Riding a historical wave of success and carrying a sixth-place national ranking, the Big Green squash team headed south to the NISRA Team Championship at Princeton this past weekend.
Four players were nursing bad colds, but the team boarded the bus confident and ready to roll.
From that point onward, the rest of the road trip was just bumps, ruts and deadends, as Dartmouth fell in all three rounds of the tournament.
In round one, Dartmouth faced a talent-saturated Princeton squad who dismantled the Green, 9-0, earlier in the season.
History repeats itself.
The Big Green were convinced of this adage as the Tigers trounced their way to a 9-0 win once again.
Next up was the squad from Western Ontario. Trying to rally back from their first lost, the Big Green put up a tough fight, but eventually succumbed 6-3.
Battling a debilitating case of the flu, co-Captain Jon Gabel '98 fell 17-15 in a heartbreaker in the fifth.
"We had some illnesses and injuries that held us back," Coach Chris Brownell said.
In their third and final match, the Big Green faced off against fifth-ranked Franklin & Marshall. Although they lost to F&M late in the regular season by a tight 5-4 decision, the Big Green knew that they could definitely pull off a win if they could just find their form.
Let's just say, that form was never found as Dartmouth fell for the third time by a score of 7-2.
Will Leicht '99, playing at the five spot, and Ranjit Ahluwalia '97, at nine, put up the pair of points for Dartmouth.
Despite the rough weekend, the Big Green can still find some satisfaction in the unparalleled season they had -- they finished with a groundbreaking season win-record and a sixth-place regular season ranking.
"I'm very happy with how the team has done this season," said top-gun Beau River '00. "Altogether we have had an amazing year. There's nothing like having a match tied at four-all and knowing that whoever the decider is, he will step up to the plate and put up a fight. And that's what the guys did this season."
