I sat down with Dartmouth men's soccer midfielder Adam Rice '12 to talk about the Big Green's Ivy League Championship, the upcoming NCAA tournament and his life at Dartmouth off the soccer field.
This weekend you fought to a 0-0 double-overtime draw against Brown University. What was going through your mind as the game progressed with so much on the line?
AR: Especially as it got later on in regulation and overtime, I started to think that the next goal was just going to be a game winner. We were playing obviously for the Ivy League Championship, and as the clock ticked down it was kind of just that motivation to work that little bit harder, make the next run, because I knew that either if we scored or they scored, it was so late in the game that that was going to be an Ivy League-winning goal. There was definitely the excitement mounting and the pressure mounting as the game went on, but fatigue starts to set in and the game opened up. So it kind of got to the point where it was just thinking about the next moment and working hard and hoping that we would pull out in the end.
The team is now headed into its fifth consecutive NCAA tournament. How is the squad using its past experience, including last year's trip to the Sweet 16, as it prepares to make a run this season?
AR: I think, more than anything, we're just excited and grateful to be back in the NCAA tournament, and obviously excited to have a second Ivy League Championship for our class of seniors, and for this entire team that has worked so hard this year especially given the hardships we had at the beginning of the season to keep fighting and improving as the year went on. I'm really excited because we're playing our best soccer right now and so that's a really exciting thing going into the tournament.
Do you have a prediction for how far the team can go in the NCAA tournament?
AR: As far as our goals, it would be a real accomplishment to move past the Sweet 16, where we've been for two of the past three seasons, and to get into the Elite Eight and hopefully push onwards to the College Cup, to the Final Four. We set, at the beginning of the season, the goals of winning the Ivy League, making the tournament, and then the third one was exactly that pushing farther than we ever have before. At this point, we've done extraordinarily well to take care of those first two goals and now we just have the third one. But of course, you can't get to the third round without winning in the first round, so that's our focus right now.
What does it mean to the team, coming from a small, Ivy League school like Dartmouth, to be going up against the bigger programs in the Division I NCAA tournament?
AR: There's something thrilling and exhilarating about walking into an NCAA tournament game and realizing that you're looking at the other side, and the other team has Notre Dame [University] or [the Univesity of California, Los Angeles] or Wake Forest [University] on their jerseys like we have in the past couple of years. But at the same time, we as a program have challenged ourselves year in and year out in playing some of the top teams in the country during the regular season and we think that we've established ourselves as one of the premier programs in the country. But there definitely is that motivation of knowing that we're a small Ivy League school from New Hampshire going out there against these big-time athletic programs that you see on ESPN everyday with their college football and college basketball programs.
Athletes are notoriously superstitious. Do you have any sort of interesting pre-match rituals that help you get ready?
AR: We're a pretty relaxed and tight-knit group, so before games in the locker room there's just a lot of music going on, a lot of crazy dancing and trying to get as relaxed and pumped up as you can be at the same time. We have our post-game [ritual]. After a victory, we always sing and listen to "Happy Ending" by MIKA.
In addition to your on-field success, you have won multiple scholar-athlete awards and have a 3.97 GPA. How do you balance the rigors of a varsity athletic team with the demands of heavy coursework?
AR: That's a good question. I probably don't sleep as much as would be ideal is probably the simplest response. In all honesty, it's a challenge to do both, and I strive to do both at my very best whenever I can. I think more than anything else it's just hard work and commitment, and holding myself to high standards on the field and high standards academically, and trying to make the most of college as a learning experience. There aren't that many secrets beyond working hard and putting in the effort.
Compare yourself or one of your teammates to a professional soccer player and explain why.
AR: Arthur Harris ['12] looks a lot like Brazilian star Robinho.
