Never mind the late season snow drizzles up here in Hanover. The Dartmouth baseball team got a second breath of spring air this past weekend.
After a frustrating non-league start, the Big Green sluggers started all over again on Friday and Saturday, opening the all-important Ivy League season with two wins in doubleheaders at Princeton and Cornell.
"That has been a difficult trip for us," Head Coach Bob Whalen said of the six hour bus rides to Princeton and Cornell. "We've never won at Princeton or Cornell since I've been here, so to be able to win a game at each place was ... encouraging."
Dartmouth, now 2-2 in the Ivy League, will travel to Tufts on Tuesday before opening its home schedule at Red Rolfe Field this coming weekend with doubleheaders against Pennsylvania and Columbia.
Princeton 7, Dartmouth 2
Dartmouth 12, Princeton 5
Coming off a four game slump, Dartmouth had to wait through a 7-2 Tiger victory in the first game before the Big Green downed the Tigers in the nightcap on Friday 12-5.
Eric Walania '98 (1-3) pitched a complete game, scattering 10 hits and fanning four to get the win in the second game.
Walania lost his battery mate, freshman catcher Eric Anderson '99, in the first inning to a mild concussion after the rookie receiver absorbed a hard blow at home plate on a first and third delayed steal attempt by the Tigers.
With starting catcher Mike Stacy '98 also out with a sprained knee, Anderson was replaced by co-Captain and starting right fielder Greg Gilmer '96, who had last caught for the Big Green in his sophomore year.
Gilmer may well have provided the spark the Big Green needed to beat Princeton, as the veteran went three for four with four runs batted in while also making his presence felt behind the plate.
"It felt good to get back there again and it picked up my game," Gilmer said. "But I was hurting after that fourth game [with Cornell on Saturday]."
Dartmouth 7, Cornell 5
Cornell 11, Dartmouth 5
The Big Green got their most pleasant performance of the weekend from starting pitcher Matt Tarver-Whalquist '98, who iced Cornell in five strong innings of work to give Dartmouth the win, 7-5, in Ithaca.
"I was happy for him and it was certainly a very much needed win for all of us," said Coach Whalen.
The victory was "T.W.'s" first Ivy League win of his career, giving the Big Green a big boost in the opener.
"The key was my ability to throw a second pitch in the zone. I can always spot my fastball ... , [but] I finally began having success with my curveball, and that kept the hitters off balance," Tarver-Whalquist said. "With that under my belt, I can go into the meat of the Ivy season with the confidence that I can beat these teams."
Reliever Chris Van Vliet '97 came on in the sixth inning to quell a no-out, two men on potential rally, setting up Peter Sellers '98 to close the game in the seventh.
After allowing a few hits, Sellers bore down and closed the door on the Big Red in style, punching out Cornell's Jaime Schaeffer with the tying run on second.
"That was the plan all along," Whalen said on using Sellers, his starter for game four, as a closer in the opener. "If we have a chance late, we are going to do everything we have to do to get that win."
Whalen was very pleased with the play of his team in the close victory. "It was a game that could have gone either way. If the kids had hung their head it would have been tough to win down there. But we just kept bustin' our butts and we kept competing and we got some timely hits," he said.
Dartmouth slipped up in the nightcap, losing 11-5, despite strong hitting from senior co-Captain Jake Isler, who went three for three with two runs batted in and two runs. Sellers took the loss, pitching five innings before giving way to the bullpen.
