At cocktail hour, hot-air balloons in LifeSaver colors drift over Quechee Gorge ("the Grand Canyon of the East"), seven covered bridges, ten area ski resorts and a dozen golf courses. Below, on the country-club decks and inn porches, the chat runs from third homes in Florida to the iffy prospects for the Dartmouth football team and, more and more, Opera North.The italics are mine. No, it isn't a real deep, hard dig, but a dig it is.
The Ivy League isn't getting much more love from the pundits as the preseason polls/rankings start to trickle in. The College Sporting News does a nice job over the summer compiling the polls and consolidating them into one über-poll. So far, only the Any Given Saturday poll and Lindy's ranking are in and Yale is the only Ivy team getting a mention. The Bulldogs are No. 24 in Lindy's and missing in action in the AGS poll. Defending champion Harvard, with two starting quarterbacks returning, is nowhere to be seen.
The only other Dartmouth opponent mentioned is New Hampshire, which is No. 10 in the Lindy's ranking and tied for 18th in the other.
Speaking of UNH, quarterback Ricky Santos has signed with the Montreal Alouettes after being released by the Kansas City Chiefs. Find a story here.
Still on the CFL, I had a nice conversation with former Dartmouth standout Anthony Gargiulo last week after his "retirement" from the Calgary Stampeders was announced. Anthony told me that despite the horrendous break in his lower leg last fall, he's rehabbed hard and is now able to run as fast as ever. The problem: He can only do it for short intervals before the leg tires and the pain builds up. He's still holding out hope about perhaps one day playing again but is realistic about his chances. In the interim he is continuing to train football players and other athletes back home in New Jersey at Test Sports Clubs. Among the athletes he's worked with: Joe Flacco, the Delaware quarterback taken 18th overall in the 2008 NFL Draft.
And finally, that certain Hanover High sophomore learned another lesson yesterday in the Covered Bridges Half Marathon. For the second year in a row she was using the run for training, rather than as a race. That said, she has a pretty strong competitive gene and so when the classmate she was running with developed blisters and asked her to walk with her on several occasions, she was torn. Stick with a friend or try to post a time? In the end, she tried to do both, walking with the friend on a handful of occasions before eventually running again. She felt awkward about finally leaving her friend, but also disappointed about not having a chance to see what she could do in a race that comes around only once a year. To her credit – and this will embarrass her – when people asked her time for the 13.1 miles and she told them 2 hours, not once did she add the "but," that I certainly would have been tempted to add on.
I'm reminded of my second cross country bicycle ride with a friend from grad school. He was a marathon runner but hadn't done a lot of bicycling. He found it frustrating that he couldn't keep up with me and I found it frustrating that I had to keep waiting. It made for some hard feelings before we decided after a few days that we'd both ride at our own pace and see each other at the end of the day.
Next in a series listing Dartmouth recruits: Women's soccer
- Annalyse Chinco, G, Sacramento (St. Francis HS*)
- Colleen Hogan, G, Houston (Awty International School)
- Alexandra Dutton, B, Granite Bay, Calif. (St. Francis HS*)
- Erin Fleischli, B, San Mateo, Calif. (St. Francis HS*)
- Alyssa O'Dea, F, Irvine, Calif. (Irvine HS)
- Jennifer Williams, F, Cincinnati (The Seven Hills School)
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