Big Arm Whatever He Was Throwing

Sean Furey '04 played some junior varsity football for Dartmouth before turning his attention full time to the javelin. While he's had tremendous success throwing the javelin (he was the only American to make the finals at the Worlds in Berlin a couple of weeks ago) Furey kind of wishes he were still throwing spirals. From a Q&A in the Eagle Tribune:

"Football was always my first love. When I was at Methuen and I was a quarterback, our coach, Larry Klimas, was the track coach as well. If you played football, you had to go out for track. I tried everything in track and wasn't very good but the javelin just felt natural. Obviously, as a quarterback, it was a natural thing to do, throwing. I like to tell people that the jav chose me. If I had my wish, I'd be the Patriots quarterback but I'm much better at throwing a stick."

Dartmouth continues to recruit Colorado hard. Another name to add to the list of potential recruits is safety Erik Smith of Denver's Mullen High School. Scout.com writes: "Smith's combination of on field talent and class work has garnered Ivy League attention with Dartmouth showing the most interest ..." Scout goes on to call him, "one of, if not the most underrated player in Colorado high school football ..." Smith also plays lacrosse for the Mullen Mustangs.

Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph is the FCS national offensive player of the week as named by The Sports Network. Although Randolph completed 36-of-56 passes for 414 yards and two touchdowns, the guess here is that he wasn't particularly happy with his play after the Crusaders, despite all the yards, had to rally for a 20-7 win over Georgetown.

Holy Cross, by the way, will play 0-1 Sacred Heart this Saturday. It will be interesting to see how that one goes down because Dartmouth will be playing the Pioneers in 2010 and 2011.

In case you were wondering, Sacred Heart opened with a 31-12 home loss to Marist Saturday. Marist, by the way, is in its first year in the Pioneer Football League, which counts future Dartmouth opponent Butler as a member. Butler kicked off the season with a 42-3 win over Division III Albion.

The new FCS poll from The Sports Network is out and no fewer than seven of Dartmouth's 10 opponents garnered votes. They are:

9. UNH
24. Harvard
25. Holy Cross
32. Colgate
36. Penn
41. Brown
57. Yale

There were 118 official members of the FCS last year and a whopping 67 got Top-25 votes. To save you the trouble, the only Dartmouth opponents who did not get votes were Columbia, Cornell and Princeton. Discuss among yourselves.

Nothing official posted yet that I can find on the injury status of Nate Eachus, Colgate's crushing sophomore running back although there's message board chatter. Eachus had 139 yards on 20 carries early in the third quarter before leaving Saturday's win over Monmouth with what sounds like a rib issue. Two thoughts.

First, Colgate probably would have put that game away sooner if Eachus had been able to continue to play. Coach Dick Biddle's modus operandi is to pound, pound, pound until the opponent is softened up. Eachus was going to carry a lot more carries and probably do a lot more damage before that game was through.

Second thought: If he's not able to play against Dartmouth in 11 days, the complexion of that game could change dramatically.

Does the name Kevin Hackett ring a bell? He was a member of the Dartmouth Class of '75, a backup linebacker to Reggie Williams and is a member of football royalty in Madison County, Ohio. He gets a mention in this Madison Press story about his family and its football success.

Closer to home – this home at least – that certain Hanover High senior openers her cross country season this afternoon with a home meet that might actually challenge the five-time defending state champions. She's excited because it will be the first time since she switched over from field hockey that they've run a home race in wich the varsity has actually had to push. Across the road, that certain sophomore will be teeing it up with the junior varsity golf team at Hanover Country Club. (Hanover is a perennial powerhouse in golf as well. Oh, and the boys' soccer team has won 48 consecutive games, but that's another story ;-)

Extra Point
Packing up my backpack for practice yesterday I went through a mental checklist of what I had and what I needed. Doing a website, I obviously need more than I did when I was a simple newspaper guy, but even there, things have changed.

When I started at the paper, my checklist would go like this: Pen? Check. Notebook? Check.

My last year at the paper my checklist included my laptop, extra battery, power cord, minidisc recorder for interviews, external microphone for said recorder, patch cord to run sound into the computer for transcription, earphones, batteries for the recorder and Ethernet cable in case wireless wasn't working. And you know what? Although I probably got more detailed (and accurate quotes) I don't know that the stories were necessarily any better than they were in the pen and notebook days. Ah, progress.