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STARTING OFF STRONG IN THEIR INAUGURAL VARSITY SEASON, WOMEN’S RUGBY WON THE IVY TITLE OVER BROWN IN THE FALL.
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BACK TO BACK Men’s soccer clinched a repeat as Ivy League champions this fall with a decisive 2-0 win over Cornell.
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VICTORY IS SWEET Football created a last-minute victory over Princeton to secure the 2015 Ivy League Championship, the 18th overall in program history to top the all-time Ancient Eight list.
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GREEN ON THE DIAMOND This spring, softball placed five players on the All-Ivy lists with senior shortstop Katie McEachern taking Player of the Year honors.
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12 15-16 YEAR IN REVIEW Aside from the Ivy titles earned this year, Dartmouth Athletics showed progress in excellence for teams and individuals alike. The Big Green boasted more than three dozen All-Ivy selections along with several individual Ivy League and AllAmerica honors. 16 FUELED FOR SUCCESS Swimmer AnnClaire McArt ’18 used her spring term as the DP2 intern to explore the world of performance nutrition.
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PEAK Dartmouth Peak Performance 6083 Alumni Gym Hanover, NH 03755 EDITOR Drew Galbraith SENIOR WRITER Bruce Wood
18 DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER One half of the DP2 Leadership intern team is Mackenzie St. Onge ’17. This women’s hockey player speaks to the role of leadership training in shaping her Dartmouth experience. 20 REDEFINING LEADERSHIP Track & Field athlete Mary Sieredzinski ’17 rounds out the DP2 Leadership intern team and has grown to understand and appreciate her role as a great teammate.
ABOVE: Men’s tennis qualified for the NCAA tournament this spring, ending a 19-year post-season drought. The team traveled to Chapel Hill to take on Tulane in the first round.
ON THE COVER: Track and Field stand-outs Dana Giordano ’16 and Kaitlin Whitehorn ’16 earned First-Team All-America honors in the 1500m and high jump respectively. COVER DESIGN: Pat Salvas.
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, Nate Barrett, Tom McNeill, Andy Mead, Josh Renaud Problems or Accessibility Issues? dp2@dartmouth.edu © 2016 Trustees of Dartmouth College
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YEAR
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LET’S CUT
TO THE CHASE.
What grade would you give the Dartmouth athletic program for the 2015-16 school year? All in due time, my friend. How much fun would it have been if you knew Rick was going to turn into a softie and let Ilsa go with Laszlo and walk off into the fog at the end of Casablanca? Whoa. That was a great picture but are you trying to suggest this year was a classic for Dartmouth sports? No, not really, but there were some classic performances, both by teams and by individuals. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better performance than the one put on by the football team when it stuffed Harvard and its NFL-bound offensive line five consecutive times from the one-yard line in a game for the ages. There was the men’s squash team beating the Crimson for the first time in 70 years. And the volleyball team making a strong bid for its first-ever Ivy League title. There were men’s soccer and golf, the tennis teams and the ski team all enjoying remarkable seasons. Individually there were more than three dozen first team All-Ivy League selections, three more Ivy Rookies of the Year, yet another track All-American I don’t mean to interrupt but maybe we should get down to specifics. You probably want to start with Ivy League championships, right? If you insist. Those came in football and futbol and women’s rugby* this year. Led by one of the best defenses in school history and record-setting quarterback Dalyn Williams, Coach Buddy Teevens’ squad completed the long road back to the top by winning a share of its first Ivy League title since 1996. The Big Green went 6-1 in the conference and 9-1 overall, coming within a minute of an undefeated season. When the dust settled Dartmouth was ranked 20th in the nation and had no fewer than eight seniors end up in pro camps. In addition, Teevens was named the regional Coach of the Year. We’ll get to the soccer team in a second but first, what’s the deal with Buddy Teevens testifying before Congress? He didn’t do something wrong, did he? Hardly. The veteran coach did something right – besides just winning football games. A handful of years ago he banned tackling in practice to limit the risk of injury to his players. It’s taken a while but the rest of the country seems to be catching on. Teevens was largely responsible for the Ivy League voting to end in-season tackling during the week and was behind the development of the MVP, a robotic tackling dummy. Believe it or not, one pundit billed Teevens as, “The Man Who Saved Football,” and another suggested Hollywood could do worse than make a movie about what has taken place at Dartmouth. Nothing personal, but I’ll stick with Casablanca. Now let’s switch to the other football, the round kind. I guess you could say Coach Bobby Clark is back to his old tricks in Hanover, right? You could say that but you’d be wrong. Bobby left long ago but credit one of his protégés for continuing the success that he
started. Chad Riley, who played for Clark at Notre Dame and then coached under him in South Bend, led Dartmouth to its second Ivy League title in as many years. Yet again, the Big Green hosted an NCAA playoff game at Burnham Field, defeating Hartwick in overtime, 1-0. Senior goalie Stefan Cleveland was recognized as the conference’s defensive player of the year and Riley was selected the Ivy League Coach of the Year for the second time in his three seasons in Hanover. OK, I’m curious about the asterisk next to women’s rugby. What’s with that? In its first year as a varsity sport, Dartmouth won the Ivy League title. No, it’s not an official championship with just three varsities in the Ivies, but the Big Green did everything asked of it, defeating Brown, 19-12, to win the Ivy Rugby Conference Championship. I seem to recall a former Dartmouth coach saying that while Ivy League championships are always the ultimate, having something to play for down the stretch is almost as important. Were there a few teams you could say that about? For sure. Kudos to both tennis teams, which finished second in the Ivy League. Coach of the Year Chris Drake’s men lost only to Ancient Eight champ Columbia, along the way beating Harvard for just the second time in 13 years. The Big Green capped the season by earning an at-large bid to the NCAA’s. Leading the way was Dovydas Sakinis, who was chosen All-Ivy first team in singles. The women’s team also finished second in the conference. Challenged by a schedule that featured 11 ranked opponents, the Big Green beat six of them while carrying a ranking throughout the year. Taylor Ng was chosen to the All-Ivy first team in singles. You’ll read more about Sakinis and Ng later. Any other teams make strong runs a conference championships? The men’s golf team very nearly pulled off a stunner when it finished second in the Ivy League championship, a mere four shots back. Sophomore Ian Kelsey earned first-team All-Ivy honors. The volleyball team hung with the leaders until late in the season, finishing an all-time best 9-5 in the conference behind the play of All-Ivy first-teamers Kaira Lujan and Emily Astarita. And then there were the baseball and softball teams. Bidding to tie the Ivy League record with a ninth division championship in a row, Bob Whalen’s baseball team kept reeling in Red Rolfe-leader Yale, eventually catching the Bulldogs before losing a playoff game in New Haven. Shannon Doepking’s softball team, meanwhile, jumped out to a 13-0 Ivy League start, recovered from a late stumble and with a dramatic win in the final weekend took the North Division race down to the last game before falling to Harvard. What other team highlights deserve a mention? Thanks for asking. The ski team ended Vermont’s 20-carnival winning streak and went on to finish fifth in the NCAA Championships. Foreste Peterson earned All-America honors in the women’s giant slalom and Brian McLaughlin in the men’s slalom. Sailing finished fourth in the country in the ICSA Women’s National Championship. That’s all well and good but there were still a lot of teams that finished in the middle of the pack or lower this year. Are there a few of those teams that still deserve a special nod? Absolutely. The men’s hockey team tied for seventh in the ECAC with a .500 record, but with a win over Colgate and then a surprising sweep of Yale advanced to the league semifinals in Lake Placid for the first time in five years and finished 20th in the country. The women’s basketball team reached double figures in wins while finishing fourth in the Ivies, its best finish since 2009. P E A K | SUM M ER 201 6
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Amadu Kunateh ’19 M. Soccer (upper left), Carson Spahr ’19 M. Squash (upper middle), Jaclyn Leto ’16 W. Lacrosse (upper right), Evan Boudreaux ’19 M. Basketball (middle left), Kaitlin Whitehorn ’16 Track & Field (center), Jeff Lang ’17 M. Golf (middle right), Stefan Cleveland ’16 M. Soccer (lower left), Dana Giordano ’16 Cross Country/Track & Field (lower middle), Katie McEachern ’16 Softball (lower right). Jackie Friedman ’16 W. Soccer (opposite).
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Each of the following athletes’ recruiting visits were made possible by the generosity of the listed members of the Athletics Sponsors Program. Kaitlin Whitehorn, Robert Greenspon P’00 & Lacary Sharpe ’01; Stefan Cleveland, Class of 1954 & Lyman Missimer ’78; Dana Giordano, Jim DiNardo ’78 & Andrew DuBoff ’59; Katie McEachern, Peter Zischke ’52 & Herman Christensen ’51.
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And then there’s the men’s squash team which, in addition to that historic win over Harvard, defeated Princeton for the first time since the start of formal Ivy League play. Hansi Wiens was recognized at season’s end as Ivy Coach of the Year. Do I recall you saying something earlier about three Ivy League Rookies of the Year? Good memory. Forward Evan Boudreaux of the men’s basketball team certainly lived up to advance billing. He was the only Ivy League player to average a double-double in conference play and one of just two freshmen in the entire country to average at least 17 points and nine rebounds on the season. The other was Ben Simmons of LSU, the national freshman of the year and surefire NBA lottery pick. Boudreaux is Dartmouth’s second Ivy rookie of the year in a row, following in the footsteps of Miles Wright. On the links it was John Lazor claiming Ivy League ROY honors for Rich Parker’s young team. Classmate Carson Spahr, who posted six wins in conference play, was the top squash rookie in the Ivies. Any other individual accomplishments worth mentioning? More than we have room for but with sincere apologies to those left out, here are a few. Ng, the women’s tennis player, was the national winner of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA)/Arthur Ashe, Jr. Leadership and Sportsmanship Award. Kaitlin Whitehorn was a first-team indoor track All-American after finishing seventh in the nation in the high jump. And Dana Giordano followed her second-place finish at Heps by winning the Northeast Regional cross country championship and then representing the Big Green in the NCAA’s. Quarterback Dalyn Williams won the Bulger Lowe Award as New England’s top
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The Archibald Prize went to Sakinis of the men’s tennis team and McEachern of the softball team. The Class of 1976 Award was given to Whitehorn of the women’s track & field team. Football’s Dalyn Williams took home the Alfred E. Watson Trophy and the Class of 1948 Scholar-Athlete Awards were presented to Ng of women’s tennis and heavyweight rower Spencer Furey. Football’s Daniel Gorman was given the Timothy Wright Ellis 1955 Memorial Award while the Agnes Kurtz Award wen to Tatjana Toeldte of
…while Ivy League championships are always the ultimate, having something to play for down the stretch is almost as important.”
offensive player and linebacker Will McNamara was a finalist for the Bushnell Cup as Ivy League defensive Player of the Year. In hoops, Connor Boehm for the men, and Lakin Roland and Fanni Szabo for the women topped the 1,000-point mark. Is that all? Hardly. Jaclyn Leto was unanimously chosen the Ivy League Midfielder of the Year for the women’s lacrosse team while becoming just the ninth Dartmouth player to make All-Ivy first team three times. You may recall that soccer goalie Stefan Cleveland was chosen Ivy Defensive Player of the Year, an honor also bestowed on women’s standout Jackie Friedman. Softball’s Katie McEachern led the Ivies with 12 homer runs while earning Ivy League Player of the Year honors and Morgan McCalmon topped the conference with 16 wins in the circle. There’s more, like the 42 members of the AllIvy League first team. I can name ‘em all if you’d like. Let’s skip ahead a bit. Who was honored at the annual seasonending Celebration of Excellence?
women’s rugby. And finally, skier Mary O’Connell came away with the Class of 1950 Award. I notice you haven’t talked about any disappointments, have you? I knew you’d get around to that. Sure, there are always disappointments. Not every team finished in the top half of the league standings of course, and some finished at or near the bottom. There’s still a lot of work to be done. Given everything you’ve told me, it’s time for that grade I asked about earlier. What say you? You aren’t going to like this but I’d say overall I’d have to give the year a . . . wait for it . . . an incomplete. Athletic Director Harry Sheehy said when he came to Dartmouth that the goal was to make incremental progress and we’ve certainly seen that in sports like tennis and volleyball, golf and squash. Football is back where it belongs and some of the old standbys like men’s soccer, baseball and of late softball, show no signs of slippage. Let’s give it a little time and some patience before the final grade is assigned, OK? P E A K | SUM M ER 201 6
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AnnClaire MacArt’s recruiting visit to EDITORIAL
Dartmouth was made possible by the generosity of the Class of 1974 and Peter H. Benzian ’64 through the Athletic Sponsor Program.
Fueled for Success
Dartmouth swimmer AnnClaire MacArt did not grow up a baseball fan. Far from it. 16
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“I didn’t like it at all,” the sophomore from Sacramento admits with a sheepish grin. “But when my brothers were going off to college I started watching more with my dad and I fell in love with it.” On a beautiful spring day, although champing at the bit to get outside to watch the Dartmouth baseball team play a key Ivy League game, she speaks enthusiastically about her dream of giving professional pitchers and catchers, infielders and outfielders, an edge on the competition. Within the sport’s rules. By simply eating smarter. MacArt has developed a keen interest in nutrition since arriving at Dartmouth and she knows first-hand the value in the athletic arena of eating right. A freestyle specialist, MacArt set the school record in the 500 free as a freshman and broke her own mark this winter. She is quick to credit a change in her own nutritional habits for at least some of her development as a collegiate swimmer. “I have been swimming since I was five, so I have been an athlete my entire life,” she says. “But I didn’t realize until coming to college how a big of a deal nutrition really is, and how often it is forgotten about or not looked at. “I took it upon myself, especially in the past year, to look more into it. To kind of experiment to see what works and what doesn’t work. “I’ve had blood work done to get a look at what’s happening inside. I’ve done stuff with a naturopathic doctor. I had some underlying things that were causing me to have fatigue and I studied how to fix that holistically, instead of going the conventional medicine route.” As a DP2 intern during the spring, MacArt worked on helping to revamp the College’s annual Celebration of Excellence event, but that’s only part of what kept her busy. She has taken to heart something Donnie Brooks, the former associate AD for Peak Performance, told her when she stopped by his office to say she wanted some day to work in athletics and he signed her up to help the DP2 effort. “Donnie Brooks told me, ‘I don’t want you just sitting in a chair all week,’ ” she says. “He said if I saw something I thought needed to be done to go do it.” Which has led to the recipient of Winter Academic All-Ivy League recognition becoming an adjunct nutritionist of sorts for the Dartmouth athletic department, dovetailing her findings with those of Peak Performance nutritionist Claudette Peck “The great thing with DP2 is I have been able to explore the whole department, not just what I’m doing with Katelyn (McPherson) or with Ali (Hart),” MacArt says. “I have talked with our head of strength and conditioning. I’ve gone to Boston twice now. Once was for lunch at InsideTracker (a science-based blood analytics concern in Cambridge), which is mostly for runners. Once was a baseball operations night. “DP2 has given me the liberty to explore the things that I am interested in. And they have given me the chance to research nutrition and bring a student’s input into improving our snacks, and even our focus on nutrition.” To that end, one of the initiatives she has been exploring is the possibility of incorporating a “fueling bar” at Dartmouth.
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It’s been so special being on campus, not taking classes, but having my eyes opened to so many different things I am able to do.”
“It’s kind of like a concession area,” she explains. “You can go ‘swipe’ and get the right kind of snacks. I would love to see something like that get started here and maybe get even better snacks in the back of the weight room for after lift.” MacArt feels lucky not only that DP2 has taken root over the past few years, but that her intern position has allowed her to explore and bring her interests and concerns to an interested audience. “It’s cool because I get to the weekly DP2 meetings and have the chance to be an integral member of that,” she says. “They have said they are trying to get more funding for nutrition and asked if I can do research on it. I keep giving more ideas about how can we approach this, and have volunteered myself to help if we get something started. “I can’t even tell you how fortunate I am,” she adds. “It’s been so special being on campus, not taking classes but having my opened my eyes to so many different things I am able to do.” Such as possibly work in the game that once bored her. “I talked with the assistant GM of the Red Sox when I was at that baseball operations night about nutrition specifically,” she says. “It was real interesting to hear that even in the minor leagues they struggle with getting that health track started. You hear about Pablo (Sandoval) struggling to lose weight right now and that’s something that somebody should be able to come in and addresses. How can we help you be better be a better athlete just by tweaking something that you are eating? Look at Hunter Pence. He lives off of kale. He’s a madman but it’s true.” Sandoval, of course, is the property of the Boston Red Sox but when MacArt was discovering baseball he played alongside Pence on the Bay Area team for which she now refers to herself as a “diehard” fan. Where will the talented artist who once illustrated the cover of a children’s book on celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson be in 10 years if she could draw it up? “I would love, love to work in any area of athletics, college or professional, hopefully baseball, in the future,” she says. “If I could combine nutrition with that it would be wonderful. “I don’t want to say the word nutritionist, but maybe sports nutrition coach. Whatever you want to call it, doing it for the San Francisco Giants would be a dream come true.”
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EDITORIAL
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
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Mackenzie St. Onge’s recruiting visit to Dartmouth was made possible by the generosity of David & Lee Lemal P’87 and Barry Smith ’59 through the Athletic Sponsor Program.
It is the nature of the sport that wouldbe college hockey players generally have to skate for various and sundry teams to get exposure and experience.
Between that, scrambling for ice time and training it can be difficult to find – let alone keep – a job to help pay for the college experience when it finally comes around. Such was the case for Dartmouth forward Mackenzie St. Onge, who found a unique way to make money on her own schedule, recycling old books into journals that she sells at shops near her home in Stowe, Vt., in Hanover, and on her Mackbooks.com website. “I saw something similar in Connecticut and thought it was really creative,” St. Onge explained. “I started doing it my senior year of high school for friends and got orders here and there.” St. Onge uses an Xacto knife to free up covers of books, removes all but the first and last handful of pages, replaces the missing pages with lined journal paper and then reassembles the book with wire binding. Given the warm reception for her journals, she got to the point where she was putting in up to 20 hours a week creating them, with many of the editions she starts with coming from a shelf at the Stowe dump. “I do all kinds of books,” she said. “Personally, I really like cookbooks because some of the pages that get left in have recipes. I like doing poetry books. There’s a huge range. I have found way more books in German than I ever thought I would have. Books in other languages are really fun. “Dr. Seuss books are cool. They do well in Hanover.” Given her handicraft, it’s safe to say St. Onge understands better than most that you can’t tell a book by its cover. Case in point: she’ll readily admit to a few doubts early in her freshman year when she found herself being tested by one of DP2 Leadership expert Steven Spaulding’s team-building outings at the Dartmouth Skiway. “It was a couple of weeks into school,” she recalled. “We were at the bottom of the mountain and the freshmen were all wearing weight vests. We had to complete this task without talking or anything like that.” As teammates went up the ski hill the vests were shifted from class to class, with various mental and physical challenges only serving to make the climb harder. It got to the point, St. Onge freely admitted this spring, that she began to wonder what exactly she had gotten herself into. “You are going up the steepest part of the double black diamond in the pitch black, when you’re exhausted,” she said. “But you find a way to push through it as a team. In the end that taught me so much about where my boundaries are and how far I can push them. You have a lot more in you than you think you can give. “It helped me understand what it meant to be a Dartmouth women’s hockey player, how to push through adversity as a team. It was a chance to see the attitudes of our leaders. It really confirmed
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I’ve learned a lot about what I value. A lot of that has been through the team, but also navigating Dartmouth on my own outside of the team.”
for me that, yeah, this is a team that I want to be part of. It set the tone for my Dartmouth experience coming in as a freshman.” In her role as a DP2 intern now it is St. Onge who is helping to develop and implement Spaulding’s “experientials.” Needless to say, she has developed an even greater appreciation for their value. “I am really glad that I get the opportunity to have this perspective,” she said. “The leadership department is involved in designing exercises meant to help teams grow and develop toward a specific learning objective. It’s very hands-on and requires a lot of critical thinking in terms of the planning that goes into them. “One day this spring we went out to the river and were trekking through waist-deep, freezing cold water trying to plan out where the teams are going to go and what they were going to do. Getting to be involved in a little bit of the design and implementation, to have to think critically and really have a tangible impact on some of that stuff, is really exciting to me. I am passionate about leadership, leadership dynamics, and the development of team, so this has been a great experience.” St. Onge feels her time as a DP2 intern has benefited her as an athlete, as a student and as someone who will bring the lessons she is learning in the classroom, on the ice – and on the side of mountains – to her professional life. “I’m a psychology major but I am also really interested in sociology,” she said. “It would be cool to be involved with the sociology of sport, and the movements that are making positive impacts within the sports world. Working with DP2 has been an incredible learning experience for that.” Like one of her journals, St. Onge’s story is about more than the cover. “I’ve come to find a lot of new and different ways to think about the world around me, the people I engage with, who I am and what I want,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot about what I value. A lot of that has been through the team, but also navigating Dartmouth on my own outside of the team. What role does hockey play in my life? What role do academics play? Where and how is my time being spent outside of those things? “I have grown so much as a person here,” she continued. “I really appreciate that. In the year that I have left I am going to continue to grow. Come next spring I am going to be in a very different place than I am now. I am excited about that. I’ve come to find a lot of new and different ways to think about the world around me, the people I engage with, who I am and what I want.”
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EDITORIAL
Redefining Leadership 20
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Mary Sieredzinski’s recruiting visit to Dartmouth was made possible by the generosity of Mrs. George H. Jacobus W’53 P’81 P’96 GP’10 and Ashley D. Pace Jr. ’41 through the Athletic Sponsor Program.
Is it really possible to lead from behind?
It may sound a little oxymoronic but DP2 leadership intern Mary Sieredzinski has learned the hard way that indeed you can. And that to be a good teammate you must. To better understand what Sieredzinski has learned let’s start at the beginning. Sieredzinski came to Dartmouth after a standout athletic career at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Fla. In her freshman year of high school alone she was her cross country team’s Most Valuable Runner, a member of the varsity soccer team and the track team’s overall points leader. Only because there weren’t enough seasons in the school year wasn’t she a standout on the volleyball court as well. Before her freshman year at Nease was through Sieredzinski held the school triple jump record, had run on the 4x100 relay that also broke a school record, and advanced to states in the 200 as well as a couple of relays. When her high school career was over the Nease senior class president also made it to states in the long jump, triple jump and 300 hurdles, and owned school records in four events. If not for an injury she likely would have led the Nease track team in points for all four years she was there. Not surprisingly, she graduated as the St. Augustine Sports Club Athlete of the Year. Little wonder that she arrived on the Dartmouth campus expecting big things as a “multi” competitor on the Big Green track team. “I came here thinking I was going to be the best,” Sieredzinski said. “I was going to be the Heps champion. It was all or nothing.” It hasn’t worked out that way. Not yet at least. “I was ahead of the pack my freshman fall and I just really fell off and didn’t understand why,” she explained. “It turned out I was anemic and didn’t know it.” She’s also had to deal with shin splints. And with a pulled hamstring. And a rolled ankle. And more. It’s been one thing after another – to the point that in her junior spring she couldn’t participate in any meets at all. “I have been very frustrated at times,” she admitted. “It has been very difficult getting hurt and not being able to compete. Or competing hurt, which may almost be worse because you are comparing yourself to a standard and coming up short.” If Sieredzinski hasn’t contributed to Dartmouth’s success on the scoreboard the way she expected – yet – she’s found other ways to help the Big Green. She credits coach Tim Wunderlich for helping her understand how. “I have had a lot of conversations with Coach Tim about how I am not the star athlete on my team,” she said. “He’s still in shape and competes with us. I was trying to understand how I could be a team leader in an individualized sport when I was struggling and he said to me, ‘You know, Mary, Nico (Robinson) and Ben (Ose) pole vault higher than me. How come they still listen to what I have to say when I am coaching them? It’s because even though you may not be the most gifted, people can see it when you show a strong work ethic and have positive energy.’
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It is building the mentality that we are tough up here in the middle of the woods. That we have guts.”
“In track it is all about setting the mentality,” Sieredzinski went on. “You need upperclassman to show the way. On any team you’ve got your leaders, you’ve got your haters and you’ve got your sheep. The more positive energy you bring as a leader the more you bring it out in others.” Flash back to her senior year at Nease when Sieredzinski filled out a form for Dartmouth listing her various interests outside of the classroom. Among them were outdoor activities, public speaking, TV production and, yes, leadership. To that end, she has worked with Sidney Finklestein in the leadership department at the Tuck School. She also served for a year as an assistant in the college’s Management and Leadership Development Program, helping DP2’s Steven Spaulding and Hillary McNamee coordinate student activities. Already familiar with her interest in leadership, Spaulding encouraged Sieredzinski to participate during her sophomore summer in DP’s program that goes by the acronym DRIVE (Development, Resilience, Ingenuity, Valor and Excellence). Recognizing the value of more widespread enrollment in DRIVE, Sieredzinski soon became a program champion. “I had done a lot of outreach for MLDP and I told Steven one day I think I have some good ideas for how to get more students involved in DRIVE, and how to increase awareness for the program,” she said. “It’s important because it’s a great program.” Sieredzinski’s key idea has been helping create a “reps” position to spread the DRIVE gospel, particularly to those on campus in their sophomore summer. “All DRIVE graduates are eligible to be reps,” she explained. “They are responsible for coordinating with the sophomores on their team, and the sophomores they know, to increase awareness of the program. “We have about 15 DRIVE reps who wanted to commit to it. We have a little workshop meeting facilitating how to talk about DRIVE, why athletes would want to do it and the benefit of doing it.” Add it up and Sieredzinski – the high school standout who had to find a way to be a leader when things weren’t going her way on the track – is finding a way to lead not just her team, but the whole lineup of Dartmouth student-athletes. “This is all in the greater effort at building more of a leadership culture here,” she said. “It is building the mentality that we are tough up here in the middle of the woods. That we have guts. We may not always be the best team, but you are going to have to give it your all to beat us.” Spoken like a true leader. P E A K | SUM M ER 201 6
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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 22
PE AK | SUMMER 2 016
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AD
SEP. 17
SEP. 24
NEW HAMPSHIRE at Holy Cross
7 PM
1 PM
SEPT. 30* PENN
7 PM
OCT. 15
OCT. 8* at Yale
OCT. 22*
at Columbia
TOWSON
TBA
TBA
1:30 PM HOME
Away
OCT. 29* HARVARD
1:30 PM
Homecoming
*Ivy League game
DartmouthSports.com
603-646-2466
NOV. 5*
at Cornell
12:30 PM
NOV. 12* BROWN
12 PM
NOV. 19*
at Princeton
TBA