When the women's tennis team looks back on the 1993 season, there will be no mistaking that it added its own unique chapter to the history of the program.
But it's the history yet to come that makes the Big Green's second-place finish in the Ivy League and 5-2 league record not only a proud piece of the team's heritage but also a tantalizing morsel of what is to come for the team.
Next year's squad will lose only one member to graduation and adds four regionally and nationally-ranked recruits to a talented line-up.
"If they develop the way that I think they will, we're going to have depth like you've never seen," Coach Chris Kerr said.
Still, no one is thinking it is going to be easy to replace Ali Boss '93, the team's captain and first singles players. Boss has been ranked a total of 16 times in the region, and is a five time All-Ivy selection between singles and doubles. This spring, Boss went 6-1 in singles and 5-2 in doubles in Ivy League play.
How tough will it be to replace Boss?
"I don't think we can replace her," Kiyoe Hashimoto '95 said. "We're all going to have to pick up our games and take up the slack. Losing her leaves such a big void. She's been our captain for two years. It's going to be hard."
Hard, but not impossible. Boss' play in the Ivy League is one of the key reasons Dartmouth thrived among the Ancient Eight this season, but certainly not the only one. Eight of the nine spots in Dartmouth's line-up finished with winning records.
The bottom part of the line-up, with Hashimoto, Melissa Diaz-Miranda '94, Jen Dirksen '94 and Trudy Muller '96 was as solid as Boss, Deb Healy '95 and Cathy Birkeland '94 were at the top.
Hashimoto and Healy rang up a 5-2 record as a doubles pair, and each had her share of victories in the singles. Muller, a late-season insert in the line-up, went undefeated at both singles and doubles and won the deciding match over Harvard.
Indeed, the only obstacle that stood in the way of Dartmouth seizing a share of the Ivy League title was a disappointing 7-2 loss at Penn.
"I definitely wish we could replay that match outside," Birkeland said. "It's to every team's advantage to play inside on their home court."
And while that made for a fatal loss to Penn, it also helped in Dartmouth's 5-1 win over eventual Ivy League Champion Princeton.
The knockout punch in the team's hopes for an Ivy League Title came the weekend after that Princeton win in Providence, R.I., where Brown bested the Big Green, 5-4. Still, the women managed to rebound the next day at Yale, where they played spoiler to the Bulldogs' title hopes by handing them a 7-2 loss.
The salvaging moment in the season came last Wednesday against Harvard, when Dartmouth beat the Crimson for the first time since 1980.
"They've taken the title from us so many times," Kerr said. "It was really nice to beat Harvard."
The team finished the season with a 9-0 win over Cornell this weekend.
That sweep finished off what could be remembered as the season that Dartmouth tennis arrived as a force in the East. Along with the women's second-place showing, the men recently secured a three-way tie for the Eastern Intercollegiate Tennis Association title.
"I've had so many people walk up to me and say, 'This college tennis is the best kept secret in Hanover,'" Kerr said.
Perhaps the legacy of the 1993 season is that the secret is out.
And another piece of history is added.
