n contrast to the remarkable fluidity shown by many professional sports teams -- my New England Patriots were 5-11 in 2000, the year before they went off on their current run -- college sports teams tend to be more consistent on a year-to-year basis. Generally speaking, a program that is good one year will continue to be good in future years, and bad programs find it hard to substantially improve in one or two year's time.
The reason that one always hears about programs that have drastically improved is because there are so few of them that we pay attention when they come around. The consistency in programs is mostly due to recruiting. A good coach makes a substantial difference, but cannot change the talent level he already has, unless he recruits new players. Coaches can plan better strategy and motivate players, but changes tend to occur in small increments -- witness the Dartmouth football team's 3-year transition from 1 win to 3 wins under head coach Buddy Teevens '79.
How else does this relate to Dartmouth? If you focus on the winter sports teams, they are all following past trends. The ski team, a perennial national contender and last year's national champion, won its first carnival last weeked, as expected.
In my time at Dartmouth, the two most successful winter teams have been the ski team and the women's hockey team, and that trend continues this year. In the latest national rankings, Dartmouth women's hockey (11-5-2, 8-3-0 ECAC) is ranked No. 10 in the country and has a 4-1 record in the all-important Ivy League (which, in terms of hockey, does not count as a league but still gives out trophies anyway. No one really understands).
The men's hockey team's record (6-8-1, 3-7-1 ECAC) is about normal for this time of the year, although their lackluster conference record is troubling. Typically, the Big Green is a second-half-of-the-season team that sputters through early on before going on an end-of-season run. By this point, the early struggles should not be surprising, but, somehow, they always are. This year's start, however, has left the Big Green in 10th place in the ECAC out of 12 teams. Colgate, which has one fewer point and has played three fewer contests, will likely pass Dartmouth.
In order to even host a first-round series (the last two years the Big Green have had a first-round bye), the Big Green will need to pass two teams in the standings, which will probably require a weekend sweep.
On a positive note, fifth-place Yale is only three points ahead of Dartmouth and has played the same amount of games and fourth-place Harvard is only four ahead, having played two more games. So there remains a great deal of fluidity with more than half the league games yet to be played.
Basketball, that oft-forgotten sport (at Dartmouth, not in the real world), also continues to follow past trends, though the men's basketball team has shown improvement this year. The women's basketball team (4-10, 1-0 Ivy) is always one of the top teams in the Ivy League, and, once again, this seems to be the story. After playing a tough out-of-conference schedule, the Lady Green won its first league game of the young season over Harvard on Jan. 5.
Though the men's team (5-8, 1-1 Ivy) has improved over the last few years, it should be noted that the Dartmouth College Athletic Department's website lists men's basketball's season record as 6-8. However, that's counting the win over Daniel Webster College as one of those victories, and though I have all the respect in the world for Daniel Webster College and our fine alumnus for which it is named, it is not a Division I school and beating them does not count for our official record. It would be like beating Middlebury in anything other than skiing.
We can draw meaningful conclusions from the continual trends of our athletic programs. One is an expectations game. Generally, we should not expect teams to be much better or much worse than they were the previous year, barring exceptional losses in terms of talent.
It follows that if Dartmouth teams are playing better or worse than they have in the past, they will likely regress to their former level of success. This holds for teams currently experiencing bad luck spells, as well as for those enjoying unusual success. They say consistency is a virtue, and at least for now, it is a virtue Big Green squads possess across the board.
