Nail-Biters

The Sports Network notes that four of the six games involving Ivy League teams last Saturday went down to the wire.

• Harvard's win over Brown wasn't sealed until an incomplete pass into end zone on the final play.
• Cornell's win over Yale came down to a two-point conversion attempt by Yale that hit the back of a Big Red player on the final play.
• Princeton's win over Lehigh was locked up by a pass batted down in the end zone.
• Penn's fate against Lafayette was sealed when the Leopards got a field goal in overtime to end the game.

The only games not to go down to the wire were Columbia in a loss to Central Connecticut, and Dartmouth in the loss to New Hampshire. The other four games were determined by a total of 11 points.

Today's Columbia Spectator has a roundup of last week's Ivy League games.

As noted yesterday, Dartmouth corner Shawn Abuhoff and tailback Nick Schwieger were named to the Ivy League honor roll. Find the Ivy League's weekly release here.

It was 40 years ago that the Holy Cross football season was curtailed by an outbreak of hepatitis. John Powers has a look back in the Boston Globe. The story reminds us that the Crusaders' last game was a 38-6 loss at Dartmouth. (The Holy Cross head coach, Bill Whitton, would eventually land at my high school as head coach.)

Holy Cross Magazine had a story on the 35th anniversary of the hepatitis outbreak that included this:

Recognizing the financial hit the College was going to take without any incoming revenue from football, Dartmouth proposed that all NCAA Division I football playing schools donate $1,000 to Holy Cross. In all, more than $35,000 was raised–including $2,000 from archrival Boston College.

Speaking of Patriot League teams, check out this promo for Colgate that shows a couple of forgettable plays from last year's game with Dartmouth out in Hamilton:



Dartmouth students are helping out with the Extreme Home Makeover TV show in the town of Lyme, just north of Hanover. Word was that the crew would be at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center today to film. The local segment of the ABC show is set to air on Oct. 18. The Daily Dartmouth has a story.

Even closer to home (this one ;-) that certain Hanover High sophomore football player-turned-golfer helped his team win the New Hampshire state junior varsity golf championship yesterday. His sister, meanwhile, continues to deal with a health issue that has sabotaged her senior season of cross country. The hope is that she'll be able to contribute for the state championships in about a month. Fortunately she should be good to go for the indoor track season, but suffice it to say it has been an extremely difficult fall for her. On the plus side, she's been named as Hanover's representative to the United Student Athlete Ambassadors Program.

Extra Point
The full New Hampshire foliage report can be found here. We won't be at "peak," this weekend, but we are closing in on it. (Dartmouth region foliage link).

The forecast is a little dicey for the weekend, but "Leaf Peepers" needn't despair. A lot of veteran foliage followers will tell you the colors stand out best against a battleship gray sky.

Speaking of weather forecasts, there is a chance of snow flurries at higher elevations tonight with the possibility of a little accumulation.