIT Six Dartmouth student-athletes take extra-curriculars to the next level and succeed in true Big Green form
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Men’s Soccer’s Justin Donawa ’19 (upper left), Volleyball’s Sara Lindquist ’18 (upper right), Softball’s Karen Chaw ’17 (middle left), Sailing’s Nathaniel Johansson ’18 (above), Equestrian’s Staci Mannella ’18 (lower left), and Men’s Cross Country’s Ben Szuhaj ’19 (lower right).
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IT HAS BEEN SAID
the toughest act to follow can be your own. That hasn’t exactly been a problem for Justin Donawa. The opening act for the Dartmouth freshman from Bermuda was earning a spot on his country’s Under-13 cricket team. He topped that in 2013 by placing seventh in the triple jump at the Junior World Championships in Donetsk, Ukraine, two slots ahead of the top American jumper, who now competes for the University of Florida. That’s two different sports and two different stages, but Donawa wasn’t done. Not by a long short. In 2014 he earned a spot on Bermuda’s Under-20 national soccer team. And still he wasn’t done. On March 6 of last year he topped himself yet again becoming the youngest member of Bermuda’s national soccer team and earning his first international cap in a friendly against Grenada. He went on to play in three FIFA World Cup qualifying matches, scoring two goals and leading Bermuda past homestanding Bahamas in his first-ever World Cup qualifying match. The stage? College soccer. Donawa’s transition to the Dartmouth program hit a bump in the road last fall when he suffered a severe ankle sprain during the preseason. But despite missing nine of the Big Green’s 19 contests, the 5-foot-9, 150-pound midfielder managed to finish the year tied for third on the team in scoring with two goals and three assists. He tallied the gamewinner on a 40-yard shot in a critical match with Columbia, and after helping the Ivy League champions win their NCAA opener over Hartwick, notched the Big Green’s lone goal in a 2-1 loss at Syracuse in the second round of the tournament. Although he played just half of the season he was voted honorable mention AllIvy League by the conference coaches. “I didn’t really know what to expect coming in from an athletic or academic standpoint,” said Donawa, a high school All-American at the powerhouse Berkshire School program in Massachusetts prior to Dartmouth. “From a soccer standpoint the sprained ankle was a real bummer,
but I ended up coming back in the second half of the season and making an impact. Academically, I had a solid quarter in the fall, a lot better than I expected.” After a successful fall on the field as well as in the classroom, Donawa accepted an invitation to walk on to the Dartmouth indoor track team. “The jumps coach, Tim Wunderlich, reached out to me via email in the fall, introducing himself and asking me if I want to talk about possibly doing track,” Donawa recalled. “I kind of held off on it for a while focusing on soccer. I got back in touch with him during winter break, and we spoke in early January. My soccer coaches thought it was awesome that I would be able to do both and have been very, very flexible with training and stuff like that, which is awesome.”
“In three years I am sure I can get that record, or definitely get close if I stick with it,” he said. His showing in track is a pretty tough act to follow but that’s never been a problem for him. The same holds true on the pitch where he believes he’s part of a team that can make Dartmouth soccer history. “Our goal this year was to make it to a Final Four and I think during my years here at Dartmouth we can definitely do that,” he said. “That is by no means out of our reach. “I couldn’t have asked for anything more this year. We won an Ivy League championship my first year and I am hoping to do the same for the next three years. I think we can do it. I think there are going to be great things to come for Dartmouth soccer in the near future and even after my time here.”
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My soccer coaches thought it was awesome that I would be able to do both and have been very, very flexible with training and stuff like that, which is awesome. He hasn’t been too bad himself, finishing second in the Heps triple jump with a mark of 51 feet, one inch. That’s the secondlongest jump in school history, behind only the 53-3 3/4 recorded by Vilhjalmur Einarsson ’56, a silver medalist in the event at the 1956 Summer Olympics. “Until (January) I hadn’t jumped since May of last year,” Donawa said. “And I only jumped about twice in May because I had sprained my ankle in the spring, too. My ankles are kind of messed up and I’ve had to wear a brace when I jump. “So in terms of my ankle, and not being able to jump a lot in the past year, I couldn’t have asked for more.” Given that he’s only now approaching the personal best of 51-4 he recorded as a high school sophomore, Donawa has his sights set on a school record that has stood for more than half a century.
Which raises the question of what stage he’ll be on after graduation – cricket, track or soccer? “I would have more of a chance of qualifying for the Olympics or the World Championships in track than cricket,” he said. “This summer the qualifying standard for the Olympics was like 55 feet and without my injury I think I would have been close to that.” But ask him what he really hopes to be doing a few years after graduation and his answer is hardly a surprise. “First and foremost I hope I am still playing soccer at that point, trying to build a professional career. That is the ultimate goal.”
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SAM LINDQUIST
pitched in the Seattle Mariners system after wrapping up his career at Stanford, and brother Jeff was a quarterback and captain for the University of Washington Huskies. That’s a whole lot of talent in one Mercer Island, Wash., family but, as they say on TV, wait, there’s more. Following in her brothers’ athletic footsteps, Sara Lindquist is a talented outside hitter for the Dartmouth volleyball team. “My brother Jeff and I joke that we’re lucky (Sara) is the youngest because if she was the oldest, we’d be living in her shadow,” Sam told the Mercer Island reporter a couple of years ago. Sara Lindquist missed the Dartmouth volleyball season last fall due to injury, but even if the Big Green sophomore were never to lace up a pair of sneakers again Jeff and Sam could end up in her shadow. And not just because she’s a two-time member of the Washington all-state volleyball first team who helped Mercer Island High School to its first state championship. She also happens to be a promising singer with an EP on the Skyville label. Featuring six songs, the smooth and upbeat “It’s a Good Day for a Good Day,” was released just about a year ago and has sold several thousand copies via iTunes and Amazon. An EP is an extended play recording featuring several songs but not enough to be referred to as the more familiar LP, or long play album. Lindquist recorded hers while still in high school during two, week-long sessions. While she recorded it in Nashville and is a huge fan of the Zac Brown Band as well as Eric Church and Carrie Underwood, she wasn’t laser-focused on following in their footsteps growing up. “I have dabbled in different genres but I would say I am really enjoying country music so far,” she said. “Obviously, it’s a little different being from Seattle versus being from the South, but I just love the energy of country music. It’s positive. It’s fun. It’s summery. I’m liking how that has been going so far. At this point, that is the direction that is most appealing to me.” While her dual passions of music
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We are all part of this big family together with all these interwoven passions and don’t have to pick just one. We can pursue a lot of things that make us happy. and volleyball keep her busy, Lindquist appreciates the opportunity Dartmouth has given her to go ahead with both. “The criteria I had when I was looking at schools was it had to be a very good academic school and it had to be a place where I could play volleyball but also pursue other interests,” she said. “It was important to be able to be involved in groups on campus, to be able to go abroad and to continue with my singing.” Lindquist, who spent the winter term in Barcelona, found all of that in Hanover. And on those few occasions when a music obligation conflicted with volleyball it hasn’t been a problem. “After I released the EP I had to go to Nashville for a quick weekend and my coaches were totally flexible,” she said. “They said to go for it. I had to miss a practice but they have been really encouraging of me pursuing that passion, which has been really incredible.” As a 6-foot-2 freshman, Lindquist started nine games, but back pain that began last summer and was eventually diagnosed as Spondylolysis caused her to sit out last season. “It was a bummer not to be a part of that but still being able to support on the sidelines and see how far we are coming has been amazing,” she said. “I absolutely love the team. The girls are really, really great. It’s like coming in and having a family automatically.” Lindquist is looking forward to rejoining that family – on the court – soon. “It is feeling a lot better,” she said of her back. “It took the summer and the fall to
kind of calm things down, doing PT and resting it. I am hoping to be back training soon and to be ready for next season.” Not surprisingly, one of Lindquist’s other activities at Dartmouth is singing with the a capella Decibelles. Perhaps surprisingly, she’s leaning toward majoring in human geography modified with economics, with the business and marketing angles holding a special appeal. “The part I find really interesting is the people part,” she said. “Understanding how people work and function.” Combining Division I athletics, Ivy League academics and a budding music career keeps Lindquist busy, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. While she’s pretty sure she’ll head off to Nashville after graduation she is in no rush to focus entirely on her budding recording career. “Dartmouth of course is an amazing place and I am really thankful to be here,” she said. “Everyone is so involved in so many different things that it makes it really fun. We are all part of this big family together with all these interwoven passions and don’t have to pick just one. We can pursue a lot of things that make us happy.”
Sara Lindquist’s recruiting visit to Dartmouth was made possible by the generosity of John C. Everett Jr ’68 and Judith Cross, DW ’50 through the Athletic Sponsor Program.
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I could hear the laughter in her silent smile. I could feel it in the way she scrunched up the corner of her eyes when she did. Someday, I imagined, she would have smile lines there. I didn’t know if that bothered her, but it certainly didn’t bother me. Those lines would hold memories, a result of days like this. And her laugh would still sound like Spring.” FROM IT WASN’T LOVE (IT WAS YOU) BY BEN SZUHAJ
AS A MEMBER
of the Dartmouth cross country and track teams Ben Szuhaj specializes in distance running, but as a writer he has come off the line like a sprinter. A Big Green freshman from Glenside, Pa., and the William Penn Charter School, Szuhaj has already published a book of narrative poetry. He has written for an online website he founded “connecting artists” and “showcasing talent,” and he hopes to have the first draft of his first novel finished this summer. It’s not unusual for students at Dartmouth and elsewhere to feel uneasy about career options as their college careers wind down. The second freshman finisher for the Big Green in last fall’s Dartmouth Cross Country Invitational, meanwhile, has absolutely no doubts where he would like the future to take him. “I certainly want to be a novelist or writer of other forms,” he said. He’s off to a good start. His gentle and very personal self-published book, It Wasn’t Love (It Was You), is on sale at the Dartmouth Bookstore, at
booksellers around Philadelphia, on Amazon, and via the Barnes & Noble and Lulu websites. “It’s something I feel really proud of,” he said of the paperback. “I don’t want to say it’s elegant, but there’s something contained in there that I captured about myself, about a little part of the human condition that doesn’t change, and I really like that.” The student-athlete with a Facebook account titled, benszuhajwritesbooks, caught the writing bug early. “I don’t think I could put a single date on it but my school took part in a competition when I was in fifth grade called the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival. I wrote a play that won and I got to see it staged by professional actors. At the time I thought it was cool.” As a young high schooler with ambitions to attend a top college he worked hard in math and science courses, but they left him unfulfilled. “I became a little bit disillusioned with the idea of striving for success in those sort of subjects,” he said. “I didn’t really think it brought much happiness, so I started to write. I think I brought some of the feelings from that into my writing and really got serious at the end of my junior
year and beginning of my senior year.” While a lot of would-be creative writers would have headed to schools with wellknown writing programs like the University of Iowa, or Northwestern or Emory, Szuhaj can thank his athletic aspirations for helping him land at Dartmouth. “I had heard about their running camp, which I ended up going to,” he said. “I loved it up here. It was almost magical. I thought the running experience was just what I was looking for and the surroundings beautiful and rugged. They showed me things I didn’t get in Pennsylvania.” Upon acceptance and prior to his arrival at Dartmouth, Szuhaj was an active poster to the Class of 2019 Facebook group, sharing samples of his writing, including his poetry. “I think I have been typecast a little bit as the ‘poem’ guy,” he said. “I don’t really write that much poetry. I write more prose. But for me it wasn’t a bad thing because it gave me a reputation to build upon and to share my work with people.” He’s found his cross country and distance teammates to be a receptive audience for his writing. “I can talk about things with them and be taken seriously,” he said. “They’re all smart, charismatic guys and that means a lot to me. They’re really supportive and I love that.” In addition to his running and his classes, Szuhaj has been working all year on his young adult novel, Dancing With Daffodils, set at a fictional New Hampshire boarding school called Keneval. “It is a coming-of-age story about a senior in high school,” he said. “He is a runner, and while that plays a part in his story, it is not a story about sports. It’s about a kid who has been really studious for his first three years in high school, and in his fourth year decides to branch out a little bit and explore different areas. That leads to a lot of change in his life, and he struggles with really intense highs and really crushing lows. “The end of the story is about losing your innocence and embracing the idea that the world isn’t a collection of linear events that progress one after another toward a result greater than the sum of their parts. It’s about failing and getting back up again, and succeeding in viewing things that end not as being worthless, but as having a purpose in and of themselves.”
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KAREN CHAW
is like the naturalist who chooses to live in Manhattan, the vegetarian who works as a butcher, or the auto mechanic who eschews a car in favor of a bicycle. A junior catcher on the Dartmouth softball team, Chaw figures she has crafted between 750 and 1,000 bows that are being worn in the hair of pitchers and catchers, infielders and outfielders and other athletes from New Hampshire to California. But here’s the thing. “I don’t like wearing them,” the 2015 AllIvy League first-team selection sheepishly admits. “When I play I have my hair in three braids and I’ll put little bows on the end to compensate, but I don’t like wearing regular bows because it feels like a bug on the back of my neck. It creeps me out. “But I like making them.” Chaw, who led the Big Green in RBIs and was second in home runs for the Ivy League champions last year, made her first bow for a friend who admired those being peddled at one of their travel team tournaments. “They sell them for like $15 or $20 each, which is not even close to how much it costs to make them,” says Chaw. “I was like, ‘I can make you a bow just the way you want it, artistically and color-wise.’ So I made her a huge, pink-and-white polka dot bow.” Chaw had never before made a bow. While her teammate appreciated the effort, she shudders now thinking back to that first effort. “When I saw it a year later,” she says, “I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I made this for you and it’s horrible.’ “But I’ve always done arts and crafts and I got better. There are lots of things I learned to do off of YouTube, and that’s how I learned to make bows. Lots of YouTube videos. And lots of practice.” Practice paid off although she waffled a bit when her father and a friend suggested she bring her bows to a Premier Girls Fastpitch tournament in Los Angeles and try to sell them. “I made them all the night before we left because I wasn’t sure I was going to do it,” she says. “We got down there and half
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my team bought them first. Then they all sold out. I was like, ‘OK, this is awesome,’ although, looking back at pictures of what I made I’m surprised they sold.” Perhaps, but clearly Chaw was on to something. As she kept working at the craft demand for her bows kept growing. So much so that during winter break of her freshman year she opened an online shop. Her bows are now available through Etsy – the premier internet marketplace for handcrafted items – via Instagram and through Facebook. On her off-term last fall she even sold her wares at a boutique, although she admits to feeling a little awkward hawking bows in person, particularly so when her
bearing the words Starbucks Diva. “It was, if that’s what you want, you can have it,” she says. Chaw expects to continue making bows and other crafts, such as flower crowns, even after she graduates with an environmental science major and a studio art minor. “In my perfect world I would be living in a tree house that I have built, making bows, and arts and crafts, and selling it to the world,” she says with a smile. “I don’t think I could make a career out of it, but if I could it would be awesome.” Her teammates think she just might. Like her, many of them saw the movie Joy, with Jennifer Lawrence playing the role of a woman who makes a career out of a new
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In my perfect world I would be living in a tree house that I have built, making bows and crafts, and selling it to the world. customers are older than the girls she is more comfortable selling to. Chaw would like to grow her presence online the way she’s grown her bow-tying repertoire. In addition to bows with stripes or chevrons or polka dots and the like, she’s started to do more one-of-a-kind designs. That cause has been aided by a Silhouette electronic cutting machine her mother bought for herself on a whim on Black Friday. Using Photoshop and the electronic cutting machine one of her first custom-made a bows had a numeral 5 on it for a teammate. Among her fanciest designs is a bow with a Las Vegas logo that she was asked to make for a good friend’s teammate. One of the oddest requests came via email form a mother who asked if she could make a bow with still another familiar logo, this one
kind of mop. “My teammates were like, ’That’s you,’ ” she says with a laugh. “They said I was going to take care of them financially. I was like, ‘OK.’ ” Just don’t expect her to ever wear a mop – oops, a bow – on her head.
Karen Chaw’s recruiting visit to Dartmouth was made possible by the generosity of the Class of 1963 and John Casaudoumecq ’81 through the Athletic Sponsor Program.
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Tied Up with a Bow
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SHE IS A DIVISION I VARSITY
athlete succeeding on the world stage in a different sport, all the while working on an Ivy League degree with hopes of going to veterinary school. Whew. As if that isn’t enough, consider this. She also happens to be legally blind. Not that U.S. Paralympic Alpine Ski Team member and Dartmouth equestrian Staci Mannella thinks she’s anything particularly special. “I’ve been legally blind my whole life,” she says matter-of-factly. “It’s not something new to me. It’s just part of who I am.” A sophomore from Randolph, N.J., Mannella was born with achromatopsia, which makes it difficult for her to see anything much more than an arm’s reach away. With limited color vision and extreme sensitivity to light she competes in the B3 classification, skiing behind a guide in contact with her via radio. (The Canadian Paralympic Committee describes B3 competitors as being able to read a newspaper no more than 3.9 inches away and being able to make out shapes “with the help of glasses.”) Again, if that sounds daunting it isn’t to Mannella. She writes on her website, “Because I am the most sighted of the visually impaired girls on our team, I often, quite literally, become the blind leading the blind. Surprisingly, I am actually not as bad of a guide as you might think. I only occasionally run them into things, and only once walked (a teammate) into the men’s bathroom. That’s OK though. It builds character.” Mannella obviously has a good sense of humor. While the ID card for the guide dog who came to college with her bears the name Smidge, she named her pet pooch back home Sal. (Think about it.) On her website she notes that, “Two of the only Bs I got in high school were in
driver’s ed and gym. … I am never going to drive so the fact that I had to take drivers ed is a mystery in itself. And as far as gym, I guess being a member of the U.S. Paralympic Alpine Skiing National Team does not deem me athletically fit enough to get an A. Irony at its finest.” Humor aside, Mannella is an accomplished athlete. The youngest member of the U.S. Team when she was named to the squad at age 17, she went on to win the slalom gold medal in her very first World Cup race in New Zealand. She skied for the United States in the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, taking sixth in both the slalom and giant slalom and hopes to represent
could have,” she says with a laugh. Unlike in skiing, Mannella is competing against fully sighted riders as a member of the talented Big Green equestrian team. She appreciates the chance coach Sally Batton gave her. “I met with Sally when I came up,” she says. “I told her I am a skier, but I really love riding horses and definitely want that to be part of my college experience. Sally is the kind of person who makes you earn your spot on the team. I was pretty confident that I could earn a spot and whether or not she was confident of that, I think once she saw me ride she was pretty confident that I would be a contributing member of the
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I’ve been legally blind my whole life. It’s not something new to me. It’s just part of who I am. the United States at the PyeongChang Paralympic Games in South Korea in 2018. The opportunity to takes winters off to ski on the world circuit played a significant role in Mannella’s decision to attend Dartmouth after graduating from New Jersey’s Morris Country School of Technology, but it was just one of the factors that won the day. “At Dartmouth I could continue skiing if I wanted to,” she says, “but it also has great academics, which is important to me because I want to be a vet. And I could horseback ride. I looked at a few schools but Dartmouth was the only one that had all three.” Mannella added horseback riding to her athletic repertoire as a middle schooler. “My parents are always asking me how did I pick the two most expensive sports I possibly
team.” Perhaps the biggest challenge Mannella has faced since coming to Dartmouth is on the academic front, where a program allows her to listen to readings on the computer, friends share their notes, and the Echo360 cloud-based technology platform gives her a second chance to review what she might have missed. “In high school I could just work a little harder than everyone else and get good grades,” she says. “Here everyone works hard. The fact that I can’t see makes it a bigger gap between me and people who can see, but I’ll figure it out.” No one who has watched her whiz between the gates on a mountain or over a fence atop 1,000-plus pounds of horse would doubt that.
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Take to the Sky IT’S NOT AT ALL UNUSUAL
during the school year for a college student to slap on a silly hat and work part-time at a fast food joint to keep gas in the old beater handed down from the ’rents. Dartmouth sophomore Nathan Johansson’s part-time job isn’t slinging burgers and it’s a good bet you won’t see him pulling a rust bucket up to a gas tank at the Co-Op. Unless, perhaps, he’s on his way to the airport. A skipper on the Big Green sailing team, Johansson is also a certified flight instructor, a commercial pilot and president of his eponymous Johansson Aviation, LLC – offices in Miami, Los Angeles and Lebanon in case you are wondering– as well as the proud owner of a Cessna 172-M that he keeps this time of year at Lebanon Municipal Airport. Jaw hit the floor yet? The Miami native comes by the sailing piece naturally, thanks to his Viking bloodlines. With a father who sailed in his native Sweden the younger Johansson was on the water by age seven and racing by age 12. The flying piece is all on him. “I was the first one to pick it up,” he said. “When I was little, like most kids, I liked big trucks, big boats, big planes. I just kind of
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never outgrew any of those things. “I started off on a computer playing with flight simulators. I would sell snow cones in the summertime saving up money to buy flying textbooks and did a lot of self-study with them. I guess my parents kind of hoped that I would drop it eventually, but I was begging and begging until they sent me for my first lesson when I was 14. I got the bug and I couldn’t shake it.” He earned his private pilot license at 17 and never looked back. “My parents thought that would be it but I didn’t stop,” he said with a laugh. “I went on to get an instrument rating, a commercial rating, multi-engine and flight instructor ratings.” When it came time for college he considered Stanford before ultimately deciding between the U.S. Naval Academy, where he could both sail and fly, and Dartmouth. While he admired the structure that came with school in Annapolis, he wasn’t a fan of the lengthy commitment to become a naval pilot. “Dartmouth was the last school I saw and when I stepped on campus it was like a punch to the chest where I felt like, wow, this is where I’ve got to be,” he said. “I did the typical admissions tour, then I went to a sailing team practice and it was by far the most connected team I saw. It felt like a true family and that’s the way it is. “I really love sailing on Lake Mascoma. We are in a bubble in the sense that we can
focus on what we need to improve on. It’s just my boat, my teammates and a pack of 15-to-20 boats out there. If we were sailing on the Charles we would be sailing next to MIT and maybe stressing out about what are they working on. Or what is BC or Tufts doing? I like the environment we have to be able to train here.” And, he might add, to be able to fly. In addition to giving lessons, Johansson has an active plane ferrying business where he (or one of his subcontractors) will either pick up or deliver a plane for clients. “I will ‘airline’ from Boston to wherever the airplane is, do a full inspection, make sure everything is good to go and then fly it to the owner’s destination,” Johansson explained. “They will inspect it, we’ll do the paperwork and then I will ‘airline’ back home.” Johansson, whose longest ferrying trip involved flying a plane from Seattle to Boston, had six ferrying jobs this winter and he’ll proudly tell you he didn’t miss a class. One of the more memorable ferry jobs he’s had was delivering a plane from a small field in Maine to Oklahoma City, an assignment that he originally scheduled for two days but he was able to complete in one. “I was able to get going early, the plane had a fully working autopilot and I was able to get it up to 12,000 feet,” he said. “I remember being over Kansas and the whole state was cloudless with blue skies. I remember about 3 o’clock feeling so lucky and glad to be up there.” Johansson, who is using fees from his teaching lessons and ferrying income to help pay off his plane, sees a direct parallel between his dual passions on the water and in the air. “Lift, drag, weight, it’s all the same thing,” he said. “I tell sailors who I have taken up that you take the sail and you flip it horizontally and that’s all we are doing. The principles are the same.” Johansson hopes to one day work as a developer while maintaining the ferrying business on the side so he can grab an interesting flight from time to time, perhaps to a Caribbean island one time and to Africa the next. As for sailing, he’s not planning on giving that up anytime soon. He’s excited about the prospects for the Dartmouth team this spring, hopes to keep racing when his college career is over, and will keep sailing even longer.
DARTMOUTH ATHLETIC
SPONSORS WHO ARE THE ATHLETIC SPONSORS?
Athletic Sponsors include more than 1,000 Dartmouth alumni, parents and supporters who love Dartmouth, who love sports, who either played or watched athletics as undergraduates, and who feel that Dartmouth should be a leader in the classroom and on the field. We are men and women in our 20’s and our 90’s and we are represented by nearly every class. WHY DO WE DO WHAT WE DO?
We know that success on the playing surface begins long before the contest starts... it has its genesis in recruiting. Without outstanding talent, success can only be an occasional dream. We are therefore committed to providing Dartmouth coaches with the resources they need to recruit exceptional student-athletes. We also know that Dartmouth has a unique and powerful trump card. The campus is close to irresistible when experienced in person. That’s Dartmouth’s edge! The trick is to get impact scholar-athletes face to face with this great institution to make a decision for Dartmouth. That’s the primary focus of what we do. We fly student-athletes to Hanover and send coaches to their homes. HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS TO THE COLLEGE?
Very! While the NCAA allows one paid visit to campus, the Ivy League legislates that those expenses cannot be budgeted items. That’s where we come in. We provide the non-budgeted funds. Every year we fly in nearly 300 potential impact athletes, and of those recruits accepted by the Admissions Office, the vast majority (about 90% ) decide to enroll at Dartmouth. WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT?
Satisfaction and pride! You’ll be kept up-to-date on Dartmouth sports through our official newsletter, the award-winning Big Green Sports News, and your name will be listed in the next season’s home football programs. If you choose certain membership levels (see next page) you will also be informed of a specific athlete whose recruiting trip your donation made possible, so you can follow his or her progress through four years at Dartmouth. Most important, all Sponsors share the rewards of helping young men and women make a decision to embark on the very special “Dartmouth Experience.” That’s the real reason our program has grown from 6 members in 1955 to more than 1,000 today!
Sponsors and Friends enjoy the complimentary pre-game tent overlooking Memorial Field at each home football game
MEMBERSHIP LEVELS
ADDITIONAL BENEFITS
$300-$599
Assigned a recruit every 3-4 years
$600-$1199
Assigned a recruit every 1-2 years and listed on our Leadership display in Alumni Gym
$1200-$4999
Assigned recruit annually, Leadership display & special recognition in football program
$5000 & up
Assigned recruit annually, Leadership display, special recognition in the football program & VIP Reception at Homecoming
To contact the Athletic Sponsor Program office, please call 603-646-2463 or email Sponsors@Dartmouth.edu
MAY 7 SPRING GAME
SEP. 17
SEP. 24
NEW HAMPSHIRE at Holy Cross
OCT. 1* PENN HOME
OCT. 8* at Yale
Away
OCT. 15
OCT. 22*
at Columbia
TOWSON *Ivy League game
DartmouthSports.com
OCT. 29* HARVARD Homecoming
Game times TBA
603-646-2466
NOV. 5*
at Cornell
NOV. 12* NOV. 19* BROWN
at Princeton