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When , the Haldeman Family Director of Athletics and Recreation, recruited one of the top lacrosse coaches in the country from two-time national champion University of Virginia to take over the Dartmouth men’s lacrosse team two years ago, the move turned heads.

“People were shocked that we were able to attract someone who was seen as the brightest offensive mind in college men’s lacrosse, and asked, ‘why Dartmouth?’” Harrity says.

His response: “Why not Dartmouth?”

Harrity started at Dartmouth in the summer of 2022 after leadership positions at West Point and the University of Notre Dame.

“We’re committed to positioning Dartmouth Athletics to compete at the highest level and to doing it in a way that leverages Dartmouth’s distinctions as an intimately connected community that empowers leaders through experiential learning,” Harrity says. “We’ve committed to being strategic and bold.”

This fresh approach is creating momentum and already producing results. Last season, men’s lacrosse under put up some of its best stats in more than 15 years, including an 8-5 season, the first winning record since 2006, a top 20 national ranking for the first time since 2007, and an award for the Ivy League Co-Coaching Staff of the Year.

Kirwan says that this progress is due to the institutional commitment to Athletics he felt during his recruitment process. “It’s a huge credit to Mike and the culture he’s building. There’s clear alignment from President Beilock on down, with strong relationships and support from Admissions and other campus partners.”

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Haldeman Family Director of Athletics and Recreation Mike Harrity, right, congratulates Zyion Freer-Brown ’26 at an event last summer. (Photo by Dom Gallo)

Athletics’ alignment with Dartmouth’s academic mission is key to Harrity’s vision of sustained competitive excellence—fueled by a belief in the transformative power of sports and how it builds teamwork, leaders, and competitors.

The early results from this fresh approach speak for themselves. Over the past 15 months, Dartmouth coaches have earned 12 coach-of-the-year honors. And in the most recent competitive year, the Big Green claimed five conference or national titles, including:

• ;
• in 45 years;
• skiing’s undefeated season and third-place finish in the NCAAs
• the
• and .

“While we are thrilled to celebrate these early championship titles, we are focused on the process required to achieve sustained success and building a foundation to support that,” Harrity says. “Right now, our focus is on having a shared vision for excellence, creating the right culture, aligning resources, and supporting our people—especially our coaches.”

Striving for excellence

Harrity believes that Athletics is a vital part of Dartmouth’s academic mission and is focused on positioning the department to deliver on that privilege. In doing so, he is also walking in the path laid out by at her 2023 Inauguration, where she said, “Our holistic approach to wellness includes a renewed commitment to Athletic excellence, too.”

“The lessons learned on the fields of play, in the pools, or on the track are lasting. Our coaches are educators,” Harrity says. “And they play a pivotal role in developing student-athletes as they strive for excellence.”

The road to excellence started with listening. Harrity surveyed all the coaches and staff members in Athletics, some 150 people, asking for their views on the strengths and opportunities to improve the department. That feedback informed the strategic roadmap he later presented to the Board of Trustees, and which included five strategic priorities: connect Athletics and Recreation to the Dartmouth mission; focus efforts on impact; build competitive teams; align ambitions and resources; and proactively address change.

To help bring that vision to life, Harrity hired in July 2023 as his chief of staff. A former national champion soccer student-athlete at Notre Dame and experienced athletics administrator, VeNard immediately led the effort to craft a guiding framework—“Distinctly Dartmouth”—that captured the department’s strategic priorities and defined its “style of play.”

“We focused on developing a framework that empowered our team to honor, embrace, and build upon Dartmouth’s unique sense of place, emphasis on experiential learning, and the transcendent power of community,” VeNard says.

The framework, co-created with a working group of staff and coaches, centers the core values of tenacity, collaboration, and passion. And it has become a unifying force.

“Our teams’ early successes have been huge in helping to ignite the sparks of belief that we need to build momentum as we strive for excellence the Distinctly Dartmouth way—and it’s making the environment fun—for staff, coaches, and student-athletes in the process,” she says.

Building programs and people

Central to Harrity’s strategy is hiring, supporting, and retaining talented coach-educators who appreciate Dartmouth’s distinctions and mission. That includes hires like , who came to Hanover from the University of Minnesota at Duluth to lead Dartmouth’s women’s hockey. In her time in Duluth, Crowell led her team to two NCAA Frozen Four appearances and was honored as the national coach of the year in 2017. Crowell says Dartmouth’s ambition to build a winning program drew her to Hanover, but its commitment to holistic student development sealed the deal.

“Finding people who understand that these are student-athletes and how to best accommodate their needs academically with our needs athletically is really important,” she says.

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Women’s ice hockey head coach Maura Crowell, who was recruited by Athletics Director Mike Harrity from the University of Minnesota at Duluth last year, is credited with transforming the team. (Photo by Rebecca Osowski)

Her impact was immediate. Lauren Messier ’25, who is pursuing a professional women’s hockey career following graduation in June, says Crowell transformed the team.

“She came into a pretty broken group of girls with no direction. We had little motivation, and she just lit a spark for us and showed us which direction we wanted to go, and helped us push ourselves,” says Messier, who majored in psychology. “She didn’t do it in a way that was commanding, but did it in a way that we respected her and we wanted to make her proud. And that is the sign of an amazing coach.”

Supporting coaches also requires patience and trust, even if the scoreboard doesn’t yet reflect their impact. When Dartmouth men’s hockey endured a disappointing season in 2022-2023, finishing with the most losses in program history, Harrity and Senior Deputy Athletics Director made the decision to sign Koenig Family Head Coach of Dartmouth Men’s Hockey to a new five-year contract. Harrity made the move with a for the program.

That trust paid off. In just two seasons, the team won its first outright Ivy League title since the 1979-80 season, reached the ECAC Hockey semi-finals in Lake Placid, NY, and earned the Ivy League Coaching Staff of the Year honor.

“It’s a testament to how united our athletic department has become,” says men’s hockey player Tucker McRae ’26, a government major. “The support that they put in, whether that’s through physical things like new equipment in our dressing rooms, or the performance side access to nutritionists, to Dartmouth Peak Performance helping us manage the demands of student and athletic life, has allowed us to just have a ton more success. We can just focus on being students and being athletes.”

Elevating performance through wellness

Dartmouth pioneered holistic support for student-athletes when it created over a decade ago. Taking DP2 support to the next level is a critical part of Harrity’s strategy to help student-athletes maximize their athletic, intellectual, and personal growth.

For Jada Jones ’26, a computer science major and 200-meter Ivy League champion on the women’s track and field team, DP2 support has made a huge difference in her academic and athletic performance.

“Being in a highly rigorous academic environment, combined with the very stressful impact of a sport on your body, I think going to someone who can help you control and understand what you’re feeling when you’re competing and practicing really helped me,” Jones says. “I really attribute the help of my sports psychologist through DP2 as one of the main reasons that I competed so well this past season.”

In 2024-25, Harrity made a set of strategic investments in DP2, expanding services and staffing that advanced Athletics’ ability to support student-athletes holistically and measurably benefited team and individual performance.

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Lorna Harkins, Corrigan Family Assistant Athletics Director for Leadership and Mental Performance, leads a session in July at the Athletics’ Summer Leadership Program. (Photo by Justin Lafleur)

Dartmouth recruited top-tier talent from the highest levels of sport—including Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the English Premier League, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and NCAA FBS football. Additional investments include:

• an assistant director of strength and conditioning,
• an eighth full-time assistant strength coach,
• an additional athletic trainer,
• a director of student-athlete professional development—the first position of its kind in the Ivy League, and
• a program manager for sports data and analytics.

Dartmouth is also the only Ivy League institution with two full-time sports nutritionists. Now, with the support of alumni and honoring legendary Big Green football coach Buddy Teevens ’79, Dartmouth is expanding the reach of the DP2 program to all students through the . The center hired its inaugural director in July and will integrate expertise from fields such as cognitive science, biomechanics, engineering, and quantitative social sciences to explore new approaches to mental health, physical training, and leadership development.

Jack Brennan ’76, who played hockey and lacrosse at Dartmouth and is the former chairman and CEO of Vanguard, says Harrity, with support from President Beilock and the Board of Trustees, has improved both the athletic program’s competitiveness and its reputation.

“As an interested alum, I couldn’t be more pleased with the trajectory of Dartmouth Athletics,” says Brennan, who overlapped with Harrity at Notre Dame while serving as chair of its Board of Trustees. “Mike has brought energy, a commitment to excellence in everything, and a great sense of strategy to the goal of getting Dartmouth back where it belongs relative to peers. A ton of change has occurred, of course, which can be uncomfortable for some, but the results on the field and in the classroom speak for themselves.”

Brennan says Harrity has a knack for attracting and developing talented coaches who share in his passion for supporting student-athletes.

“It’s Dartmouth’s visible commitment to development of the whole person—personally, academically, and athletically—that should make us the envy of the Ivy League and incredibly attractive to prospective student-athletes and their families,” Brennan says. “Winning and wellness are complementary objectives and will enhance our students’ Dartmouth experience and, inevitably, competitive success in their sports.”

Sport for all

The commitment to health and wellness and excellence goes beyond varsity athletes. , senior associate athletics director for regulatory affairs and recreation who joined Athletics in July 2023, has collaborated with Chief Health and Wellness Officer to elevate Dartmouth’s club sports, intramural sports, and the lifelong sport programs.

And student participation in recreational sports is soaring—beginner swimming classes increased 300%, from 50 to 217, and 331 students learned winter sports (skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, and ice fishing) last year.

Many recreational teams aren’t just competing, they’re winning, with Dartmouth’s teams claiming Ivy League Cup Championships in powerlifting and cycling; a Liberty League Men’s Rugby 7s conference championship; and three individual event national champions in men’s figure skating.

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Dartmouth hosted the 2025 NCAA National Skiing Championship in March, including the men’s 20k freestyle mass start at Oak Hill Outdoor Center.   (Photo by Sophia Scull ’25)

Generous alumni support is also driving the resurgence in Athletics and increase in recreational sports, most notably . Alumni gifts have made it possible to execute key health, wellness, and competitiveness priorities, including:

• the rededication of Memorial Field as ;
• snowmaking and trail improvements to the Oak Hill Outdoor Center—where, along with the Skiway, the NCAA skiing championships were held this year;
• HD video scoreboards for Leede Arena in 2024 and Thompson Arena in 2025;
• projects to support both the decarbonization initiative and Title IX compliance, including at , , , and .

Crowell, the women’s hockey coach, says the is game-changing for the program: “We’ll have one of the best facilities in ECAC Hockey in a couple of years,” she says.

While titles and trophies are exciting, Harrity emphasizes that success is not measured by the scoreboard alone.

“If we’re doing this right, excellence is not an endpoint but a mindset,” he says. “I don’t foresee a day when we wake up and say ‘our work is done.’ The world of human development and education, and holistically supporting people’s growth, that’s a never-ending quest.”