As you may have read here before, Chad Gaudet – whose promising career as a Dartmouth tailback was ended by a nasty knee injury that saw him eventually return to action as a lacrosse player – will be completing his athletic eligibility this spring as a graduate student this spring at Virginia, the preseason No. 1 team in the nation. I had to smile when I read what Virginia coach Dom Starsia said about Gaudet, a faceoff specialist, in the Richmond Times Dispatch: "He faces off with a long stick, and he's a brute of a kid. He can beat you up at the X." ... Sounds like the kid I watched on Memorial Field for one year. A lot of things might have been different in Hanover the past three years if Gaudet had been able to play. (Find the story I freelanced on Chad Gaudet last spring here.)
Interestingly, one of Gaudet's new teammates at UVa is a familiar name, if not necessarily a familiar face. Upper Valley local Matt Lovejoy is a sophomore defenseman with the Cavaliers and the brother of Dartmouth alum Ben Lovejoy, a former Big Green ice hockey player who also played lacrosse. Speaking of Ben, he skated in two games with the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins last month and has been selected to the AHL All-Star team. Find Ben Lovejoy's entertaining blog here, with a very funny entry about a fan making him a mix CD here. (Since the topic right now is hockey: Dartmouth topped Brown last night, 5-1.)
While hockey was going on, that certain family was at Leede Aena watching the Dartmouth men's basketball team bid for No. 1 in the nation. OK, that's a stretch, but bear with me. Remember how Boston College beat undefeated and top-ranked North Carolina? Then it was Harvard beating Boston College. Last night it was Dartmouth's turn to try to beat Harvard, which beat BC, which beat North Carolina.
When the Big Green built a 10-point lead it looked is if it might happen. Dartmouth had a one-point lead in the final 15 seconds only to see the Crimson hit a runner to wrestle the lead back. Dartmouth drew up the play to win the game during a timeout, but a contested shot from the wing didn't fall and the Crimson (9-6) escaped with a 63-62 win over the Green (2-11) in the first Ivy League game of the year.
A number of football recruits/potential recruits in town saw a very good game, albeit one with an unhappy ending for the home team.
Speaking of football, the first official coaching change with the hiring of Tom Williams at Yale is pretty ironic. Portal 31 writes about defensive backs coach Tony Reno leaving Yale for ... wait for it ... Harvard! He'll be the Crimson's new special teams coordinator. ... Also, Football Scoop reports that Colgate has replaced defensive coordinator Steve Szabo after just one season. Szabo had been linebackers coach prior to going to Hamilton.
And finally, after being nudged by 3/100ths of a second in a 61-runner field in the unseeded mile at the Dartmouth Relays yesterday, that certain Hanover High junior came back and ran a leg in the 4x400 relay. Against tough competition, the relay finished back in the pack but it can still claim the top time in its division in the state so far this winter.
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