Connection Helped Lead To Commitment

Patrick Lahey, the 6-foot-3, 285 high school junior who recently made a verbal commitment to Dartmouth, is a student at the Brooks School in North Andover, Mass. He's quoted by a recruiting analyst as saying, "I’ve always had a connection with (Dartmouth) because an assistant coach of mine at the high school level played there and has talked about them since I was a freshman." That got me wondering so I Googled my way over to the Brooks School football page and checked out the coaching roster. I couldn't find a former Dartmouth player among the listed coaches but I did find: "Dan A. Rorke -- Consultant: Quarterbacks, Offense, Defense." Rorke, the former Brooks head coach, is the father of Chris Rorke '89, a Dartmouth quarterback under Buddy Teevens and a Brooks grad. Chris, by the way, is now an assistant coach at Trinity. Find his bio here.

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UPDATE: Just got an email reminding me that former wide receiver Mike Bobo '92 has worked with the Brooks team in recent years. I knew that but didn't make the connection when I didn't see his name listed with the Brooks coaches. Mike remains close to the Dartmouth program and played a significant role in promoting Dartmouth to Dallas-area players while serving as the offensive coordinator at Greenhill School in Dallas.

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Also of note in the story about Lahey, he is said to have received recruiting interest from Georgia Tech, Northwestern, Virginia, Boston College Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Cornell. He attended Dartmouth's summer camp last year. The story goes on to say he's an accomplished wrestler who "hasn’t mentioned if he’ll continue that at the collegiate level." Hmmm. If he's going to wrestle collegiately it won't be at Dartmouth, which dropped the sport some years ago.

Former Dartmouth running back and coach Jake Crouthamel, later the acclaimed athletic director at Syracuse, was super scout Gil Brandt's first free agent signing with the Dallas Cowboys according to this story in the Star-Telegram.

Brown's Zak DeOssie is profiled in this Kansas City Star story about the NFL hopeful. I like this quote he offered about being in the position he's in:

“Going into college, you can’t expect to be here. My education and my degree were the most important things to me. You can’t predict being here in four years. If you’re good enough, you can make it. They’ll find you. I don’t think it’s been an imposition on my NFL aspirations whatsoever.”

The scoreboard at Penn State Saturday. Check out this Centre Daily Times story for more about the outporing of support for Virginia Tech during our visit to the Penn State spring game.

A subscriber sent over this link to a story about the inventor of Gatorade making it into the University of Florida Hall of Fame. Find it here.

Gatorade might come in handy today. One week after we got close to eight inches of snow up here on the mountain the forecast is for 85 degrees today. The usually shadowed half of our yard is still covered in snow so the golden retriever better get out there and enjoy rolling in it while he can. The high temperatures are supposed to be back to the normal mid-50's for the rest of the week. ...

While spring football is on the mind, baseball is in the air. That certain Hanover High freshman will have her first varsity softball game Wednesday, the 7th grader will have his first 90-foot baseball game the same afternoon (his first practice is today) and yours truly will be running a Little League practice the same afternoon. I hope to catch a little softball before heading over to Memorial Field for practice.

Note: After missing Friday's practice while we were at Penn State, a full practice report will be posted on the Green Alert premium site after each remaining spring session.