On Saturday, approximately 4,670 spectators — the most since 1981— threw tennis balls onto the Thompson Arena ice rink.
The cascade of rubber and felt — dubbed the “Tennis Ball Toss for Charity” — is a new spin on a decades-old tradition, in which fans throw tennis balls onto the ice after Dartmouth’s first goal against Princeton University. For the first time, the balls are being donated to animal shelters by the Dartmouth Athletics & Recreation Department.
This year, that first Dartmouth goal was also the last. The Big Green failed to get another in the net for the remainder of the game, ultimately falling 3-1 to the Tigers. The loss came one day after the men’s ice hockey team fell 5-4 in overtime against Quinnipiac University. The faceoff between the ECAC’s top two teams ended dramatically, with Quinnipiac scoring just 47 seconds into the overtime period for the win.
The Big Green had been riding a high before the back-to-back losses — they took on the 14th nationally ranked Quinnipiac Bobcats following a huge win at Cornell on Jan 25. Although Hayden Stavroff ’28 and Jack Silverberg ’28 had to sit out due to a one-game suspension, Dartmouth scored the first goal of the game when Luke Haymes ’26 took a rebound from Ian Pierce ’25 for his seventh goal of the season.
With five seconds left in the first period, the Bobcats went on a power play, and the second period started with the Big Green on its penalty kill. Dartmouth was unsuccessful and the Bobcats scored to tie the game.
Sean Chisholm ’25 gave the Big Green back the lead at the 8:12 mark, but the Bobcats scored twice to finish the second period leading 3-2.
With the game on the line, Alex Krause ’26 stepped up to tie the score in the third period, with Cam MacDonald ’26 scoring two minutes later to give the Big Green the lead.
Quinnipiac was determined to win, scoring with less than four minutes left to take the game into overtime.
After a two-minute break, overtime started with CJ Foley ’27 on the ice. As he skated to the bench for a substitution, Quinnipiac got the puck past him, forcing Foley to stay on the ice. The Bobcats passed Foley and launched the puck past goalie Emmett Croteau ’28 to win the game.
With a devastating loss, the Big Green was hoping to pull out a win for a sell-out stadium the following night.
“We want to bounce back,” Foley said. “We didn’t finish all three periods and that’s a goal of ours, to play a full 60 minutes.”
The next day, the Big Green hosted the Princeton Tigers in the packed Thompson Arena.
“When Thompson is full, it’s a wonderful thing,” head coach Reid Cashman said. “The fans are on top of the game. To see our students show up tonight, to see our town show up tonight — it’s awesome.”
The game began with an intense first period in front of the largest crowd at Thompson since 1981. Roughly 11 minutes into the game, Pierce found Foley, who slapped the puck into the back of the net and triggered the shower of tennis balls.
“It’s always great to score a goal,” Foley said. “It feels good, but the forwards made a great play. They battled hard and put me in a good situation as a screen net front, so the credit should really go to them.”
For Foley, the euphoria of that first goal was familiar — he scored the first Dartmouth goal in the Princeton tennis ball game last season as well. Goalie Roan Clarke ’27 joked that Foley “seems to be the tennis ball guy now.”
“It was a pretty cool experience,” Clarke said. “It’s good to see [Foley] score. It was an awesome experience and I’m glad to be part of it.”
But with just 50 seconds left in the first period, Princeton found its equalizer.
The Tigers took control of the game in the second period, scoring at 7:13 to take a 2-1 lead. The Dartmouth squad tried to fight back — winning 11 of 18 faceoffs during the period — but remained scoreless in its six shots on goal.
“They had us in our D zone, and it just felt like we were just working hard to get the puck out,” Cashman said. “They made it hard on us.”
Dartmouth pushed hard to tie the game during the third period, even pulling Clarke as a last ditch effort. The Tigers sealed their victory with an empty-netter with 51 seconds left, bringing the final score to 3-1.
Cashman said Princeton ultimately “had a really good plan” and “executed at a really high level.” Clarke expressed a similar sentiment.
“I think we came out hard and used the crowd to our advantage, but we couldn’t follow through,” Clarke added. “Princeton did a good job of just being the better team today.”
With both of these losses, Dartmouth has dropped from second to fifth place in the ECAC standings. Despite this setback, Cashman said the Big Green remains focused on its upcoming matches, emphasizing a need to “regroup” and “learn from these games.”
As Dartmouth heads into its next matchup against Harvard University on Feb. 7, Cashman also underscored the need for resilience and preparation.
“Anytime we’ve faced adversity this year, we’ve responded well in practice,” he said. “We need to channel that energy and make the necessary adjustments to get back on track.”
