Lax looks to break nine-year-long skid against Big Red
By Nathan Niparko | April 13, 2006EMI ITO / The Dartmouth Staff All of the pieces are seemingly in the right places.
EMI ITO / The Dartmouth Staff All of the pieces are seemingly in the right places.
The Dartmouth crew program can have high expectations for their spring season after turning in impressive times at their fall regattas. This past weekend's regatta, the Foot of the Charles, concluded the Big Green's fall schedule. Perhaps the most impressive performance of Dartmouth's crew was the lightweight "C" boat racing in the men's varsity four division. The boat, crewed mainly by sophomores, turned in the Big Green's top time in the race, finishing in front of Dartmouth's three other lightweight boats and all three heavyweight boats. The lightweight "C" finished 20th out of the 48-boat race. The Big Green's lightweight "A" freshman eight rowed their way to a strong finish, beating 22 of the 28 teams in their race including Harvard's lightweight "A" boat. Dartmouth's heavyweight "A" boat finished just seconds behind and wound up with eighth place. It was the first race for the heavyweight crew with "stacked" boats; they had previously split up their best rowers between two boats in "mixed" competition. Christopher Brouwer '09, the two-seat in the freshman heavyweight "A" boat, was pleased with the team's performance but is cautious of complacency. "In comparison to past years, we did pretty well as far as the standings go," he said. "We rowed really well technically, which is one of our big focuses over the fall especially for the heavyweights.
The Dartmouth volleyball team (9-7, Ivy 2-4) continued to fall short of its potential this weekend, losing two matches at Brown and Yale.
The Big Green's women's volleyball team saw its nine-match winning streak and its Ivy League success come to a halt this weekend as it dropped matches at Princeton (10-3, Ivy 2-1) and Penn (6-7, Ivy 3-0). Dartmouth proved unable to return to the success of its early season, as it only claimed one game over the course of the weekend, as the Big Green dropped to 9-5 overall, with a 2-2 record in the Ivy League. Friday night's loss to Princeton (30-23, 30-20, 30-28) was the first blemish on the Big Green's Ivy League record. The Tigers held Dartmouth's leading hitters, Jess Thomas '09, Katie Hirsch '08 and Sarah Nadler '06 to a fraction of their season averages. The teams exchanged side-outs until 19-19, when Princeton pulled away with their aggressive serving, exploiting a weak serve-receive game by the Big Green. This momentum carried the Tigers through the second game as they coasted to a 30-20 victory, holding Dartmouth to a -.024 hitting percentage. The Big Green rallied in the third game, but fell short as the Tigers aced a serve to win their first Ivy League match, taking the third and final game 30-28. "Something was different," said Thomas, coming off her second Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors, "we didn't come out with intensity; a big part of our team is playing with spirit.
Regionally ranked Big Green volleyball (9-3, 2-0 Ivy) out-hit, out-served and outmatched opponents to win the Harvard Invitational this weekend in Cambridge.