Better News For Reggie Williams

It's probably an overstatement to say it's good news for Reggie Williams. But the news about the former Dartmouth and Cincinnati Bengals linebacker is clearly better than it was when there was a very real fear that he would lose his leg. This Cincinnati Enquirer story says:

The knee has now stabilized. The crutches are gone. The imminent danger has passed.

Cornell has released its football recruiting for the Class of 2013. Find the list and player bios here.

With this class in the fold, Dartmouth is already looking ahead to next year and has its eye – along with a lot of other schools – on an Indiana quarterback named Connor Kelley. From an Indiana.scout.com story: (T)he list of schools that have shown interest certainly is formidable: Penn, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth and Brown. ... "

Another story about the Batesville High School QB that notes he's already been "offered" by Colgate, includes this quote from the young man:

"If I get to play football in the Ivy League and graduate, I am set for life with a great education. There is life after football and if I have a degree from the Ivy League or the Patriot League, it will be a dream come true for me.”

The scout.com profile of the 6-foot-1, 197-pound Kelley can be found here. And when this story was written he's already taken unofficial visits to Dartmouth, Harvard and Yale and was headed to Princeton, Penn and Colgate. Well-traveled kid.

You would think that if any school in the country could afford to still field junior varsity teams it would be Harvard. And yet, as the Harvard Crimson reports, the school is dropping jayvee baseball, men's basketball and men's ice hockey to the club level as part of a $77 million belt tightening at Harvard.

And finally, I made the long trek over to the seacoast yesterday to watch that certain Hanover High School junior's softball team win its first game of the year, albeit against a woeful opponent. I got home before the bus and dutifully reported to that certain mother of hers that she had a double, a single, an RBI, scored three runs, took extra bases in that daring way of hers, and played terrific defense behind the plate.

When I picked up the paper this morning it said she had three hits, which got me thinking.

When I coached that certain Hanover High freshman in his final year of Little League, I always kept the book in the dugout. I'm probably a little tougher on hit-error than most scorekeepers, but when it was my kid it absolutely had to be legitimate to go in the books as a hit. I was compiling season stats during what would be a championship season and there couldn't be any hint of favoritism, so I leaned the other way. He still ended up leading the team with something like a .585 batting average that spring, and every last hit was clean.

There's no way the junior had three hits yesterday, but if that's the way they are keeping the book, so be it. When the all-state voting takes place, an extra hit here and there certainly won't hurt. And others are probably getting similar gifts. But it's another reminder about how tricky the dynamic can be when you are coaching a team with one of your own on it. Which is why when I head out to practice this afternoon with the freshman's old Little League team, it will be a lot easier than it was a few years ago.

One last note: I'm not sure if I've ever seen uglier uniforms than those worn by the opposing softball team yesterday. It started with the Columbia blue-and-white tie-dyed socks and got worse as you went up. No lie, the jerseys looked as if they had smocks pulled over them.

I know what you are thinking. This is the guy who didn't like Dartmouth's green-on-green pants and shirts football uniforms. You are right. I didn't. But trust me, this was ridiculous. I mean, tie-dyed socks?