Today is my 22nd birthday, and my present to myself is a shout-out in my own column. Congratulations to me. And in the spirit of congratulations, I'm going to further congratulate myself for winning the Ledyard National Bank Halftime Three-Point Shooting Contest at the Dartmouth men's basketball game against Brown last Friday. I was not at all sober, and the Big Green won the basketball game in overtime, so it was a good night all around.
The Ledyard Shooting Contest was an eye-opening experience for me. Consequently, this column will be a somewhat scattered conglomeration of random observations about life, liberty and the pursuit of an Ivy League basketball championship.
First, our men's basketball team is not at all bad this season. Shocking, I know, given that we started out 2-33 -- or something around there. But it's true. We're on a three-game winning streak and defended our home court with two big victories last weekend.
On paper, it seems like this year's squad has less talent than last year's, especially since DeVon Mosley '09, last year's starting guard and second-leading scorer, left the team. However, the Big Green is getting contributions everywhere, and Alex Barnett '09 looks even more dominant than he did last year.
Second, "blackouts" work at Dartmouth. Again, shocking, I know. Before going to the "blackout" game on Friday, I asked a friend how many people he thought would be dressed in black. He replied, "Just the four of us." He was wrong. The entire north side of Leede Arena was full of rowdy students dressed in black. And I can speak from experience: standing on the court and looking into the black-clad crowd while trying to drain a three from the corner is incredibly, incredibly intimidating.
Third, and on a related note, getting people to Leede Arena has to be the number-one priority of the basketball team and the Dartmouth athletic department as a whole. The blackout game on Friday was the most fun I've had at a basketball game since high school.
The crowd was rowdy, the stands were packed, everybody was standing up for the last ten minutes of the game, and, in the end, Brown was not up to the pressure. The players and head coach Terry Dunn obviously appreciated the support, running up to the student section after the thrilling victory to thank those in attendance.
It was a big win for an up-and-coming Ivy League basketball team, and it was great being a part of it. In contrast, there were probably half as many people at the game against Yale on Saturday. Not surprisingly, there were no thanks exchanged between the two teams after the game.
Finally, tough times call for tough measures. The College just announced massive budget cuts across the board this week, which resulted in dozens of support personnel losing their jobs, yet lame-duck Athletic Director Josie Harper announced that the College would not be cutting any athletic programs. This simply baffles me.
Cutting underachieving sports programs is a common and logical collegiate mechanism for reducing costs. In 2002, the College cut the men's and women's swimming and diving teams, expecting to save roughly $212,000 per year. The team was reinstated just over a month later, under a funding agreement between a group of students, parents and alumni and the administration.
This may not be my most popular suggestion, but I am advocating that we cut the swimming and diving programs and the equestrian team.
The swimming and diving teams are arguably Dartmouth's least successful athletic programs, and it may be time to let them go and start over when economic times are better.
I hate to say it, because I know several swimmers who obviously want to continue swimming, but these are tough times.
The endowment has lost $700 million in the last six months -- a serious chunk of change. Let's scrap the program and let some more people keep their jobs.
And the equestrian program -- why do we have one? I don't know of a single person who is on the team, which lists just 13 players on its roster on DartmouthSports.com. I'm guessing that not very many people even knew we had an equestrian team, so would it really be missed? My guess is not.
