Dartmouth National Champions

Feels good just writing that. 

On Friday morning I had breakfast with Harry Sheehy, the new athletic director at Dartmouth. We talked about the Big Green squash program and about how there is renewed interest in athletic excellence at the College—the benchmark being winning the Ivy League title.

But over the weekend, Harry got a bit more than an Ivy title. The men won the 2011 USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship. I got to watch it on NBC yesterday. Pretty cool.

There are many ways to think about rugby sevens and how to learn from its meteoric rise in popularity around the country and world in the past couple of years. The Olympics, I think, is as much an example of that popularity rather than a catalyst.

Two things strike me: one is the ease of the game compared to regular rugby, less rules, great flow. It makes sense—my wife, who had never watched rugby before, understood what was happening.

Two is the endemic sportsmanship and socializing that goes with rugby. It is just fun off the field. I mean, what other sport would you have the Princeton women’s rugby team, having clearly lost a bet, standing in the stands throughout another match clad only in their sports bras? See: http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/123210078.html

One thought on “Dartmouth National Champions”

  1. Tony Downer, father of the co-captains of the Dartmouth Rugby Sevens team, is an enthusiastic squash player from the New Canaan CC. Very good friend of Bostwick. His wife, their mother Amy Chan Downer, was my wife’s field hockey teammate and roomate at Princeton Class of 1979. Great people. GO BIG GREEN!

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