The Dartmouth Sports Weekly 03/07/16

03.07.16

Women’s basketball finishes season in fourth

NCAA CHAMPS LOOM OVER BREAK

MEN’S LAX DROPS HOME OPENER

EQUESTRIAN TAKES SIXTH PLACE AT UNH JOB ORENGE, SEAMORE ZHU/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

SW 2

BY THE NUMBERS

8 Double-doubles for Roland ’16 this season

12 Innings played by baseball v.

No. 1 Florida

1.84m Whitehorn ’16’s high jump before NCAAs

3 Goals for hockey’s Schierhorn ’16 in OT victory over Colgate

03.08.17

MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2016

Women’s basketball wraps up fourth-place season

By ASHLEY DUPUIS

The Dartmouth Staff

As the women’s basketball program wraps up the 2015-16 season, the team’s outlook is optimistic despite the impending loss of two dominant players, seniors Lakin Roland ’16 and Daisy Jordan ’16. The program has had its ups and downs over the past few seasons — its consistent year-toyear improvement, however, looks to continue under new emerging players and the continued efforts of the coaching staff. The current season marks Belle Koclanes’ third year as head coach. Her tenure has seen the team go from last place in the 2013-14 season to sixth place last season. This year, the team finished fourth place in the league with a record of 7-7. This finish is the team’s best since the 200809 season in which the Big Green took home the Ivy title.

The team took the floor this past weekend for the final time this season, losing to the University of Pennsylvania 65-50 and Princeton University 68-42.

The season kicked off to a rough start, with four straight losses for the Big Green. In an article published earlier this year by the Valley News, athletic director Harry Sheehy spoke on the mediocre record of the team — 5-11 at the time — saying that one of the team’s key problems was its lack of offensive threats. This has been a struggle the team has battled for a number of seasons. By the final buzzer, Dartmouth’s stats always showed only a few players contributing the majority of the points. This became especially problematic during the current season when one of these offensive threats, Fanni Szabo ’17, went out in December with an injury.

The season looked grim when the team fell against Harvard University at home 56-43 on Jan. 9. In the game only Roland broke double digits with 21 points. The next highest point total came from Andi Norman ’18 with eight points, while the rest of the team scored anywhere between zero and four. However, before the team could be discounted, it mounted a comeback two weeks later at Cambridge to beat the Crimson 70-64. The team as a

Rebecca Asoulin ’17 Editor-in-Chief

Rachel DeChiara ’17 Publisher

Annie Ma ’17 Executive Editor

Maya Poddar ’17 Executive Editor

JOB ORENGE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Daisy Jordan ’16, above, and Lakin Roland ’16 will be graduating this spring, leaving the team without two important players.

whole raised their contributions, with Katie Letkewicz ’18 scoring a game high 26 points. The trend continued into the team’s next game, an overtime victory over Columbia University.

“We’ve figured out what it takes to win,” Roland said. “We know it’s not going to be one person, and we understand that in the Ivy League anything can happen. It’s not who won last year or earlier this season, it’s who plays well that night.”

Roland also chalked up the team’s improvement to greater confidence, and outside time put in to attain visible results.

The last half of the season has seen the clear emergence of players such as Letkewicz and Amber Mixon ’18, who will be crucial looking towards next season. The loss of Roland, who still accounts for a substantial amount of the Big Green’s points, will be mitigated by a greater team threat and deep bench, something that the team will look to secure in the coming months with recruitment. Sheehy said in early January that next year’s class will be crucial for the future of the program.

The women’s basketball program has had a storied history that the current members look to recapture. Before

Koclanes was hired, Chris Wielgus led the program for a total 28 years.

Wielgus was a Dartmouth legend in her own right, building the program into a formidable powerhouse in Ivy League basketball. Under her tenure as head coach, the Big Green captured 12 Ivy League titles and 393 victories.

However, even under Wielgus the program reached a plateau. After winning a share of four Ivy League titles between 2005 and 2009, the program finished fifth in the following season, its worst standing since 1992-93.

Moreover, Wielgus’s last three years as head coach saw the team experience some of its worst Ivy play.

“Change is rough, but it is also opportunity,” Sheehy said in an interview on the coaching transition. “I’m excited to see the growth. I’m really excited to see where we will go and to watch our players gain confidence.”

Koclanes is trying to return the program to its winning tradition. Under her coaching, the team has adopted the phrase “mind on 18” in reference to moving the program towards its 18th Ivy League championship. Koclanes has also built the program around the core values of RAP — respect, attitude and preparation to unite the

team. The young coaching staff has emphasized leadership development.

Koclanes has embedded the concept of “servant leadership” into the team’s culture, which emphasizes leadership through action, not position.

Koclanes efforts will be aided by the recent $2 million endowment of the head coaching position from former player Gail Koziara Boudreaux ’82.

“Our culture has been restructured,” Roland said. “That’s a big piece. We really are building a championship culture here. We have a stronger team, on and off the court, we are getting higher level recruitment, and we are making a statement in the league.”

Most players are quick to point to the team atmosphere as one of it’s primary strengths, and one that all hope to continue to build on. Sheehy cites the team’s passion, closeness and dedication as its key tenets.

“It’s definitely a really supportive and positive environment,” Szabo said. “We always think about losses as learning experiences, so it’s really a comfortable environment to play in.

It still challenges you every single day, but it also inspires you to keep going through tough times.”

Gayne Kalustian ’17 Ray Lu ’18 Sports Editors

Eliza McDonough ’18 Tiffany Zhai ’18 Seamore Zhu ’18 Photography Editors

JOB ORENGE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

After getting off to a rocky start, the team finished its season as a solid contender in fourth place.

MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2016

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

Equestrian finishes in sixth place at UNH

SW 3

RUNDOWN THE

Men’s Basketball

COURTESY OF SALLY BATTON

Though the equestrian team took sixth place this weekend, it had two first place finishes in the fall.

By EVAN MORGAN The Dartmouth

The equestrian team was back in the saddle on Saturday at the University of New Hampshire, competing for the first time since they concluded its fall stint in November. The Big Green placed sixth out of 12 schools who competed in Saturday’s show. Dartmouth equestrian enjoyed modest success in its seven fall shows, winning at Middlebury College and Colby-Sawyer College and placing third in three more shows.

“We have a young team this year — probably half the team is new riders — so a lot of my returning riders did really well and rode well and worked hard, and our new riders had a bit of a learning curve figuring out intercollegiate riding,” head coach Sally Batton said. “They all really rose to the occasion and had a lot of good individual placings in the fall.”

Big Green riders and horses rested during December and January, when New England’s winter weather keeps the horses cooped up inside.

“The horses haven’t been practicing, we haven’t been practicing, so it’s kind of a slow process getting everything back up and running,” Olivia Champ ’19 said.

Riders began training again in February, but conditions often did not work in the team’s favor. Batton said that even though the weather was milder this year than last, the team could still only hold a limited number of practices.

“It is very tough for us to ride in February,” Batton said. “We have to cancel practices if it’s below 15 degrees or if the roads [to Morton Farm] are bad. So we hardly had any practice at all. Maybe in the past two weeks we might have had three practices.”

Some riders were able to jump in just one practice before the show, while others could not jump at all.

Unfamiliar mounts added a further degree of difficulty to the competition. As at every away show, horses at the UNH show were provided by the host school and assigned randomly to visiting riders.

“You have just a couple seconds to figure it out, and hopefully you read the horse right to give them the ride that they need,” Claire

Bick ’18 said. “You’re in the dark when you go in the ring.”

The weather and the unfamiliarity both played into Saturday’s show.

“Horses get a little excited when it’s cold, in general, and some of their usual dependable standbys were bucking a little bit in the show,” Batton said.

Despite the adverse conditions, several Big Green riders impressed at the UNH Equine Center.

The team is absent its regular point riders in the walk/trot class, who are off this winter. In their stead, Holly Langley ’19 won the walk/trot, her first blue ribbon as an intercollegiate rider.

“She really had the pressure on her, and she not only did well but she won her class,” Batton said. “It’s her first time winning all year, and she did it when her points counted for the team, so that was really exciting.”

Additionally, Anna Knowles ’16 took first in the intermediate flat, and Sarah Cohen ’18 bested her competition to take first in cross-rail equitation.

Champ has been a force all year long, and on Saturday she reinforced her position as the second-place rider in the region.

Champ finished second in open fences and first in open flat, entering her in a ride-off for reserve high point rider, a separate competition to determine the second-best rider of all 12 teams at the show. Champ emerged from the ride-off victorious.

Bick and Batton noted that Champ and Cohen’s performances were all the more notable because both drew difficult horses.

Dartmouth entered Saturday’s show sitting in third place in the region, trailing second place UNH by just two points. The team’s goal had been to best UNH on the Wildcats’ home turf and move into second place to claim the title of regional Team Reserve Champion.

The show “didn’t pan out quite as we had hoped,” Bick said, as the Big Green finished in sixth place and did not gain the two points necessary to pass UNH. Saturday’s show concludes the equestrian team’s regular season.

Though the team as a whole will not move on to regionals, Dartmouth riders enjoyed unprecedented individual success this season.

Collegiate equestrian teams compete in both the fall and spring. Individual riders accumulate points in both stretches of the season, aiming to qualify for higher levels of competition — regionals, zones and nationals — in April and May. A record-setting 12 Dartmouth riders, nearly half the team, scored enough points this season to qualify for regionals. They will represent Dartmouth in all eight divisions: walk/trot, walk/trot/canter, novice, intermediate and open fences and flat.

“We had kind of a combination of good riders and awesome individual seasons in the fall, and there were a lot of us who were on the brink of having enough points to qualify for regionals coming into the start of the fall season,” Bick said. “A lot of us showed up really well individually and performed really well in the fall, so a ton of riders ended up qualifying.”

The Big Green riders will get a reprieve from the chilly New England weather in the form of a spring break trip to Florida.

“That will be a great time for them to get on horses they really don’t know,” Batton said. “They’re going to ride with a different trainer down there, and I’ll be there kind of supervising, but it will be a really great experience for them for somebody else to be looking at them and watching them and seeing what they need to work on.”

When the team returns from Florida, it will have a short time to train for IHSA Regionals, which will be held April 3 at the Dartmouth’s own Morton Farm.

Champ said that Saturday’s performance is a signal that many individual Big Green riders are preparing well for regionals.

“We’re really all kind of on the right track, and our work is really showing itself in how well we’re doing,” Champ said.

“Continuing to support each other makes such a huge difference in how we perform.”

Bick stressed that individual success this season was more than just a silver lining to the team’s overall performance.

“Equestrian sports tend to keep you really humble because you never really know what you’re going to get from the horses,” Bick said. “It teaches you to understand that there are other ways to succeed, and the individual success is just as important as the team as a whole.”

SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

YALE PRINCETON COLUMBIA HARVARD PENN DARTMOUTH CORNELL BROWN

13-1 11-2 10-4 6-8 5-8 4-10 3-11 3-11

22-6 21-6 21-10 14-16 11-16 10-18 10-18 8-10

Women’s Basketball SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

PENN PRINCETON HARVARD DARTMOUTH CORNELL YALE BROWN COLUMBIA

12-1 12-1 9-5 7-7 6-8 5-9 3-11 1-13

23-4 23-4 14-13 12-18 14-14 14-17 15-13 12-17

Men’s Lacrosse SCHOOL IVY OVERALL SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

HARVARD BROWN YALE PENN CORNELL PRINCETON DARTMOUTH

1-0 1-0 1-0 0-1 0-1 0-1 0-1

3-0 3-1 3-1 3-2 2-2 2-3 1-2

Women’s Lacrosse SCHOOL

IVY

OVERALL

PRINCETON CORNELL HARVARD PENN DARTMOUTH BROWN YALE COLUMBIA

1-0 1-0 1-0 1-0 0-1 0-1 0-1 0-1

4-0 3-0 3-1 3-1 3-2 2-2 2-3 1-2

ECAC Quarterfinals No. 7 Dartmouth at No. 2 Yale No. 6 Rensselaer at No. 3 Harvard No. 5 Clarkson at No. 4 St. Lawrence No. 8 Cornell at No. 1 Quinnipiac

THE DARTMOUTH SPORTS WEEKLY

SW 4

MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2016

TUESDAY MONDAY LINEUP LINEUP

SPORTS

MEN’S LACROSSE No athletic AT VERMONT events 3 PM scheduled

Men’s lacrosse loses tight game at home to Wagner 7-6

By MATT YUEN

The Dartmouth Staff

At the fifth game of the season, and the first home game, the men’s lacrosse team fell 7-6 to Wagner College at Scully-Fahey Field for the first time in program history. While the Seahawks improved to 2-3, the Big Green falls to 0-4.

Although ultimately ending in a Seahawk victory, the close score does not do justice to describe the overall narrative of the game. The match against Wagner was in the Big Green’s favor for the majority of the time until the Seahawks just managed to secure a lead with less than 21 seconds left in the game.

The match between the Seahawks and Big Green started off pretty evenly between the two rival teams.

It took nearly 12 minutes of the first period and 15 shots from both teams before either team scored a single goal. Progress was finally made at 12:13 minutes into the first quarter when Wagner’s Paul DeVita successfully scored a goal.

Wiley Osborne ’17 had the opportunity to tie the first quarter a minute and a half later after the first goal, but his shot just narrowly missed the net and ended up tragically bouncing

off the crossbar.

Osborne redeemed himself in the second quarter by scoring three of his four goals for the day, giving the Big Green a one-point lead over the Seahawks at the end of the quarter. Osborne impressively ripped through Wagner’s defensive plays and scored the team’s first two goals with just an eight second interval between both shots.

Austin Meacham ’19 assisted Osborne on his first goal. Osborne’s second and fourth goals, however, were unassisted while Don Stephan ’17 assisted Osborne’s third.

In the third quarter of the game, the Big Green continued to hold the lead. Both teams continued to trade goals one by one until Wagner finally scored two goals in a row to tie up the match 5-5. With seconds left in the third quarter, time was ticking away and the Big Green would have to act fast if they wanted to gain a lead.

Luckily, Dartmouth’s goalkeeper Blair Friedensohn ’16 made a beautiful long clear pass to Evan Key ’18, who was able to successfully sink in the ball with just six seconds left in the quarter.

The game was flipped on its head in the last quarter. With the score in Dartmouth’s favor, the Big Green

SEAMORE ZHU/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Men’s lacrosse has lost both of its local games by two points or less.

shifted its focus on defense rather than offense to hold its lead, which may have been the downfall for the Big Green.

“We may have paid too much attention to the defense down the stretch and that was what ultimately led to Wagner’s victory,” head coach Brendan Callahan said.

With 2:36 minutes left of the final quarter of the game, Wagner’s Billy Martin was able to tie the score 6-6, causing the Big Green to lose the lead it tried so hard to hold

onto. Unfortunately, the Seahawk surge did not stop there. With less than 21 seconds left in the match, Wagner’s Andrew Streilein pierced through Dartmouth’s defense and scored against the Big Green, giving the Seahawks a one-point lead, that would cost the Big Green the game.

Overall, Osborne was the only player on the Big Green to score multiple goals in the game, while four other of the Big Green players scored one point each. Nevertheless, the game was a fight to the bitter end,

and the Big Green is ready to get back in action on Saturday, March 19 against the University of Michigan.

“Our guys put out a great effort today,” Callahan said. “I thought our fight was there for the entire game.

Wagner also played a hard and good game. We need to continue to get better with our stick work and our execution. Some of things Wagner did kept us on our heels and by the time we started to attack, it was too late. I give a lot of credit to them for the way they came in and played.”

highest mark. The jump was also Whitehorn’s highest of her career.

With her top finish, Whitehorn is set to head down to Birmingham, Alabama as Dartmouth’s lone representative in the 2016 Indoor Track and Field Championships.

This marks the high jumper’s second invitation to nationals. Last spring, she accepted an invitation to the 2015 Outdoor Track and Field Championship, where she placed 12th in the high jump. This year, she’ll hunt for a better result in one of her last chances to compete in the NCAA National Championship event.

While Whitehorn heads down to represent the Big Green in Birmingham, the Dartmouth ski team will head west to Colorado to face off with the country’s top ski programs.

The team wrapped up its most successful carnival season in years last weekend. It shattered the 22-carnival win streak of its rival the University of Vermont, finished no lower than second place overall in any carnival

and won back-to-back carnivals after being shut out from the top overall spot over their previous three years.

The team has several skiers who are at the top of their game right now and plan to turn in strong finishes during the championship races held from March 9 to 12.

On the Alpine side, standout freshman Alexa Dlouhy ’19 and Foreste Peterson ’18 hold the top women’s individual event rankings in slalom and giant slalom, respectively. With three skiers — Dlouhy, Peterson and Kelly Moore ’18 — all ranked within the top five for the slalom, the Big Green seem poised for big finishes in the Alpine discipline.

In addition to strong regular season performances that bode well for the Big Green, the return of Patrick Caldwell ’17 ought to provide a huge boost. Caldwell won the NCAA Championship last year, finishing first in the 10K Freestyle to earn a national title. He has spent most of this season with the United States national team training, leaving him

away during most of the regular season carnivals.

Despite his prolonged absences, he returned to the team to earn enough points to qualify for the NCAA Championships. Caldwell was away from Dartmouth but was competing as well. He earned a third place finish in the World Under-23 Ski Championship in Rasnov, Romania in February. His top finish should give him and his Dartmouth teammates some confidence heading into the Championship.

At the NCAAs, the Dartmouth team will face off against more that its top local competition. Western powerhouses like last year’s overall champion Colorado as well programs like the University of New Mexico will race with Dartmouth and its East Coast counterparts. But Dartmouth should prove ready to hold its own. The Big Green have earned sixth place finishes in their last two NCAA Championships and seem poised to make another showing at this year’s races.

Athletes to spend spring break at NCAA Championships

By MAX KANEFIELD

The Dartmouth Staff

The next week will be a big one for Big Green track and field and ski teams, as both teams head to the NCAA championship races hunting for strong results. The Big Green track and field team is closing one its top seasons historically after the men’s best finish in the five years at Ivy League’s Indoor Heptagonal Championship. On the slopes, the Big Green Ski team will head to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where the University of Colorado will host the NCAA Skiing Championship.

Dartmouth track and field completed its season with a third place finish in men’s and women’s indoor Heps, the team’s best results since 2011. They did it behind a host of strong individual and team performances, headlined by Joe Chapin ’16, Justin Donawa ’19, Kaitlin Whitehorn ’16 and Helen Schlachtenhaufen ’17. These four

athletes represented Dartmouth’s All-Ivy League contingency. Chapin took the 5000-meter race, cruising to a comfortable seven second win over the field. Donawa, a two-sport athlete who also plays in the midfield for Big Green men’s soccer, made Second Team All-Ivy with a strong triple jump showing. On the women’s side, it was Schlachtenhaufen and Whitehorn who led the way. In the first race of the day on the track, Schlachtenhaufen managed to win the mile, finishing just 14-hundreths of a second ahead of the second place finisher.

For Whitehorn, it was a continuation of an already stellar career that now leads the senior to the NCAA Championships later this week. She notched a win in the high jump at the Ivy league Championship, adding that to wins in the event in both her freshman and junior years. Not only did she grab the high jump title, but she also set a new school record in the process with a 1.84-meter high jump that now stands as Dartmouth’s