New women's basketball coach Chris Wielgus doesn't believe in looking at the past.
"If you look backwards, then you go backwards," she said. "I'm only concerned with the future."
But sometimes you secretly hope that the future will resemble the past.
Wielgus returns to the same post she held from 1976 to 1984, where she compiled a 107-73 record. In those eight years, Wielgus guided Dartmouth to four straight Ivy League titles, from 1980 to 1983.
Wielgus' teams did more than just win. They dominated. The Dartmouth women's basketball team was arguably the most successful squad in the Ivy League in any major sport throughout the decade of the 1980s, and it all started with Wielgus.
Her 1983 team is still the league's first and only squad to ever play in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament - a distinction that will end this season now that the tournament has been expanded to 64 teams and the Ivy League has earned an automatic bid.
Wielgus' second stint at the helm in Hanover comes on the heels of two successful campaigns at Fordham University, where she led the Rams to their first back-to-back winning seasons since 1980. In the 1992-93 season, Wielgus' squad won both the Patriot League regular season and tournament titles, and she was named Patriot League Coach of the Year.
Now Wielgus hopes to turn around a Dartmouth team that finished 8-18 (6-8 in the Ivies, tied for fifth) a year ago and move them back into the Ivy's upper echelons, a territory Dartmouth dominated in winning eight Ivy League titles during the 1980s.
"I was very happy at Fordham," Wielgus said. "I took the job [here] because Dartmouth is a solid program with a great tradition, good players, and room for growth. In my career I've always tried to build and establish a quality program. I'm not interested in just maintenance."
Wielgus appears to have her work cut out for her. Her young ball club, which features only one senior and three juniors, struggled to an 0-5 start before rebounding to win its holiday tournament and up its record to 2-5.
But Wielgus isn't discouraged. She says the losses don't stem from lack of effort, but merely lack of experience. And while this bodes well for the future of Dartmouth women's basketball, Wielgus isn't prone to making predictions.
"I can't even get into the right line at the grocery store," she laughs.
This candidness, as well as her proven coaching ability, has already endeared Wielgus to her players.
"She's great," Co-Captain Ilsa Webeck '94 said. "She knows incredible amounts of basketball and has a great personality. She's very personable and has a certain quality that makes her easy to talk to."
That quality has helped ease the transition for both the players and their coach. Wielgus was named head coach this past Labor Day, which left her with less than two months to assemble a staff and get to know the players.
"Getting in our staff was a key," Wielgus said. "And we have a very good staff."
Sharon Dawley and Laurie Lopes '87 join the Big Green program as assistants. Dawley was a highly successful coach at Tufts University, leading the Jumbos to a 154-65 record over nine seasons. Lopes was a two-time letter winner for the Big Green in both basketball and track.
Still, Wielgus feels that it will take at least a year for her and her staff to get to know the players and the program. She also has to find a way to catch up on lost recruiting time. Most of the recruiting for basketball is done in the summer, and the Big Green program lay dormant last summer as it waited for a coach.
For now, Wielgus is concentrating on developing this year's squad and is enjoying her return to Dartmouth.
"It's like deja vu, only it's very clear," Wielgus said. "The setting is the same, but the plot and the characters are different."
Hopefully the end results will be the same.
