The Dartmouth men's lacrosse team has been the Rodney Dangerfield of the Ivy League for the past several years. They got no respect.
That's no longer the case.
The men's lacrosse team earned a lion's share of respect yesterday afternoon by thoroughly dominating the19th-ranked University of Pennsylvania en route to a convincing 12-8 win at Memorial Field.
The victory extends Dartmouth's winning streak to five and raises its record to 6-1 overall and 1-0 in the Ivy League. More importantly, the win marks the Big Green's first Ivy League victory since 1988.
"This is the best feeling I've had in a long time," Co-Captain Pete Fahey '94 said. "Every year we've lost a couple one-goal [Ivy] games, and now it's finally our turn."
Tom Scott '96 led the Big Green with three goals and one assist; Fahey and Brendan Bowler '94 each added two goals and an assist. Seven other players made their way onto the scoring chart with either a goal or assist.
"Our strength is that we're a team and we don't rely on one player," Coach Tim Nelson said. "Today's win was a total team effort."
Dartmouth used goals from Fahey, Bowler, and Scott to open up a 3-1 lead at the end of the first quarter. Penn came charging back in the second period, scoring four unanswered goals to take a 5-3 lead with 4:17 left in the half.
Brian Merritt '97 brought the Big Green back to within one when he scored from five yards out. Scott set up the goal by losing his defender with a beautiful spin move and then dumping the ball off to a waiting Merritt.
The Big Green evened the score with a minute left in the half, when Fahey scored his second goal. Tim Kennedy '96 started the counterattack that led to the tying goal when he outran the Penn midfield and managed to get off a nice pass to a teammate as he was leveled by a defender.
The two quick goals to tie the game 5-5 at the end of the first half were important "because we didn't want to be down going into the third quarter," Co-Captain Andy Ruckh '94 said.
Dartmouth struck quickly in the beginning of the second half, taking a 7-5 lead on the strength of unassisted goals from juniors Eric Welsh and Todd Smith. But the Big Green could not put away the Quakers, and two Penn goals sandwiched around an unassisted tally by Dave Fivek '94 made the score 8-7 with 4:39 left in the third period.
That's when Dartmouth delivered the knockout blow. On the face-off following the Quakers' seventh goal, Ruckh bulldozed Penn's Andy Rodriguez, forcing the freshman to leave the game. The hit brought the crowd to its feet and visibly sparked the Big Green, who scored four goals over the next 10 minutes to take a 12-7 lead. Penn scored with six minutes remaining in the game to provide the final margin.
"We've played with Penn the past two years, but always lost in a close game," Fahey said. "If we didn't hit a couple of pipes [today] we could've beat them by a lot more."
Dartmouth outshot the Quakers by a convincing 50-23 margin. Much of the credit for the disparity goes to the defensive corps of Andy Thut '95, Justin Boyd '96, and Dave Hehir '95, which repeatedly shut down Quaker attacks. Goalie Ned Hazard '96 made 12 saves.
Though this victory may get the "when will they get an Ivy win" monkey off of the players' backs, it does not ease the pressure on the team.
The win, in fact, "puts more pressure on us," Ruckh said. "We want to be ranked. We're not satisfied with just one Ivy win."
