A Sneak Peek At Next Year

Today's Power Rankings column in The Daily Dartmouth takes a peek ahead at next year's fall sports. Football is ranked No. 2 after men's soccer. The writer of the piece says:

I’m excited because Dartmouth football has absolutely nowhere to go but up. Let’s face it — the team hit rock bottom last year, and we all felt it, even those of us who couldn’t care less about Dartmouth sports. It was embarrassing to everyone.

One of the schools frequently mentioned as a future opponent for the Dartmouth football team once the current non-Ivy contracts run out is Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The News-Leader in Springfield, Mo., has a primer on the non-scholarship Drake football program here.

From the story:

Missouri State assistant coach Sean Coughlin, a former Drake player (1999-2000) and assistant (2001-03), said a minimum 3.00 GPA and ACT score of 21 are starting points.

"It definitely cuts your pool," Coughlin said. "Yet you'd be surprised how many kids you'd find ..."

The Wearers of the Green celebration was held Saturday evening at the Westin Copley Place in Boston. I've been told that there were two standing ovations during honorary inductions and both were completely deserving: College President Jim Wright and the late Sports Information Director Kathy Slattery Phillips. The event drew a gathering of about 650 for the induction of 200 new members of the Wearers of the Green.

A 6-4 win over Princeton has sent the Cornell men's lacrosse team into the Final Four where it will meet up with top-ranked Virginia and former Dartmouth tailback Chad Gaudet. The Cavaliers blew past Johns Hopkins yesterday, 19-8, with Gaudet handling the faceoffs and even earning an assist. Find a story about the second matchup of the year between Cornell and Virginia here. UVa won the first one.

Anyone who has spent time around Dartmouth over the past 40 years or so would recognize the name of Ed Lathem '51, the college librarian and dean of the libraries emeritus. Lathem collapsed in his Webster Hall office and died Friday at age 82. The Daily Dartmouth has a story.

And finally, an aside. I am glad I'm not in high school these days. At least not in honors classes at our local high school. The amount of homework kids in those classes get is mind-boggling. If they are involved in a lot of extracurricular activities they seem to always be staying up too late and getting up too early to get their work done. I regularly tell that certain sleep-deprived Hanover High junior to hang in there because college will be easier, and I honestly believe that. It hasn't hit the freshman quite as hard yet, but there have been a lot of times when he's at his desk when I turn in, and he's back at it when I wake in the morning.