At Dartmouth, or really any and all colleges where socializing often involves drinking, student-athletes are confronted with balancing drinking habits and their athletic performance. How much and how often athletes decide to drink varies depends on a lot of specific team factors while some teams have more lax stances on drinking, others face stricter consequences that make them ardent adherents to their teams' dry season.
Restrictions on drinking are called "dry policies," and they vary widely among teams. For example, during its primary season in the spring, the women's rowing team remains dry during the week individuals can decide if they'd like to have one or two drinks rather than "go out and get hammered" on Saturday nights after their races, captain Jamie Chapman '12 said. Seniors meet as a class to decide the policy and then announce it to the team over their spring training trip.
By contrast, rather than having a mandated policy, the football team has an "unspoken agreement" during the season that the team is dry during the week but can "party on Saturdays after games," Eddie Smith '12 said.
The men's Nordic ski team allows individual players to decide what's best for their athletic performance.
"Coaches trust that our commitment to the team and the sport will stand throughout the season," Sam Tarling '13 said. "Whether we want to be social and go out and have fun is definitely our decision."
With this policy of individual choice, however, most choose their commitment to the team over drinking, Tarling said.
These varied drinking policies often reflect the nature of the sport for which they are created that is, whether the activity is more team-oriented or individual. For example, in rowing, the boat cannot move if everyone isn't working together. With Nordic skiing, however, team members stand on a podium after a race as individuals, though team members are awarded points for Dartmouth based on where they finish, according to Tarling.
Drastic policies can have unforeseen negative consequences on athletes' drinking habits and health. One female '13 athlete who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the situation said her team had to be dry for long periods during the season, and then "all of a sudden we'd have one night and a lot of people would black out, and it'd be really bad and really dangerous because all of our tolerances had gone down."
It seems that for these teams, allowing students to take ownership and initiative over their drinking policy is the healthiest way to strike a balance between drinking and peak performance.
"I'm 100 percent dedicated to skiing, but I also believe that state of mind is key to performing well in sports," Tarling said. "If that means being social to a minimal extent, then that's important."
Smith said that football coach Buddy Teevens gives football players ownership of the team.
"It makes us want things more because it's our team, we're playing for each other," he said. "We don't want to let each other down."
Chapman, Smith, Tarling and the female '13 said that in recent years, there haven't been any issues with drinking on their teams, but the cliched "work hard, play hard" ethic that students use to characterize Dartmouth students' attitude "absolutely translates" to the football team and to other teams at Dartmouth, Smith said.
"When we win a game, we think, Yes, we can't wait to go back and celebrate,'" the female '13 said.
However, this attitude can be taken to the extreme when athletes aren't allowed to drink for an extended amount of time, whether just for a month or for a whole season. After many dry weeks of hard practices, "having just one night, mentally you're like, This is my only night for the next week, I have to have the most fun ever, I have to drink all these things and play pong with all these people,'" the female '13 said. "I don't think it's good. I think dry is really dangerous actually."
In the end, it's not that drinking itself is so necessary to student-athletes' lives, but "it's nice to have freedom," she said.
