After finally gaining respect as a fully funded varsity sport, the women's volleyball team plans to make an impact on Dartmouth Athletics.
"I really respect the girls who were on the team last year," new coach Anne Marie Larese said. "Having the players run the program does not lend itself to competition within the Ivy League because other Ivies have such strong programs. Now we have an ideal situation because all the girls have to do is worry about coming to practice and playing."
Not only is the Dartmouth program new, but Larese, who was an assistant coach at Bucknell and Bentley for a total of five years, is now entering her first season as a head coach.
"I think this will be a great growth place for us," Larese said. "I feel we can really do something with this program because we have the backing and funding from the college."
The Big Green players have also noticed a significant change regarding the additional funds and coaching.
"Our coach can watch and tell us what we need to work on," Mandalyn Begay '97 said. "Before, we would often know what we had done wrong, but we didn't have anyone their to direct and lead us."
The Big Green, now 1-2, traveled to Middlebury last Saturday and disappointingly let a two game lead slip away as they lost 15-12 in their fifth game of the season.
"Going in there, we felt we should win and coming out, we felt that we should have won," Dara Denberg '98 said. "We didn't play as well as we can. Our offense just didn't execute as well."
Middlebury gave the Big Green a change of pace, which Dartmouth was expecting, but just couldn't adapt to.
"We should have won," Begay said. "We were so accustomed to playing against fast and quick teams, and we weren't ready to play against Middlebury's slow pace. Our movement and defense ended up really slow. We weren't playing defense good enough to let our offensive get a chance to play."
Defensively, blocking was a definite problem for Dartmouth, but the lack of consistency and teamwork was also a concern.
"We need more communication while on the court," Denberg said. "We were left a lot of times not knowing what others were doing, and that makes it difficult."
"It was difficult to get any momentum going," Larese said. "Middlebury played hard every point and we, unfortunately, did not do that. We never played like we were winning. But we need to put it away and concentrate on Vermont which should be a tight match."
The Big Green will take on Vermont Thursday in Leede Arena at 7:30 p.m. which will be the Dartmouth women's first home game as a funded varsity sport.
Everybody is a little nervous about it because it's so new here," Larese said. "Center court at Leede is intimidating, and there will be a ceremony before the game and a reception afterwards, but I think it's more of an excited energy, which is good."
