This week, Dartmouth women’s tennis received Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-Academic Honors for the 2024-25 season for the 22nd year in a row. All members of the team must maintain a GPA of 3.2 or higher to earn the honor. Dartmouth is one of 222 Division I teams to reach this accomplishment.
Team members Michela Moore ’27 and Caroline Lemcke ’27 attribute this achievement to their head coach Bob Dallis, and team culture.
“One thing that’s really big on our team is [that] our coach emphasizes being a good student first before just being a good tennis player,” Moore said. “It’s something that’s been created as a part of the team culture: emphasizing yourself as a person.”
Lemcke added that the team culture generally emphasizes “a good balance of academics, athletics and recreation,” and praised Dallis and the team for cultivating this culture.
“It definitely helps that we have a coach who’s very accommodating, and teammates who are all very collaborative and hard-working and encourage each other to get our work done.”
According to team member Peyton Capuano ’27, the achievement requires carefully balancing schoolwork and athletics.
“When we travel for weekends away, that’s when it gets really tough to keep up,” Capuano said.
That said, Capuano described Dartmouth professors and coaches as helping ease the stress on those weekends.
“It really helps when we’re lucky enough to get a professor who really understands and cares about you,” she said. “I had one really empathetic professor in the earth science department who, without me asking, gave me an extension on an exam because I was getting there the night before.”
“You can [also] talk to our coach and he’ll accommodate and help us out, which doesn’t happen a lot for a lot of other sports or schools,” Capuano added.
Not only did the team win All-Academic Honors, but nine out of 10 team members also received Scholar Athlete honors. Being named a Scholar Athlete requires maintaining a GPA of 3.5 or higher.
The Big Green members who received this honor included Capuano, Valentina Cruz ’26, Elizabeth Fahrmeier ’25, Sam Grosjean ’28, Brooke Hess ’26, Ujvala Jupalli ’25, Lemcke, Moore, and Elise Wong ’28.
Despite the athletes’ high grades, they rarely take classes together — something Capuano said she would “love” to do more of.
