Success After Football

Someone stumbled across the blog in the past couple of days by Googling the name Nick Mourlas. I recognized his name immediately and Googled him myself to see why it might be that someone had been searching out information on this former defensive lineman. Turns out, Nick is yet another former Big Green football player who has shown that you really can combine hard work on the Dartmouth football field with tremendous accomplishment in school and thereafter. Check out this dated bio on the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Program web page:

Nick Mourlas graduated with high honors in 1992 with a BE degree in Mechanical Engineering from Dartmouth College, and in 1996 he received an MS in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. He ... completed a PhD in EE at Stanford, which focused on microfluidic couplers, sensors and dynamic chemical processing, he has a patent pending for fluidic channel processing and has also disclosed an invention for fluidic coupling ... to Stanford's technology licensing office (OTL). Mourlas plans to pursue an MD degree

Mourlas, who had 30 tackles as a 5-11, 225 senior nose guard for the Big Green in 1991, co-founded Acumen Medical and has been an Industry Mentor for Stanford's Biodesign Program since 2003. ...

Enrique Salem's '87 Dartmouth football career was more brief and less distinguished, but he hasn't done badly for himself either, serving as Group President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Symantec. Check out this recent New York Times piece he co-wrote. He is the former president & CEO of Brightmail, Inc. ...

I had a chance to watch Dartmouth take on the top-ranked Cornell men's lacrosse team yesterday in Hanover and while Cornell was having its way, 17-3, I was keeping a close eye on a solid-looking junior midfielder for the Big Green. Chad Gaudet, the promising tailback who has missed two years of football after a freak knee injury, is playing lacrosse for the first time since high school and considering a return to football next fall. I can't attest to how his knee is feeling and if there is any pain, but I saw all I needed to see in one series. The player he was defending made a couple of quick juke steps left and right and, like a defensive back, Gaudet mirrored each one. Whether his knee can stand up to the rigors of football or whether he'll even play is to be determined, but from what he showed yesterday he appears to have regained the agility he would need to play.

Defending champion Princeton has named its co-captains for the 2007 season according to this release.

In case you missed it the first time around -- and I must admit I did -- the end of the Ithaca Journal article about Cornell spring football mentioned that the AstroTurf at Schoellkopf Field is slated to be replaced by FieldTurf within the next year to year-and-a-half (listen and you can hear the cheering). The story also mentions that Cornell is looking at a bubble for offseason use of Schoellkopf. The facility arms race continues.

Top off your Sunday by reading this inspiring -- if perhaps apocryphal -- story about onetime Columbia coach Lou Little and a "teddy bear" defensive tackle at Georgetown as recounted on the Roar Lions Roar blog. This one would make a fabulous pregame speech.

If you are getting a little tired of these snow updates rest assured, so am I. It's coming down pretty good right now and the forecast is for anywhere from 8-12 inches of the stuff before it stops tomorrow morning. Hopefully this time the weather wonks got it wrong. If they didn't, the plow will be out on Memorial Field again tomorrow in anticipation of Monday's start of, ahem, spring football.