Thursday, June 06, 2013

Alumni Honor

Pete Frederick '65, a two-way tackle who helped Dartmouth to Ivy League titles in 1962 and '63 – and served as president of his class – has been chosen to receive a Dartmouth Alumni Award.

A Dartmouth Alumni story summarizes the career of a onetime Big Green football player to be proud of :
Frederick was also a member of Sphinx, Palaeopitus, and the Alpha Omega Chapter of Beta Theta Pi. When he graduated, he began a successful career with Dupont that spanned 17 years. Then, at age 39, he joined the foreign service. Commissioned as an officer in the Foreign Commercial Service, Frederick was accredited to nine embassies and served under President Ronald Reagan as deputy assistant secretary of commerce, responsible for the operations of the U.S. Department of Commerce in more than 80 countries.
Also selected for the Alumni Award is Brad Evans '64, a former Dartmouth basketball player.

Frederick, who earned three letters on the gridiron, Evans, and the other honorees will be feted Oct. 25 at the Alumni Awards Gala in Hanover.
Thanks to a regular reader for sharing a link to the news that Kyle Hendricks '12 has been named the Chicago Cubs' minor league pitcher of the month after going 4-1 with a 1.95 ERA in five starts for the Tennessee Smokies. The Smokies play in the AA Southern League.

Find a very interesting scouting report on Hendricks here. From the report:
He's a cerebral pitcher (he attended Ivy League Dartmouth) who has a feel for pitching. He has a vast repertoire that he commands well.  It includes a fastball (both 4-seam and 2 seam), a cutter, a curve, and what is probably his best pitch -- a changeup.
Speaking of Dartmouth baseball players in the pros, former shortstop Joe Sclafani '12 is batting .374 in 25 games with the Houston Astros' high A team in Lancaster, Calif.
The Daily Pennsylvanian has a story about the new SprinTurf surface being put down at venerable Franklin Field, where Dartmouth will play on Oct. 5. When the original AstroTurf was installed in 1969 the Philadelphia Eagles, who played at Franklin Field from 1958-70, became the first NFL team to play on an artificial surface. As the DP tells it, the move to the plastic stuff might have been fine with the Eagles but it didn't go over particularly well with another flying species:
Before the Eagles’ first game on the brand new AstroTurf surface in 1969, a swarm of grasshoppers began to feast on the new bright green plastic, forcing the ground crew to use high pressure water hoses to clear out thousands of dead grasshoppers.
The Harvard Crimson has an in-depth look at the Academic Index that reveals a twist in the admissions process.

I've written more stories about Dartmouth athletes than I can count and time after time during interviews for those stories the athletes have told me the same thing. Their parents wisely reminded them to pick a school where they would be happy if they suffered a career-ending injury.

As it turns out, the athletes aren't the only ones who think that way. From the Crimson:
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 uses what he calls “the broken leg test” to evaluate prospective student-athletes, who, when admitted, enroll at much higher rates than the average admitted student. According to an article in The Daily Princetonian, athletes typically enroll at a 92-94 percent rate, 35 percent higher than Princeton’s general enrollment rate. 
“Say a student who happens to be an athlete or a dancer breaks his or her leg in five places and can never participate, is this still a good admission?” Fitzsimmons said he and the admissions committee ask themselves. “Will the person be able to take the energy, the drive, the commitment that went into becoming a great dancer or a great athlete, or whatever else it may have been, and turn that into something positive?”
By the way, kudos to the Crimson for that story and the piece a day or so earlier about the Ivy League's prohibition against going to the FCS playoffs. (Link) It's nice to see college writers working up stories about issues surrounding Ivy League sports instead of offering opinions on pro sports.