The 2010-2011 season proved to be another exciting and successful year for Dartmouth varsity athletics, as the Big Green tallied two Ivy League championships, nine national championship appearances and 32 First Team All-Ivy athletes. Overall, 13 Big Green teams were nationally ranked at one point during the season and three athletes Kat Collins '11, Nick Schwieger '12 and Peter Williamson '12 were named Ivy League Players of the Year in women's lacrosse, football and men's golf, respectively.
The women's tennis team earned the program's first-ever Ivy League championship this past spring with a 6-1 conference record. Since Dartmouth's women's tennis program began in 1973, the team has finished in second place four times but had never won the Ivy League championship.
"The validation of winning the Ivy League title was great," Sarah Leonard '13 said. "It's something we would like to repeat many times in the future."
In 2011, Big Green women's tennis kicked off its conference schedule by narrowly defeating Columbia University, Cornell University and Princeton University, all by scores of 4-3. After victories over the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University and a loss to Yale University, Dartmouth needed a win against archrival Harvard University in the last match of the season to tie Yale for first place in the Ivy League.
Playing at a 3-3 tie, senior co-captain Georgiana Smyser '11 won the deciding singles match in her last collegiate contest to clinch the title for the Big Green. Co-captain Molly Scott '11 became the all-time leader in career wins at Dartmouth.
"It always feels great to beat Harvard, especially under that pressure," Leonard said.
Another Cinderella story unfolded during the winter season when the Dartmouth women's hockey team qualified for the NCAA tournament despite low preseason expectations. The team finished with 22 wins the most in five years and 10 wins more than last season.
Head coach Mark Hudak led the team past Clarkson University and Harvard in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference playoffs before losing to Cornell in the final. The Big Green earned an at-large bid as the eighth and final team in the NCAA tournament, but lost in the first round to Cornell once again.
Men's soccer continued its success by qualifying for its fourth consecutive NCAA tournament. The Big Green finished the regular season with four straight wins and opened the NCAA tournament with victories over Monmouth University and Notre Dame University.
In its Sweet 16 round match against the University of California in Los Angeles, the Bruins scored the game-winning goal with eight seconds left in double-overtime to defeat the Big Green 2-1.
The women's lacrosse team also earned its first Ivy League championship since 2005. The team, led by head coach Amy Patton, won eight out of its last nine regular season games, including a 9-8 victory over University of Maryland the highest ranked team in its final game.
Luck ran out for Big Green women's lacrosse in the postseason, and the team lost to Harvard in the first round of the Ivy League Tournament by a final score of 11-10. Nine days later, Dartmouth fell to Albany University 10-7 in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Coming off a championship season last year, the Big Green baseball team enjoyed another great season. The team brought home a fourth-straight Red Wolfe Division Championship while also winning a program-record 30 games.
In the Ivy League Championship Series, Dartmouth baseball lost its first game to Princeton before coming back from a 4-0 deficit in the second game to force a deciding series tiebreaker. Despite holding the momentum after game two, the Big Green was mauled by the Tigers in the final game, 8-5, and lost the chance to play at NCAA Regionals for the third year in a row.
The Dartmouth skiing team is another perennially strong team. In 2011, the Big Green finished second at the EISA Championships. The team went on take third place at the NCAA Championships, two spots higher than last season.
Dartmouth varsity athletes will look to repeat their successes from last year when the 2011-2012 season officially kicks off in September.
