Dartmouth College's Remy Borinkski and Iona's Madeleine Lessard battle for a bouncing ball Sunday at Hanover's Burnham Field. The Big Green won the nonconference match, 3-0, and improved to 2-0 this season. (Valley News - Tris Wykes) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
Dartmouth College's Remy Borinkski and Iona's Madeleine Lessard battle for a bouncing ball Sunday at Hanover's Burnham Field. The Big Green won the nonconference match, 3-0, and improved to 2-0 this season. (Valley News - Tris Wykes) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Hanover — Casey Cousineau is a Dartmouth College geography major and the women’s soccer team’s starting goalkeeper. She doesn’t need her studies, however, to realize the Big Green hasn’t sat atop the final Ivy League standings in more than a decade.

Nope. It’s right there on the mesh fence covering behind one of Burnham Field’s nets: 2003. A 13-year stretch during which the men’s program has captured six Ancient Eight crowns.

Could this be the breakthrough campaign? The Big Green is off to a 2-0 start after swamping overmatched Iona, 3-0, Sunday. Cousineau posted her second consecutive shutout, and the Gaels just didn’t have the athletes or the organization to stay with their hosts, particularly during a first half in which Dartmouth possessed the ball roughly 75 percent of the time.

Ron Rainey, the Big Green’s third-year coach, substituted liberally even before halftime, and the constant lineup shuffle likely held down the score.

Dartmouth’s first tally came when Iona goalkeeper Tiffany Martienz saw her short goal kick headed back in her direction but couldn’t handle the bouncing ball, allowing Charlotte Esty an open-net tally in the 18th minute.

The lead moved to 2-0 just three minutes later when an Iona defender knocked the ball directly to Meredith Gurnee on the left side of the box. The midfielder cut back inside that same defender while on the dribble, and a quick shot produced the senior’s first goal of the season and the sixth of her career.

Dartmouth, which held an 8-2 shot advantage in the first half and an 18-5 lead in that category for the game, closed the scoring nine minutes after halftime. Esty hustled to save a long ball from rolling over the end line by the left post, and she centered to senior Holly Patterson in the center of the box. The New Zealander faked right, cut back to lose a defender and fired home a left-footed shot for her first goal in nearly three years.

Cousineau was credited with four saves but had only two close calls, including one shot that barely slipped over the crossbar. Iona slumped to 0-4 after going 2-15 last fall.

“It makes my job really easy when we’re winning all the 50-50 balls and our backs are making great passes to the forwards,” Cousineau said. “We didn’t have much to do defensively, but we covered any runs they made.”

Rainey arrived from Iowa with a defense-first reputation, and last year’s team allowed only 12 goals while going 8-4-4 overall and 1-3-3 in the Ivies. That was a fall from a 3-1-3 league mark the year before, which left the Big Green in second place. Just a little more offense could have made all the difference, so Sunday’s outburst, even if against a lackluster opponent, was welcomed by the boss.

“We kept the pressure on with a lot of different (lineup) combinations, which was nice to see,” Rainey said. “The challenge is to get everyone to figure out their roles and to play at a faster and faster pace.”

Asked if the current campaign might be a turning point for the Big Green while under his command, Rainey demurred. He built Ball State’s program from scratch and made Iowa, once a doormat, competitive again in the Big Ten Conference. Both construction projects took time, however.

“I’ve done this a few times at different places,” said Rainey, who also coached at Towson, Cincinnati and Wisconsin-Parkside. “I don’t get caught up in it being the second or fifth or 10th year and what that might mean.

“If we can play good team defense and have seven or eight people score three or more goals each, I think we could take a step up.”

Dartmouth is at Wake Forest and Gardner-Webb next weekend before hosting Central Michigan and Fairleigh Dickinson on Sept. 9 and Sept. 11.

Notes: Attendance was listed at 297. … Between 2011-15, Dartmouth played the likes of Portland, Washington, Purdue, Northwestern, Connecticut, Central Florida, Rutgers, Texas A&M and Texas. No such big schools and/or women’s soccer powers are on this season’s slate, but Rainey said he’s made no conscious move to book lesser opposition. “We just play whoever will play us,” he said, however noting a preference for schools that agree to home-and-home series. … Iona, a college of roughly 4,500 students, is located 20 miles north of midtown Manhattan in New Rochelle, N.Y. Founded in 1940, its most notable athlete is former NBA standout Jeff Ruland. … Talk around the scorer’s table Sunday included the anecdote that the referee for Friday’s double-overtime defeat of visiting Marist wore a device that showed him running 7.7 miles during the contest.

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 802-727-3227.