Dartmouth/ND: The Soccer Triumph!

A Story by Abishai100

A very dazzling tale of college-sports wonder in the USA, revealing strange magic surrounding sports-writing...and dialogue.

A toast to college-sports writing, inspired by Blue Chips (Nick Nolte) and The Program (James Caan).

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Soccer had become an iconic sport in media and on the world stage and was celebrated as a great fun in Europe, but in the USA, it remained mostly a video-game and collegiate/high-school sports pastime. Nevertheless, soccer-media from Europe became a fun media-access for American youngsters, which leads up to our current tale about the 'cleats' of American sports excellence...and body imagination!

The two rivals are Amlan and Marcus, midfielders-turned-coaches of Dartmouth and Notre Dame's 'Big Green' and 'Fightin' Irish' teams which are to meet each other soon in the NCAA soccer championship tourney.

AMLAN: Soccer's generated quite a bit of media-ads and endorsements in recent years.

MARCUS: The 'fitness' linked to soccer-life/gear has brought creative forms of ad-revenue in modern times!

It's true; thanks to collegiate-soccer in America and the successes of the US women's national soccer team in the World Cup tournament, soccer offers/boasts its own media/fanzines for readers/fans of the iconic and even legendary world-sport on the college level, which goes down to serious high-school recruiting considerations for academic scholarships (student-athlete readership!).

Now, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are legends for their celebrated college-football (NCAAF) team which has brought it a terrific American national-TV broadcasting 'relationship' with NBC, and every year, the Notre Dame campus is livened by the college-football season. This time, however, the campus is charged because of the soccer tournament.

AMLAN: We're excited to travel to Notre Dame's home-field to challenge the Fighting Irish on their turf/campus!

The fanfare surrounding Dartmouth Big Green and Notre Dame Fightin' Irish soccer has generated many 'creative' forms of homegrown costumes/masquerade on field for media and journalists/sports-writers looking for students who cheer on their fans with loud forms of inventive avatar-presentations (e.g., leprechauns, maudlins, etc.).

MARCUS: We're not intimidated by Dartmouth's Big Green team, despite its reputation for outstanding teamwork-spirit.

The sports-writers think the two star-coaches (Amlan/Marcus) will bring possible important future ad-revenues and media-markets for the US national soccer team for World Cup endorsements from important 'soccer-cleat' (sports-field shoes) companies like the iconic Diadora (Italy).

It's a rousing game, and Notre Dame jumps out to a 1-0 lead but thanks to the star striker of Dartmouth, the Big Green tie the score in the second-half and send the NCAA champions-tourney game into overtime, where Big Green striker Arnold manages to weave a diagonal pattern up the field after a key defensive-stop by Dartmouth and strikes a looped-shot into the net-corner, crushing Notre Dame fans' hearts with the final 2-1 overtime victory in what will be hailed as a 'modern masterpiece' in written American collegiate athletics, worthy of fan-fictions.