We are still several months away from Sept. 21, when the Dartmouth football team will travel to Florida for its first game of the season at Jacksonville University. But while the team’s first official game is still far off, the culmination of the Big Green’s spring practices arrived last week in its annual Green-White spring football game.
Per the old adage, baseball is a game of inches, and Dartmouth learned this lesson the hard way in its final week of competition. The Big Green lost three nail-biters, falling to the University of Maine 8-7 on Wednesday and losing to Cornell University 2-1 and 8-6 on Saturday. But the team rebounded to end its season on Sunday, winning 6-1 to give 30-year veteran head coach Bob Whalen his 600th career win.
Arguably the most overused phrase in sports is taking the season one game at a time. But as the baseball team enters its last two weeks of Ivy League play, it is going to need to stick to this cliché in order to have any chance of reaching the Ivy League championship in spite of its current sixth-place standing.
A typical first-year in many college sports gets minimal playing time as he or she adjusts to the difficulty of collegiate athletics. However, that hasn’t been the case this season for the Dartmouth baseball team.
Many people criticize baseball for being a slow-paced game without a lot of scoring. Scores like 3-1 and 4-3 are very common at all levels, and Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has been trying to increase the number of runs scored since he took office. But lately, the Dartmouth baseball team has found itself in more high-scoring affairs with scores that would be more common in football games than baseball games.
The Dartmouth baseball team was scheduled to play 18 innings of baseball on Saturday in a doubleheader lined up against the University of Pennsylvania. They ended up playing 21, but not in the way they expected to.
Dartmouth and the Ivy League are better known for their academics than for their sports teams. However, that’s not to say that stellar athletes haven’t catalyzed their professional careers in the friendly confines of Hanover or the rest of the conference.
While the Dartmouth baseball team was able to escape the cold during its spring break trip to Florida, it was not able to escape difficult competition.
The theme of the men’s basketball season has been losing close game after close game in Ivy League play, and to some degree, the trend continued this weekend.
With only one senior leaving after this season, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team has a promising outlook for the 2019-20 campaign. For starters, the team will return its entire starting lineup and all but one of its key contributors. Additionally, Trevon Ary-Turner ’21, a transfer from Weber State University, will be eligible to play next season and will be a huge addition to an experienced roster.
