Net Loss

No, I'm not talking about UConn basketball, although San Diego's win yesterday in the NCAA Tournament was fun to watch. Ditto for Davidson over Gonzaga. I had picked the latter but no, I didn't have the wonderfully named Toreros over the Huskies.

The net loss in question is our internet service, which is completely down for the third or fourth day after working sporadically for a few days prior to that. I'm on my wife's pirated work dialup number and, looking up at the timer at the top of my screen, it took me 22:12 to download two emails, read one story, try (and fail) to bring up another and type this much. Before our hapless provider of internet radio signal came along to offer us something better, those of us living our here were told our phone lines really couldn't handle very fast internet transmissions. No kidding.

The good news is that my nearest neighbor finally tracked down the fellow who runs our ISP and was told the transmitter on the mountain peak behind us is in need of repair. Duh. He was told the part was ordered and due in time for the transmitter to be fixed today. We'll see. I know I wouldn't want to be up there working on the peak with bare fingers. It's 14 degrees this morning, the wind is blowing and we've got a couple of feet of standing snow in our yard. Can't imagine how much snow there is up there. Keep your fingers crossed.

All of that is the long way around to telling you I don't have much for you today. That said, I'll share the names and specifics of four walkons who are joining the Dartmouth program in the spring. They are:

• Ben Boachie, WR, So, 6-3, 214, Springbrook/Silver Spring, Md.
• Ajman J. (AJ) Houston, CB, So 5-10, 188, Taft School/Bronx, N.Y.
• Kevin Estrada, FB, So, 5-11, 210, Riordan/San Francisco, Calif.
• Darius Assadian, RB, So, 6-0, 195, Eastwood/El Paso, Texas

I know nothing about them except for Estrada, who worked as a football manager last fall.

I'll let you know more once practice begins in 23 days. At least, that's when it is scheduled to begin.

With the FieldTurf project on Scully-Fahey Field not completed, both the men's and women's lacrosse teams are still playing and practicing on Memorial Field. The track teams will soon join them. Because the two lax teams and the track team are "in-season," and football is not, the football team would likely have last dibs on its own field.

What is going to happen? Perhaps the weather will finally let up and a crew can be brought in to finally finish Scully-Fahey. Otherwise your guess is as good as mine. Two possibilities (and these are just me speculating): spring football will have to be moved to a grass field, or the dates will have to be shifted.

The problem, of course, is grass fields will be muddy, muddy, muddy in three weeks. (Unless they are still snowy, snowy, snowy.) And, if the recruiting window is anything like it was last year, the coaches may be slated to head out on the road at the conclusion of the regularly scheduled spring ball, meaning the schedule can't easily be changed.

To steal a saying that a Dartmouth athletic director who ended up on the West Coast once used with me, the football program might be "between the dog and the fire hydrant," on this one.

Stay tuned.