Informed On Uniforms

My laptop beeped yesterday and coughed up a link to a September, 2006 blog item posted on the Daily Pennsylvanian site. From that posting:

Penn starts the Ivy League season this weekend with Dartmouth — the team with arguably the most interesting uniforms in the league and the most recent changes.

Not sure why it showed up now, but believe it or not it's timely. The item discusses changes in Dartmouth's football uniform dating back to 2001. Some of the links are dead, but it's still interesting to get someone else's perspective. The reason the item is timely is because there's current news on the uniforms to share:

The green pants have gone the way of the black pants. They are gonzo.

Regular visitors to this electronic neighborhood know I was no fan of the black or green pants. If you ask me (or even if you don't, because it's my blog ;-) the green pants were barely passable – with white shirts. But the green-on-green thing just didn't work. I kept waiting to hear a voice over the loudspeaker intone, "Ho, ho, ho Green Giant."

Don't forget, I've got Penn State blood in my veins. A stripe down the middle of the helmet and numbers – readable numbers – on the shirts and I'm good to go. (But JoePa, the Nike swish? C'mon.)

Former Dartmouth tight end Casey Cramer and his Tennessee Titan teammates from non-BCS schools are getting a little love from a Tennessee teammate named Cortland Finnegan. From a story in the Tennesseean:

But the Titans cornerback is willing to spread his love for all the underdogs of college football, and his teammates who represent those schools.
Finnegan recently ordered T-shirts from nearly a dozen small schools, from Washburn and Fort Valley State to Montana State and Eastern Washington.

The story goes on to say another of the T-shirts was from Dartmouth.

Occasionally I'm asked if I would start a message board to go with Green Alert. I haven't and I won't because unless they require registration, prohibit anonymous posting and are heavily moderated given time they often degenerate into a mess like the Ivy League Football forum. Yes, the Green Alert blog allows anonymous "comments," but they all show up first on my computer and if they even hint of a personal attack they don't get through.

I bring this up because a column on CBSsports.com is a reminder that what people post on the Internet can hurt and do damage. In this instance, a young basketball player decommitted from Wisconsin because of the things he read about himself on a message board.

Given the amount of press he's received heading into the NCAA lacrosse Final Four, you know former Dartmouth tailback Chad Gaudet is a pretty good story. And you had to know with Gaudet's Virginia team taking on Cornell that the Ithaca Journal would sniff this one out, and it has. Find a story about the Dartmouth grad who played against the Big Red in another color uniform a year ago here.

And finally, that certain Hanover High junior got a couple of hits in yesterday's softball loss to archrival Lebanon, but a generous scorekeeper listed her with three. I don't think she'll give the last one back ;-). The freshman was supposed to have a jayvee doubleheader today against Lebanon but with the holiday weekend depleting the other team's roster, the games were cancelled and he's headed out on the golf links instead. Given the end-of-season blues, I don't think he's disappointed.

Have a fun and safe holiday weekend everybody.

More From The Recruiting Front

Penn's recruit list can be found here.

Keeping in mind that what is on recruiting sites is unofficial, Scout.com reports that Dartmouth "became the first school to offer Park City (Utah) cornerback Erik Walker, the 100m champion in Utah."

According to his Scout.com bio page, the 5-foot-10, 170-pound Walker rushed for 1,051 yards on 131 carries as an option quarterback (8.0 yards per carry) and had 36 tackles along with two interceptions at corner. His 40 time has been listed at 4.36 and he won the Utah 100 meters in 10.95. Keep in mind it's early and there are a lot of big schools on his list.

Incoming recruit Garrett Waggoner, a 6-2, 210 safety from Sarasota, Fla., received a $2,000 "Bud Carson Scholarship." Waggoner couldn't know it for sure when he said it, but this quote from a story on the award is torn 100 percent from Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens playbook:

"From football I learned a lot of team concepts, because in football you have to rely on your teammates to do their job and you to do your job. Because if you start trying to do other people's jobs, everything gets messed up. So you have to depend on other people and have confidence in them."

Former tailback Chad Gaudet's return to New England as a grad student/lacrosse standout with the Final Four Virginia squad brought the Boston Herald to write:

FOXBORO - It has been a strange journey that has taken Chad Gaudet from Ivy covered Memorial Stadium (sic) in Hanover, N.H., to jam-packed Klockner Stadium on the lacrosse-mad campus of the University of Virginia.

While a devastating injury wiped out one athletic career, the Winchester-born, Burlington-raised Gaudet has risen to the highest ranks in another. He will start at defensive midfielder for the Cavaliers, who face Cornell in the NCAA Division 1 national semifinals tomorrow (2 p.m.) at Gillette Stadium.

Of his decision to switch sports after the kind of rare knee injury that often leaves those who suffer it with a pronounced limp for the rest of their life, Gaudet – who has something of a Ringo Starr thing going in the photo accompanying the story – said:

“With the hardware in my knee, it was going to be too much of a risk to continue playing with so much impact. So at that point, I really had to make a decision whether I wanted to continue competing athletically or just hang it up.

“I really love competing and I played lacrosse in high school. I walked into the coaches office at Dartmouth and asked if I could have a shot. They gave it to me and I really fell in love with the game again."

And Lacrosse Magazine's blog posted a story about Gaudet that included this:

"It was my plan when I decided to pursue this fifth year. I was well aware the final four was going to be held at Gillette Stadium," he said.

He better enjoy it, because he'll soon be going from host to tourist. In a week, Gaudet and others in his master's program depart for the business school in Copenhagen, Denmark, for a month to complete the requirements for his graduate degree.

And finally, a tough week on the softball field for that certain Hanover High junior catcher was offset with the release of SAT scores yesterday. Suffice it to say she was smiling pretty broadly after hitting her target score exactly on the point. Hopefully she's be smiling just as much after today's game at archrival Lebanon.

Still Another Recruiting List

Columbia's recruiting list for next fall is out. Find it here. Interesting that the Ivy League's most urban school and it's most rural school probably have the most overlap in terms of high schools where they recruited the Class of 2013:

Brophy College Preparatory (Arizona)
Dartmouth: Mike Tree, defensive line
Columbia: Seyi Adebayo, defensive Line

Bergen Catholic High School (New Jersey)
Dartmouth: John Golio, offensive line
Columbia: Nick Gerst, running back

Loyola Academy (Illinois)
Dartmouth: tight end Jackson Floyd
Columbia: Alec Kosminskas, offensive line

Cascia Hall (Oklahoma)
Dartmouth: Danny Husband, defensive end
Columbia: Paul Pinkerton, wide receiver

I've been reading a book called Soccer Dad by W.D. Wetherell. The author lives locally in the town of Lyme and has written about yet another state championship season by the traditional powerhouse Hanover High School boys soccer team.

It's not a book I normally would have bought or read, but I received it as a gift at Christmas. Here it is mid-May and finding myself out of reading material I picked it up and started reading. It's interesting because I know some of the players involved (Dartmouth track coach Barry Harwick's son is the goalie) as well as a number of the parents who the author writes about.

But it is a maddening book. Beyond the overly sappy descriptions of how soccer is such a beautiful and imaginative game, the cheap shots at football are just that. Cheap shots. Writing of the cheating scandal at Hanover High that year, the author quotes himself asking his son, "Any soccer players?" The son answers, "Football players." The father again: "Why am I not surprised? Cynical of me, but that's sometimes my role."

Later in the book:

"The chance to play beautifully finally came against Hollis-Brookline at home. It was a cool, crisp Saturday – "football weather" they call it, those benighted souls who persist in the delusion that football is America's game. Dartmouth was playing Princeton in their refurbished stadium three hundred yards away, and roars from the crowd, shorn of passion, were breezelike whispers by the time they reached our stands."

"... (T)hose benighted souls who persist in the delusion that football is America's game?" ... Discuss among yourselves.

Brown is the latest Ivy League school to release it's football recruits here.

Forner All-Ivy defensive back John Carney '78, whose bid for the governor's mansion in Delaware was derailed last year, is running for congress. Find his website here. His bio on the site starts this way:

The second of nine children, John was born in Wilmington and raised in Claymont by his parents Jack and Ann. He attended St. Mark’s High School where he was quarterback of the 1973 state championship team. John continued his football career at Dartmouth College and earned All-Ivy League and Most Valuable Player awards before graduating in 1978. After several years of coaching football and lacrosse, John became a freshmen football coach at the University of Delaware, while earning his master’s degree in public administration.

Dartmouth football will be honoring four Ivy League championship teams on Saturday's this fall. The teams and dates:

• Oct. 3 vs. Penn – 1969 Ivy League Co-Champions
• Oct. 24 vs. Columbia – 1963 Ivy League Co-Champions
• Nov. 7 vs. Cornell – 1971 Ivy League Co-Champions
• Nov. 21 vs. Princeton – 1981 Ivy League Co-Champions

From an email that went out announcing the schedule of teams to be feted:

If you were a member of one of these teams, you will be receiving an invitation to the weekend's festivities during the summer, so please mark your calendar and plan to return to Hanover with the rest of your teammates to celebrate your championship season.

If you were not a member of one of these teams, you too, are invited to return to Memorial Stadium (sic) this fall to witness the introduction of the members of these great Dartmouth teams at halftime.

And finally, the Hanover High junior varsity baseball team came from behind for a dramatic, 6-5, win yesterday in its final at-bat. That certain freshman catcher was solid behind the plate the whole game, laughing afterward at the pressure he felt to not give up a passed ball when the bases were loaded with none out and his pitcher was striking out the side. (He didn't give up a passed ball and has the black-and-blue marks to prove it.) He batted just twice, popping out to third and walking when a 6-foot-3, 250-pound fireballing relief pitcher threw two pills that went at his head and forced him to hit the dirt. I explained to him that when a kid that big throws that fast and he's on the junior varsity, control is probably issue. Fortunately he didn't say what he probably should have: Duh.

That certain Hanover junior's softball team wasn't as lucky, traveling more than two hours to be on the wrong end of a 27-0 no-hitter. That's two days, six-plus hours on buses and two losses by a combined, 41-0.

Records Made To Be Broken

As promised/threatened (pick one), Dartmouth records that are overdue to be broken:

Career rushing yards – 2,252, Al Rosier '91
It doesn't have to be Clifton Dawson (4,841 yards), Mike McLeod (4,512 yards), Nick Hartigan (4,492 yards) or Jordan Scott (5,621 yards), but the record will fall if Dartmouth can simply develop a workhorse back who will do the job for three solid years. Not since Jeff Dufresne from 1978-80 has the Big Green had a player lead the team in rushing for three consecutive seasons. Astonishingly, Rosier's yardage is just 27th on the all-time Ivy League list. Every other Ivy League team has at least one player who has rushed for 3,000 career yards. Yale has had six runners top Rosier's record, Penn five, Princeton and Cornell four each, Harvard and Brown three each and Columbia one.

200-yard rushing game drought
Dartmouth's last 200-yard game by an individual was on Nov. 16, 1991 when Al Rosier ran for 229 yards against Brown. Every Ivy team has had at least two 200-yard games since then. Brown has had 12, Princeton 10, Harvard and Yale six each, Penn and Cornell five each, and Columbia two.

Passing yards in a game – 419, Jay Fiedler, 1992
Hard to believe, but Fiedler's total against Yale is tied for 30th on the all-time Ivy League list. Every Ivy League team has had someone throw for more yards. Brown quarterbacks have surpassed Fiedler's mark 11 times while Princeton's QBs have topped it on seven occasions.

Career interceptions – 13, Scott Sims '89 and Lloyd Lee '98
The Ivy League record book lists the top 16 players for career interceptions and every school is represented with the exception of Dartmouth. The top three players for career interceptions are all from Princeton – Superman Dean Cain with 22, Damani Leech with 20 and Jay McCareins with 18. Cain came within one of Dartmouth's career record in 1987 alone, when he picked off 12 passes.

---

Incoming offensive lineman Rob Bathe has been chosen to play in the 36th annual Minnesota High School All-Star Football Game at St. Cloud State's Husky State on June 27.

Our local paper has a story today noting that safety Kyle Cavanaugh, projected to be the only fifth-year senior on next year's team, did in fact tear his ACL in the spring game. Barring a miraculous recovery from surgery, it will be the fourth time in five years that the hard-luck Cavanaugh has had a season ended by injury. He was a starter in the first two games of his collegiate career.

Today's Daily Dartmouth has a story about the retirement of longtime field events coach Carl Wallin.

Tragic news in Cambridge, Mass., where a 21-year-old man was shot and killed Monday afternoon in the entrance to a Harvard dorm. He was not a Harvard student. Find a Boston Globe story here.

And finally, a regular reader sent along a link to a New York Times blog post by a Dartmouth sophomore headlined, "Sober in the Animal House."

Closer Than We Remember

Given how last season ended, it's easy to forget how promising a start Dartmouth had at Colgate last fall. Although this video is from the Colgate perspective, it's a reminder of just how close the Big Green came to an upset over the eventual Patriot League champion.

Junior quarterback Alex Jenny completed 29-of-48 passes for a career-best 343 yards and Phil Galligan caught 10 balls for 146 yards in a game that was tied at 20-20 midway through the fourth quarter.

Dartmouth had a chance to take the lead when it drove from its own 35 to the Raiders' 4 early in the fourth quarter only to have a 21-yard field goal attempt blocked. Even after Colgate responded with a touchdown that gave the Raiders a 27-20 lead with 7:27 remaining, Dartmouth wasn't finished. The Big Green marched from its own 15 to the Colgate 17 before the drive bogged down with just over four minutes remaining. A late Raider touchdown made the final a deceptive 34-20.

Allen Lessels' blog in the Manchester Union Leader has an update on the two UNH players who tormented their cross-state rivals for what seemed like, oh, six or seven years. Former New Hampshire quarterback Ricky Santos is back with the Montreal Alouettes, battling for a roster spot. David Ball, his record-setting wide receiver, has signed with the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats after a stint in Montreal last year. Ball has also spent time on the practice squads of the Chicago Bears and New York Jets.

The Daily Dartmouth has a story about the latest Wearers of the Green celebration in Boston. From the story:

The distinction was not limited to athletes from traditional varsity sports, as teams as diverse as rugby, figure skating, Ultimate Frisbee and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu were represented.

Jake Novak over at the Roar Lions Roar blog has a post about his "Top 5 Least Favorite Lion Records." If there's one thing I learned in the newspaper business, it's the merits of stealing a good idea and then making it your own. With a nod to Jake, I'll have my own list of Dartmouth football records that need to be broken tomorrow. ;-)

And finally, it dropped to 31 degrees last night here on the mountain. Thursday's high could be 85 degrees. Ah, spring in Northern New England.

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.

Yale's The One

The idea of last week's poll was to find out what one team, other than Harvard, you would most like to see Dartmouth defeat next fall. Several emailers suggested Colgate was the logical choice, both because it is the first game of the year and because it would set the tone for the season. I've got no quarrel with that thinking. The guess here is that any and all coaches would have voted for Colgate on those grounds alone.

But the hope was to find out what opponent, again other than Harvard, you'd most like to see Dartmouth beat in the event it won just one game. Assuming that's how most people voted, the top five spots went pretty much as I expected. I suppose you can sum it up this way:

It's always going to be HYP until you take out the H. Then it's going to be YP ;-).

As a trophy win, it's no surprise to me that New Hampshire came in third after YP. The tradition of the Penn series being what it is, the Quakers being one of the presumptive Ivy League favorites next fall, and Penn being the Ivy League opener probably all contributed to the Quakers finishing fourth. And Colgate was a logical pick to finish high both because it is the opener and because it, too, would represent something of a trophy win.

The surprises? What looks to be a very good Holy Cross team was mired in seventh place (one vote lower than Columbia). And not one of the 123 ballots mentioned Cornell. You'd think someone would hold a grudge against the Big Red.

Here's how the balloting broke down:

1. Yale 29 percent
2. Princeton 18 percent
3. UNH 17 percent
4. Penn 11 percent
5. Colgate 8 percent
6. Brown 5 percent
7. Columbia 4+ percent
8. Holy Cross 4 percent
9. Cornell 0 percent

Several folks asked which team I voted for and given that I was operating on the presumption of just one win, I went with New Hampshire. The thinking was that if the Ivy League title was out of reach, I'd want to beat the best team on schedule. Or the team that Dartmouth has gone longest without winning against. Both of those point to UNH.

The Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings measuring overall success of the intercollegiate athletic programs at the nation's Division I colleges and universities hasn't yet been updated with spring results. When the update comes, Dartmouth's baseball championship should help the Big Green's cause.

Unsurprisingly, Stanford is No. 1 through the winter results with Minnesota second, North Carolina third, Michigan fourth and Penn State rounding out the top five. Here's how the Ivy League sits:

38. Princeton
53. Cornell
61. Harvard
65. Yale
72. Dartmouth
99. Penn
132. Columbia
194. Brown

The June 20th Dartmouth Friend of Football Golf Classic is hoping to fill out a field of 100 golfers and identify a few more sponsors. Donations for the raffle and auction are also being sought. From a recent email:

The Reunion Classes of 1979, 1984, 1988, 1989, 1990 and 2004 will all be in town so come join them for great food, excellent beverages, BAD golf, and lots of laughs! Family and friends are welcome and there is lots of time to have a post golf beverage and still make your Saturday night reunion dinner.

To help out, or for more information, contact curt(dot)oberg(at)dartmouth(dot)edu.

The Portal 31 blog covering Yale football for the New Haven Register is reporting that linebacker/tight end Jordan Jefferson of Palo Alto, Calif., has decommitted from Lehigh in favor of attending Yale. While Buddy Teevens' stint as head coach at Stanford didn't necessarily give him the pick of Ivy-bound recruits in the Bay Area (Ivy League passing leader Nathan Ford of Cornell also came from Palo Alto) it certainly helped. But Jefferson going to Yale is a reminder that with former Stanford standout and assistant coach Tom Williams at Yale, there's another sheriff in town. (Or at least a deputy ;-)

And finally, that certain Hanover High School freshman caught the first game of yesterday's jayvee doubleheader and did a terrific job of blocking just about every ball that bounced in the dirt in front of or to the side of him. Last night he somewhat proudly showed me his black-and-blue marks. I think there's more black-and-blue than skin color showing and I was duly impressed. As someone who avoided catching at all costs when I played baseball, it's astonishing to me that we're two-for-two with catchers in the family.