With spring sports upon us, Dartmouth players and coaches again face the task of making up for lost time. This time was not wasted by coaches or players, but instead lost to inclement weather. Dartmouth spring sports teams consistently get onto their natural competition surface later than most of their competitors. Like the advertisement says, however, "Athletes are made in the preseason." It is the training in the winter and early spring that has and will control the success of Dartmouth athletics this term.
At the beginning of every spring, Dartmouth teams still battle the forces of nature. This term, Dartmouth crew did not hit the Connecticut River until March 26, more than a month later than crews from the Boston area that were on the Charles River.
This does not work against our crew entirely. While many schools will jump at the opportunity to get on the water as early as possible, they often neglect conditioning, a focus of Dartmouth's winter training program.
During the winter, the crew team had indoor practice five or six days per week. This work ethic pushed the rowers to the point of physical, as well as mental, exhaustion.
"At times we wondered if the hours of intense training indoors was going to do us any good, but it is paying off now that we are able to row on the river again," freshman lightweight Jeff Munsie said.
In the last 20 years, there have been three times that Dartmouth rowers have not been able to row on the Connecticut until mid-April. Each of these years a Dartmouth crew has taken the Eastern Sprint Championships. Although it is hard to draw direct conclusions from this, a delayed start in getting on the water did not hinder progress and perhaps even propelled rowers to better seasons.
Dartmouth baseball faces a similar situation. Whereas teams from other Ivy League schools can get in sometimes five games before league competition begins, Dartmouth will likely practice on its own field for the first time this Wednesday. With two doubleheaders against Cornell and Princeton coming up this weekend, the last half of this week will be the beginning of a big adjustment.
The primary disadvantage of practicing indoors is on defense where players have not seen any high fly balls, nor taken groundballs off of anything other than the cement tennis courts of Leverone Field House. According to left fielder Craig Pawling '96, the one advantage to practicing inside is hitting in batting cages where "everybody's swings are nice and compact as opposed to swinging from our heels to try and hit the ball out of the park."
Bad field conditions and frozen rivers aside, athletes' jobs remain the same. As baseball Head Coach Bob Whalen said, "We can't feel sorry for ourselves. We have to find a way to win regardless of the situation."
