And with 15 varsity teams in action this fall, as well as a host of freshmen athletes, the 2008 fall season should be chock full of excitement, and maybe even a few surprises.
FOOTBALL
This year marks the fourth season of head coach Buddy Teevens' second tenure at the helm of Dartmouth football.
A former all-American quarterback for the Big Green's championship squad in 1978, Teevens coached Dartmouth to back-to-back titles in 1990 and 1991. Teevens now looks for his first winning season with Dartmouth this time around.
Despite a mostly lackluster record over the past 10 years, Big Green football has made modest improvements under Teevens, who has revamped the program's recruiting in the past few years. Dartmouth has increased its conference victories by one since 2005. In 2007, the team went 3-4 in Ivy League play and 3-7 overall.
This season the Big Green hopes to continue to improve its conference record and live up to its 2008 slogan -- "putting it all together" -- by capitalizing on the talent of this year's well-rounded squad.
"We have a great deal of talent in all three phases of the game: defense, offense, and special teams," offensive lineman and captain Alex Rapp '09 said in an e-mail message.
"If we play to our ability in all aspects of the game, we are going to be a tough football team to beat. The key is to consistently perform at a high level in all three phases."
The team recently began a grueling practice and conditioning schedule -- including two-a-days, team meetings, and extensive film -- in preparation for the regular season, which begins on Sept. 20.
The team played an intrasquad scrimmage on Sept. 6 and traveled to Harvard on Sept. 12 for another scrimmage.
"There is a lot of film, a lot of practice, and a lot of work in our playbooks and on the dry-erase board," linebacker and captain Andrew Dete '09 said.
Dete also noted that the offensive line, which lost four seniors last year, has improved its depth during the preseason, and praised quarterback Alex Jenny '10 for his development as the team's top signal caller.
"Jenny has really done a great job as our quarterback -- he is a very smart player and is consistently putting the ball in the right place," Dete said.
Dartmouth kicks off its regular season at Colgate in Hamilton, N.Y. The Big Green will look to avenge last year's 31-28 overtime loss to the Raiders, when Dartmouth blew a 28-point halftime lead.
SOCCER
Dartmouth's men's and women's soccer teams, which arrived on campus for preseason training on Aug. 23, began their respective regular seasons earlier this month.
The 25th-ranked men's side (2-1-0, 0-0-0 Ivy), which qualified for the NCAA tournament last season, played Columbia (0-2-1, 0-0-0 Ivy) in a scrimmage early in camp.
The team also traveled to Indiana to take part in the Mike Bertcelli Memorial Classic at Notre Dame on Sept. 5-7.
Dartmouth dropped its first game to the No. 8 Fighting Irish (4-1-0, 1-0-0 Big East), 2-1, on Sept. 5, before pulling a 4-0 upset of then-No. 3 Indiana University (1-1-2, 0-0-0 Big 10) on Sept. 7.
Forward Craig Henderson '09 believes the win over the Hoosiers was an important morale boost for the young Dartmouth team before it heads into the competitive Ivy League schedule.
"We beat one of the best teams in the country -- we've got to show that confidence, maybe that arrogance, really," Henderson said.
The men's team played in the four-team Nike/Hypertherm Classic in Hanover on the weekend of Sept. 12.
The Big Green defeated Farleigh Dickinson (4-2-0, 0-0-0 NEC), 3-1, on Sept. 12 and faced off against Colgate (3-0-2, 0-0-0 Patriot) on Sept. 14, winning the game 2-0.
The men's team's good fortune seems to have passed over the Big Green women's squad (1-1-0, 0-0-0 Ivy), which fell victim to the inclement hurricane season affecting the Southwest.
Dartmouth's women's team was slated to play against Louisiana State University (4-2-0, 0-0-0 GCAC) and University of South Florida (3-1-2, 0-0-0 Big East) at the Tiger Classic in Baton Rouge, La., on the weekend of Sept. 5. But damage to soccer facilities caused by Hurricane Gustav forced the team to cancel its road trip.
Instead, the Big Green kicked off its season against Monmouth (1-2-0, 0-0-0 Midwest) at home on Sept. 7, earning a 3-0 victory.
The women traveled to Charlottesville, Va., for the weekend of Sept. 12. The team fell to the University of Maryland (3-3-1, 0-0-0 ACC), 2-1, on Friday and faced off against the University of Virginia (5-0-1, 0-0-0 ACC) on Sunday, losing 2-1. This fall will mark the first full season that Dartmouth's soccer teams will play on the recently constructed Burnham Field on the eastern part of campus.
FIELD HOCKEY
Dartmouth's field hockey team, like its soccer teams, has a new home this season. The Big Green will play all home games at the AstroTurf-fitted Chase Field, after the surface of Scully-Fahey Field, the team's former stomping grounds, was changed to FieldTurf earlier this year.
Dartmouth (0-2, 0-0 Ivy) arrived on campus on Aug. 21 and competed in two scrimmages against Harvard (1-2-0, 0-0-0 Ivy) and Canada's Carleton University (1-0-2) before starting its regular season.
The Big Green dropped its season opener to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (4-2-0, 0-0-0 Atlantic 10), 2-0, in Hanover on Sept. 5. The team then lost to Northeastern, 5-0, (3-2-0, 0-0-0 CAA) in Hanover on Sept. 10.
Despite the team's losses, captain Ashley Hines '09 said she is impressed with how the team has developed over the past few weeks.
"Even though we lost both our games so far, we've played really well," Hines said, noting that the Big Green hit two posts in the first half against Northeastern. "We've had a lot more switching fields and a lot more offensive opportunities as opposed to last year. We're working more as a team than as individuals."
The Big Green hoped to record its first victory of the season against Providence College (5-2-0, 0-0-0 Big East) in Hanover on Sunday, Sept. 14, but lost 3-0.
CROSS COUNTRY
Dartmouth's cross-country teams began the 2008 season at the Dartmouth Invitational on Sept. 13. The races, which took place at the Hanover Country Club, are the teams' only home competition this season.
The Big Green men took the top spot out of a field of seven teams from around New England. Glenn Randall '09, an NCAA-champion skier and Dartmouth's top male athlete in 2007-2008, finished first.
The women's team finished fourth, with Aryn Gruneisen '09 leading the way as Dartmouth's top finisher in 10th place overall.
Both squads began preseason on Sept. 1, traveling to the Dartmouth College Grant in northern New Hampshire for several days of training.
Randall believes the men's team has the potential to compete at a high level in the season's upcoming events, as well as in the Heptagonals, the Ivy League championship meet that will take place in October.
"I think we can have a really good year this year," he said. "It basically comes down to if we race up to our potential this year. The sky's the limit."
VOLLEYBALL
Dartmouth volleyball kicked off its preseason on Aug. 24, with a scaled-back practice schedule that allowed freshmen to participate in the Dartmouth Outing Club's Freshmen Trips program.
The Big Green squad is looking to top last year's 8-6 Ivy mark, Dartmouth's highest finish in the league since 1999. The Big Green finished fourth in the Ivy League, its all-time highest standing in the conference.
Captains Jess Thomas '09 and Megan MacGregor '10 pointed to the open competition for starting spots during practice, which has been heightened by the addition of five freshmen players, as a highlight of the team's training thus far. Thomas, an outside hitter, is the lone senior on the Big Green squad.
Dartmouth (2-2, 0-0 Ivy) began the season with a 3-0 road win over Holy Cross (1-8, 0-0 Patriot) on Sept. 8.
The squad competed in the Harvard Invitational tournament in Cambridge, Mass., on Sept. 12-13, where it lost to Long Beach State (9-1, 0-0 Big West) and American University (5-4, 0-0 Patriot), and defeated Central Connecticut University (3-5, 0-0 NEC).
CREW
The Big Green rowing teams -- the men's lightweight crew, the men's heavyweight crew, and the women's crew -- will take the water this week for the opening of fall practice. The teams hope to take advantage of the lingering warm weather in Hanover to practice on the Connecticut River.
All of the teams will compete in several tune-up distance races in the coming months, in preparation for the highly competitive sprint season, which takes place in the spring.
TENNIS
The Big Green's men's and women's tennis teams began training for fall competition earlier this month. For both teams, the fall schedule is dominated by tournaments in which players compete strictly for themselves and not in a team-scoring format.
In addition to practice on the court, the women's side worked with a fitness specialist brought in from Chicago, who introduced new stretching and footwork exercises to the Big Green.
"The fall season is really more about individual competition," Jamie Caplan '09 said.
Both Dartmouth squads compete in non-conference play in the winter and begin their Ivy League schedules in the spring.
The men will travel to the Brown Invitational in Providence, R.I., on the weekend of Sept. 19, while the women will head to the University of Maryland for a tournament in College Park, Md., that same weekend.
GOLF
The Big Green golf programs will play in a number of tournaments in the fall before beginning the conference season in the spring.
The balmy fall weather gives Dartmouth golfers the opportunity to use the nearby Hanover Country Club to sharpen their skills in real-life course conditions.
The men took 10th place out of 24 teams at the two-day Rutgers Invitational in Piscataway, N.J., on Saturday, Sept. 13.
Pete Williamson '12, a former Hanover High student, carded a team-best even par to help the Big Green team.
In Hanover, the women's team collectively shot a school-record 308, to take the lead out of 17 schools in the Dartmouth Invitational, which took place on the weekend of Sept. 12.
Sailing
Dartmouth sailing has a marathon schedule of regattas until mid-November. Big Green sailors were in action in four events across New England on the weekend on Sept. 12.
Dartmouth's sailing teams will host the Mrs. Hurst Bowl, the teams' first home race, on Sept. 21.
