1. For most part, I get along with my boss (me ;-)
2. I can hold staff meetings in a phone booth (if I can find one, which I occasionally have to do because I don’t own a cell phone).
3. Coaches and others around the Dartmouth football program are unfailingly helpful and friendly.
4. I thoroughly enjoy getting to know alums, friends of the program and parents of players. (We had unbelievably good seats to see the Colorado Rockies last week courtesy of a parent who became a friend, and were hosted and treated to a terrific time in Colorado by parents of another former player, who have been wonderful friends.)
5. I get to know the players better than I did when I was at the newspaper and missed the occasional deserving story because I wasn't around the program the way I am now and wasn't as keyed in.
One of the people I should have written about when I was at the paper is John Stanton, but I wasn't aware of his story until starting BGA.
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| John Stanton in the '92 Dartmouth media guide (click photo to enlarge) |
Now, anyone who sticks with it without seeing the field on Saturdays is a good story. But the undersized linebacker from California’s story is a great one, and not just because he stuck with it.
John Stanton, who was out there banging helmets like everyone else for four years, was just the second deaf student ever to attend Dartmouth (the first graduated in 1979).
While the school has had one or two deaf students a year on average since the 1990s, and more and more deaf students are finding a home on Ivy campuses, Stanton knows of just one other deaf student-athlete to play football in the Ancient Eight. (The other was Columbia offensive lineman Nathan Walcker, who graduated in 2009).
A lot of Dartmouth players who made headlines have graduated since Stanton, but few continue to bleed green the way he does. No one, and I mean no one, sticks up for Dartmouth football quite like Stanton, who does so almost to a fault.
That's how much Dartmouth has meant to him.
It's why he proposed to wife Cindy Bellefeuille Stanton '97 outside the Corey Ford Rugby Clubhouse after her alumni game. It's why the onetime scout-team linebacker and the onetime captain of the Dartmouth women’s rugby team were married several months later not in Washington, D.C., where he practices law, but here in Hanover.
A graduate of Georgetown Law, he has long been a dedicated volunteer for the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, a deaf advocacy group that promotes speaking and lipreading.
Now the reason for the late introduction to Stanton.
Recently he was presented with the AG Bell Honors of the Association Award, “given to individuals who have demonstrated dedication to – and sustained efforts toward – the mission of AG Bell.”
A video recognizing this year’s AG Bell Award recipients includes a segment about Stanton that details his efforts for the organization and features pictures of him and his family. Find it HERE. To view the entire video, CLICK HERE.
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Andrew Goldstein, who helped the Dartmouth men's lacrosse team to the NCAA Tournament, who scored a goal in the tourney game against Syracuse and who, oh yeah, came out as gay right around that time, is featured in a story out of the World Lacrosse Championships headlined, For a trailblazing Israeli lacrosse team, a pioneer in the nets. Find the story HERE.
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The Stanford Daily writes about softball coach Rachel Hanson's move last week from Dartmouth to Stanford. Hanson is just the latest in a line of successful Big Green coaches who went on to coach at Stanford. Men's soccer coach Bobby Clark and women's coach Steve Swanson, men's cross country and track coach Vin Lananna and football coach Buddy Teevens all headed up teams at both schools. Check out the Hanson story HERE.
