3 Foes Celebrate End Of Spring Drills

While Dartmouth is just one week into spring practice and still two weeks away from its Green-White game, three opponents held their end-of-spring intrasquad scrimmages yesterday.

At Columbia, junior quarterback Millie Olawale engineered an 80-yard, two-minute drive that lifted the White team to a 28-20 win over the Blue. Olawale completed 16-of-30 throws for 228 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. An interesting spin on the Columbia game as reported on the school website:

Special teams was dictated by the luck of the draw, literally, as the public address announcer selected various scenarios blindly out of an envelope, giving the offense and defense different situations to maneuver. Each scoring drive in the first half was aided or affected by one of these situations.

That's interesting on two accounts. First, with kickoff and punt returns seldom live in intrasquad scrimmages because of the potential for injury, a random drawing adds a little fun mystery to the game. And second ... they had a PA announcer? Maybe I'm forgetting, but I can't ever remember Dartmouth having someone call the action. Music, yes. But not an announcer. Nice touch.

Columbia also named a whopping six captains, including Olawale and standout receiver Austin Knowlin among others. Six???

At Princeton, the Tigers held their White-Black game with White taking a 17-2 victory. Silly me, but I would have thought it would be the Orange-Black game. (Help me here. Does anyone have a name for its spring game that is more original than two colors?) Not a whole lot of detail on the Princeton website. Princeton announced four captains including standout tailback Jordan Culbreath. It's the first time the Tigers have had four captains.

In Worcester, Mass., Holy Cross had just 155 yards of total offense – the Crusaders usually do that in a little more than a quarter – but a look at the game statistics gives a hint why. All-American quarterback Dominic Randolph did not play. Or if he did, he didn't have any stats. It's not completely clear from the report, but it looks as if it was just the offense against the defense with no official score kept. Holy Cross, of course, trumped Columbia and its PA announcer by having its spring festivities broadcast on the internet.

No word yet on whether anything special is planned when Dartmouth's spring game is played on May 2. Last year former coaches Jake Crouthamel and Joe Yukica were welcomed back to coach the Green and White teams. For a look back at last year's Green-White game, check out the Big Green Alert story.

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The Dartmouth men's lacrosse team had a 6-5 lead over No. 2 Virginia early in the fourth quarter yesterday before the Cavaliers used a big final period to take a 13-6 win. Interestingly, the Big Green made it a difficult afternoon for Chad Gaudet, the former Dartmouth tailback who, as a graduate student at UVa, has been one of the best faceoff men in the nation. Gaudet won just a so-so 8-of-19 on the faceoff X against his old teammates. A picture of Gaudet defending a former teammate can be found along with the Daily Progress game story.