I sat down with athletic director Harry Sheehy to look back on the year in sports and his first three years at the helm of the Big Green.
*What has been the proudest moment for you, be it a specific team or department-wide accomplishment?**##
HS: I think we saw a really nice turnaround in women's soccer and I think the softball team made great strides. Both were very competitive and right there in the Ivy League and so I was very excited about that, because those programs were two that we really felt could get moving, and [head soccer coach] Theresa Romagnolo and Rachel Hanson in softball have done terrific jobs, as have the student-athletes. One of the things that I'm happiest with was the continued growth of Dartmouth Peak Performance, [which] has become more of a part of the fabric of the department, and to see more and more of our coaches figure out how best utilize it.
Based on this year's performance, where does Dartmouth athletics need to improve?
HS: We're continuing to try to be more competitive. So what we're trying to do, in a win and loss sense, is to get as many teams into the top three in the league as we can, because if you're in the top three, then chances are you're playing very significant games in the Ivy League near the end of your schedule. I think we've improved our competitive landscape a little bit, but we still have work to do.
*Last year, Dartmouth won one Ivy League title. This year, it's still looking for the first title. Are these an accurate way to measure success?**##
HS: There's actually stages. Getting our teams into the top three is the first stage, and then the next stage is to actually win those championships. Particularly in the last few springs, we've gone into the final few weekends with opportunities to win lots of Ivy championships and just haven't done it yet. For example, baseball is a really good program and they had a great year, a wonderful year, and they got to the championship series with Columbia. Softball got into the championship game against [Penn] and a lot of those programs have been right there knocking at the door. When I first took the job, I looked at this and said, well, it's kind of a five-year process to get us better. And the coaches are doing a great job of working hard and recruiting well and bringing our programs into more competitive stances.
This past year, two of your most successful coaches, Chris Wielgus and Jeff Cook, left the program. How will this affect the women's basketball and men's soccer teams' performances next year?
HS: I think the soccer program is in really good shape. And I like Chad Riley, who we hired to replace Jeff Cook, he will do a fine, fine job. I think their program is at slightly different place than the women's basketball program, which has struggled the last few years, so we're very hopeful that Belle Koclanes, our new coach, can start to rebuild that. The thing I look at too, is that anytime there's change there's opportunity. When you have a coach that you'd really like to keep, sometimes you go, well, we lost that coach and that hurts, but it's also an opportunity to take that program somewhere, the next place the program can go.
What was one story, of an athlete, team or coach, that you think wasn't appreciated enough in the media?
HS: One of the things that never gets enough publicity is the community service our athletes do. We're really proud of that. They have something called a senior prom out at Kendall, the retirement community. Our athletic departments [work] with youth clinics, and I just think it's great that we're out with seniors in our community doing some community service. I think that's a really fun thing.
Which team do you think will show the most marked improvement next year?
HS: Women's volleyball has a tremendous opportunity. They have good young players, they had a very tough season this year, but I think that they have an opportunity in the next year or two to be someone who competes for an Ivy League championship.
Now at the end of your third year, what has been the biggest change for you coming from Williams College?
HS: I came from a program that had kind of figured things out. And I came to a program at Dartmouth that had work to do. And it was really one of the appealing things. Because I think our coaches in the department are very good and there are lots of things in place at Dartmouth to be very successful, so I think that was really a challenge that I looked on with a lot of fun. It's really fun trying to help folks get better. And I'm not doing that alone, obviously we're doing it with a great group of coaches, a great group of senior administrators, great support staff. I was comfortable at Dartmouth right away because it is relatively small. It is in a kind of college community that I really care to live in.
What can we expect in the next three years?
HS: I hope that we will create and I think we have to some degree and it was here way before I got here a really positive student-athlete experience, where the students are coached by more than competent people technically and they're coaches who understand the value of a Dartmouth education. That our student athletes become fully engaged in our campus, in general. And that we just become more competitive across the board. And I think all those things are intertwined, to be honest. In a very black and white sense, we'd like to win more Ivy League championships.
