In the Fall, the Big Green men's season ended with a loss to Syracuse University in the Northeastern territorial semifinals, 7-6. Dartmouth entered the game riding a 13-game win streak, having defeated all of its Ancient Eight competitors in the first Ivy season. The Big Green dominated its competition, beating Ivy opponents by an average of 55 points per game. This made its loss to the Orangemen all the more shocking.
"This game was really a statistical anomaly," coach Alexander Magleby said. "It's one of those lessons that you hope to have only once in your life."
Although its hopes for a berth to the USA Rugby national tournament in the Spring were cut short by the upset, Dartmouth is using this term to focus on the positives.
"In the Fall, we had a fantastic season," Magleby said. "You can't control the wins and the losses you can only control the process. As clich as it sounds, we played and trained well."
According to Magleby, after the season ended, the team was given the rest of Fall term off to take a break and be away from rugby. As soon as the players returned from winter vacation, however, they went back to practicing.
"We have been working really hard this term," Nate Brakeley '12 said. "It is different [than the regular season] because right now we only have three active seniors who are going to practice, a couple of sophomores and juniors, and the rest are all freshman."
Because Winter is the off-season for rugby, the majority of the starting first and second 15 players are not on campus. Freshmen, who generally do not play on the A-side or B-side teams, are given personal, hands-on coaching that prepares them for the Spring season.
"This Winter, we have been working to bring the freshman up to speed and get them ready for competition," Brakeley said. "After the Spring tour, the seniors will no longer be playing on the team, so that is the time when we are really going to work on fine tuning next year's team."
The juniors and sophomores who are away this term will rejoin the team on March 17, and the Big Green's spring tour begins on March 18 at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Ark.
"We will only have one training session before our first game, so we will have to go from zero to 60," Magleby said.
The team will play in seven games during the tour through Arkansas and Texas and another 13 matches during the Spring term, according to Magleby.
When the men take on Arkansas State, both sidaes will play their own matches before the team heads to Texas.
The team will be preparing for next year's national championship and focusing on ways to improve.
"We want to prove to ourselves that we can do more," Brakeley said. "If we have a good show down in Arkansas and Texas, I think other people will see what we can do."
The Dartmouth women's rugby team finished its Fall season with a disappointing 3-5 record. Like the men's team, its hopes of competing in the national championship were dashed by a loss to Syracuse. "We were disappointed with the outcome of losing in the first round of the playoffs," captain Meghan McDavid '10 said. "Overall, though, I think we had a good season, and we are proud of it."
According to Leah Weisman '10, lack of experience has caused this year's team to struggle.
"This year has been really developmental for us because we lost so many talented [members of the Class of 2009]" she said. "Now that we have a smaller team, it is hard to field an A-side and a B-side team, so the freshmen are just getting thrown into everything."
Because few people come to college really knowing how to play rugby, Weisman added, there is often a significant learning curve for the freshmen ruggers.
Like the men, the women's rugby team will head out on a spring tour, playing many Canadian teams.
"We are not going to nationals this Spring, so we definitely have a different tour and a different sort of season," McDavid said. "We are still working really hard in practice. We still want to win games and develop the team so that next year we can perform better during playoffs."
Last year, the men took their 50th annual tour, and competed against five California teams in March 2009.
The women also traveled to the Golden State last year for their spring tour.
The process of touring provides tough competition and is essential to team unity, Magelby said in an interview with The Dartmouth after the California tour.
"A trip away from campus and the other priorities in our lives is always good," he said. "Team culture is the key in any sport. When a team works well together, respects each other, earns those opportunities together, they're certainly on the right track towards wins."
