Jorge Rodriguez '12 put forward the argument in this space last week that Dartmouth students have an obligation to attend sporting events because doing so will help boost the Big Green to more wins. He based this on the energy he felt in the crowd at the Dartmouth versus Princeton hockey game on Jan. 30 ("Curious Jorge," Feb. 15).
"Dartmouth attempted a comeback in the third period, cutting the deficit to one goal," Rodriguez wrote. "I'm not saying the crowd was the reason for the second burst of energy, I'm sure it made a difference."
Rodriguez's column is a classic "seventh-man" argument. He believes that the fans can have a big impact on the outcome of a game by yelling and cheering for their team. And he's probably right. Mike Devine '08, the former goalie for the Big Green men's hockey team, told The Dartmouth in 2007, "When we step out on the ice and everyone is screaming and the place is loud, it's a huge advantage."
But does that advantage make it the responsibility of fans to show up and cheer? Or is it instead the responsibility of the team to give the fans something to cheer about, and, by extension, the responsibility of the College to equip its teams to do so?
The truth is probably a little of both, but the Big Green hasn't given its fans much to cheer about this winter. Men's basketball is in last place in the Ivy League. Women's basketball is in fifth and while there is a lot of basketball left to be played for the women, the team has not finished below fourth place since 1992-1993.
On the ice, men's hockey is in 11th place, and women's is in ninth. The men are on pace for just their second losing season since the 1999-2000 season, and at 12-14-2, the women's team is in danger of its first losing season since, get this, 1978-1979.
Any way you cut it, things are bad right now historically bad and fans in Hanover, students and non-students alike, don't want to watch losing teams. So do I fault students for not showing up in droves to hockey games where they don't get to throw tennis balls on the ice? Not at all.
The question Rodriguez and Dan Lentz '13 on the Above the Fold blog post ("Meet me at the rink?" Feb. 9) should have asked isn't: "Why aren't Dartmouth students attending sporting events?" but rather: "What needs to happen before Dartmouth students start attending sporting events again?"
For most of the winter teams, I don't think it's time to panic just yet. Three of these four teams are historically some of the best teams at Dartmouth evidenced by how shocking it is to see the kinds of records they're putting up right now. And after finally picking up an Ivy win, men's basketball has seen improvement from a dismal start to the season.
But some people are panicking. College President Jim Yong Kim made the right choice in preserving all of the school's current varsity teams with this latest round of budget cuts. That didn't stop some commenters on Bruce Wood's Big Green Alert Blog, however, from calling for Dartmouth to cut funding to all of its sports and focus solely on ice hockey the way Johns Hopkins University focuses on lacrosse. And it certainly won't stop some of the other doubters buying into the narrative common among students that Dartmouth athletics are bad and can't get better.
With the amount of funding directed to Dartmouth's athletic facilities during former College President Jim Wright's administration, there is nothing about Dartmouth that prevents the College at a fundamental level from putting strong teams on the field, court, ice or in the pool. At this point, Dartmouth does not need to make large, capital-intensive investments in its athletic programs.
The cuts the Kim administration made recently to the athletics budget should prove to be fairly minor or irrelevant to the success of Dartmouth teams. After all, it's not uniform or travel budgets that make a team win, it's practice time, practice facilities and the right person leading those practices and filling out the team's roster. For ice hockey and women's basketball, the ingredients are all there, and the Big Green seems to just be having a down year. And when these teams come back, the fans will too.
