While many students consider Hanover home by the time they graduate, the area was already home for the student athletes who grew up in New Hampshire and Vermont and chose to attend Dartmouth due to its athletic and academic programs.
Golf player Peter Williamson '12 who attended Hanover High School and lives approximately a mile from the College said that he followed Dartmouth athletics before he chose to attend, and was able to visit campus on a daily basis growing up.
Williamson said he primarily wanted to come to Dartmouth for its academics, adding that he hoped to improve the College's golf team.
"Dartmouth doesn't promote the best golf atmosphere," Williamson, who is currently studying in Thailand on an off-campus program, said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth. "But it's wonderful to know that I will have a Dartmouth education to fall back on if my golf career doesn't pan out the way I hope."
Williamson said he was not sure if he would have studied at Dartmouth had not grown up nearby.
"It's tough to tell," Williamson said. "Depends on where I lived previously I suppose. Given my family's history with the school, it would have been on the list."
Women's crew member Hayley Daniell '12 who lives in Hopkinton, N.H., and whose parents both attended Dartmouth said her family's connection to the College had originally dissuaded her from applying.
"I wanted to forge my own path somewhere else," she said. "Clearly that didn't end up happening."
Men's crew member Graeme Calloway '12 similarly said he had always felt a strong connection to Dartmouth. Calloway grew up in nearby Norwich, Vt., and attended Hanover High.
"Both my parents work at the College," Calloway said in a e-mail to The Dartmouth. "I knew the names of all the academic buildings, I knew there was usually a dog named Alasdair you could play with at [Carson Hall], I knew the registrar's office smelled pretty funny."
Daniell said that she is happy at the College despite her initial hesitations, noting its strong academics, study-abroad programs and outdoor setting as positives.
Daniell said her proximity to Dartmouth growing up had little to do with her choice to attend.
"I would actually have preferred to go to a school father away from home and closer to a city," Daniell said. "But I ended up loving Dartmouth too much."
Women's track sprinter Alex Kurkul '13, who lives in Exeter, N.H., also said that her local roots did not factor into her decision to apply to the College.
"I do think I would have ended up at Dartmouth even if I wasn't from New Hampshire," she said. "It's such a great school and has such an amazing atmosphere that I think I would have been attracted to it no matter where I came from."
Kurkul was recruited to run for the Big Green, after excelling as a high school athlete at Exeter High School.
The academic opportunities that came with attending an institution like Dartmouth were her focus when deciding to run for the College, according to Kurkul.
Calloway said that, although it is sometimes a burden, attending an institution close to home has its perks.
"It's an absolutely beautiful area, I haven't found another place like it," he said. "That's not to say I never wondered what it would have been like to get away, to walk down Main Street without running into your high school English teacher, but I've never regretted my decision to stay so close to home."
Local athletes continue to gravitate to the College. Running back Cody Patch, an incoming member of the Class of 2015, committed to Dartmouth in late January.
"It was right down the street from me," Patch, a native of Lebanon, said in an interview with the Valley News. "Playing for the home crowd, there's nothing like it. And it's a great academic school, obviously."
