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A reminder that the 15th Annual Dartmouth Football Golf Classic is slated for Saturday, June 16 at Hanover Country Club (which astonishingly opened last Friday). Following lunch under the tent, play will begin at 12:30 and the day will wrap up with cocktails, dinner, a raffle and the always entertaining auction. Reunion classes in town will be from the classes of 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 2007.
Contact Curt Oberg '78 to help out with a sponsorship. Auction items and raffle prizes are welcomed as well.
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It's not a spring prospectus but Cornell's press release about the start of spring football today at least offers a glimpse at what the Big Red will look like in the fall. Interesting to see – but not surprising given the emergence of quarterback Jeff Mathews – that Beau Sweeney has been switched to tight end. Sweeney transferred to Cornell from Cal, where he was the backup QB for two years.
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Don't put too much stock in Ivy League games missing from future Patriot League schedules as mentioned on the blog here. A high-ranking PL official emailed after reading the BGA note and said the PDF schedule that had Patriot League bloggers buzzing had not been updated.
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Penn State has a quarterback coming in from Cairo, Ga., named Steven Bench. That's a little unusual because Georgia isn't exactly a Nittany Lion hotbed. What does that have to do with Dartmouth? Read on.None of the initiatives over the years to come up with a nickname or mascot to replace Big Green have gotten any traction so maybe it's time to float the nickname from Bench's high school team: the Syrupmakers. I mean, we tap our maples and make syrup around here, right? OK, I'm sticking with the Dartmouth North Stars but keep in mind Sports Illustrated once called the Syrupmakers the most unique high school nickname in the country. (My high school's longtime nickname of the Canucks would have rated highly in that poll until it was pirated by the NHL team in Vancouver.)
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Reading that the well-regarded football strength coach at Ball State has a Dartmouth connection to thank for his job (link) reminded me that Jay "The Big Bopper" Butler followed his head coach from Rutgers to the Tampa Bay Bucs. The official announcement that Dartmouth's former strength coach was joining the Bucs finally came out here.
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The Dartmouth has a story about former defensive back and punt returner Ronald Smith '74 losing his battle with multiple sclerosis and cancer. Smith, who the paper writes once returned an interception 72 yards for a touchdown against Brown, helped establish Dartmouth’s chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the College’s first black fraternity.
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Kudos to the Yale football team, which joins with the women's ice hockey and field hockey teams to spearhead the Mandi Schwartz Marrow Donor Registration Drive. From a story about the April 19 drive that honors the late women's ice hockey player . . .. . . (A)t least six life-saving genetic matches for patients in need have been located through the Bulldogs' efforts. That includes Yale junior field hockey player Lexy Adams (Lancaster, Pa.), who donated to a patient with cancer in December 2010.The Harvard football team, meanwhile, headed up a blood drive last Friday.
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My friend TigerBlog wrote yesterday of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, "This is the rare athletic event where the beginning far eclipses the end." Couldn't agree more. I didn't watch more than five minutes of last night's game, but I watched as much of the first two rounds as I could. Of course, it didn't help that last night's game tipped off at 9:23 eastern.
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The local daily yesterday had a huge story about the cost of the renovation at the Hanover Inn soaring from $13 million to $41 million. Interesting reading that after coming across a story in the Montreal Gazette raving about Six South Street, the "boutique hotel" in Hanover that was built for $6 million and opened last year.
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And finally, this has absolutely nothing to do with football and the only excuse I can make for posting this video is that it comes from the University of Pennsylvania. I've always had a weakness for flying toys and while these things aren't exactly toys, they are unbelievably cool to watch. The video is just over a minute and a half so take a look.