Lacrosse Brings In Another High School FB Standout

It's still a little early to get a read on how Dartmouth football's early decision recruiting class is shaping up, but the Dartmouth men's lacrosse team is starting to look as if it could field a pretty talented football squad.

On the heels of last week's Green Alert blog note on two-way lineman Pat Flynn of New Jersey heading to Hanover to play lacrosse comes this Stamford Advocate story about the previously unbeaten Darien, Conn., football team having to play a game without injured all-purpose back Nikki Dysenchuk, "also an outstanding lacrosse player who has already committed to playing the sport next year at Dartmouth."

Dysenchuk led his team with 1,047 yards rushing and was second on the Darien squad with 28 catches for 533 yards this fall. He averaged 6.8 yards per carry with 17 rushing touchdowns and four receiving. In his best game he ran for 204 yards and four touchdowns, caught a 27-yard pass and had an interception.

Note to readers: I can't find them all because some papers, like our local daily, are very stingy about what they put up on the web. If you see a note in your local paper about a football player headed Dartmouth's way, drop me an email and I'll get it posted here.

From the Dolphins Digest after yesterday's Miami win over Buffalo:

With 181 passing yards, QB Chad Pennington now has 3,062 on the year, the third 3,000-yard passing season of his career (3,120 in 2002; 3,352 in 2006). It is the first time a Dolphin has put together a 3,000-yard campaign since Jay Fiedler threw for 3,290 yards in 2001. Overall, it is the 15th 3,000-yard season in Dolphins history and Pennington is just the third player to do it (Dan Marino, 13 times; Jay Fiedler, 1 time).

If you were around in Buddy Teevens' first incarnation as Dartmouth football coach you may remember Jeff Hawkins. "Hawk," a jack-of-all-trades for Dartmouth football in the late 1980's, was a high school teammate of Teevens and Harvard coach Tim Murphy and went to Tulane with Teevens in 1992. Now the director of football operations and assistant AD for football operations at Oregon, Hawkins (Oregon bio) is quoted in a Daily Emerald article with the subhead: "Student-athletes given training on how to successfully navigate turning pro."

Saw a note elsewhere that Columbia led the nation in "First-Year Enrollment of African Amercians at the Highest-Rated Universities, Fall 2008" and wondered where Dartmouth fell on that list. In case you were wondering:

• Columbia 12.1 percent
• Yale 10.0
• Penn 9.4
• Dartmouth 9.2
• Harvard 8.4
• Princeton 7.7
• Brown 6.7
• Cornell 4.5

North Carolina was second at 10.8 percent, followed by Stanford (10.5) and Duke (10.1). Find the complete list from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education here.

And finally this: It was -2.5 degrees this morning when I walked out to the school bus with the kids this morning. For the uninitiated, that's 2.5 "below," or perhaps "minus" 2.5 degrees. You'll reveal yourself as a "flatlander" immediately if you refer to it as "negative" 2.5 degrees. ... That certain Hanover High junior and her freshman brother will be running outside today with the "indoor" track team, and it figures to be a bit, um, brisk. With Dartmouth going on break, they get inside Leverone tomorrow and will have the luxury of running inside for the rest of the month before hitting the streets again in January.