Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Big Little Brother Heading This Way

John Paul Flores, the 6-foot-4, 270-pound brother of first-team All-Ivy League and All-New England center Jacob Flores '16, has Tweeted his commitment to Dartmouth HERE. John Paul, a senior at All Saints Episcopal High School in Fort Worth, Texas, has another older brother, Charlie, who played at Columbia, another of the schools that was recruiting him.

Find John Paul Flores' highlight video HERE.

Jacob Flores spent a year with the Green Bay Packers. (LINK)
Here's an area-by-area look at what we *think* we know about the Dartmouth recruiting class so far per the confirmed early decision admits and Twitter. (Additions and corrections encouraged ;-)

OFFENSIVE LINE
Calvin Atkeson, 6-4, 284
Ravenscroft School
Raleigh, N.C.
John Paul Flores, 6-4, 270
All Saints Episcopal High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Griffin Lehman, 6-4, 270
The Hill School
Pottstown, Pa.
Andrew Paxton, 6-4 285
Detroit Central Catholic High School
Novi, Mich.

TIGHT END
Joe Kramer, 6-4, 225
Westwood High School
Washington, N.J.
Robbie Mangas, 6-3, 244
Gonzaga College High School
Washington, D.C.

WIDE RECEIVER
Devin Powell, 6-3, 211
Marvin Ridge High School
Waxhaw, N.C.
Christopher Sykes, 6-4, 193
St. Louis School
Honolulu, Hawaii

RUNNING BACK
Zack Bair, 5-10, 186
Red Bank Catholic High School
Red Bank, N.J.

DEFENSIVE LINE
Toby Adedara, 6-4, 232
St. Charles North High School
St. Charles, Ill.
Luca Di Leo, 6-1, 302
St. Ignatius HS/Choate Rosemary Hall
Elmhurst, Ill./Wallingford, Conn.
Alex Schmidt, 6-2, 265
Peddie School
Hightstown, N.J.

LINEBACKER
Joe Heffernan, 6-1½, 207
Marquette University High School
Milwaukee, Wis.
Carson Reich, 6-2½, 228
The Woodlands High School
The Woodlands, Texas

DEFENSIVE BACK
Joshua Betts, 6-2, 176
Manatee High School
Bradenton, Fla.
Isaiah Johnson, 6-2, 190
Detroit Country Day School
Beverly Hills, Mich.
Landon McDermott, 5-11½, 178
Lovejoy High School
Lucas, Texas
John Pupel, 6-1, 195
Episcopal High School
Alexandria, Va.

Dartmouth athletic teams only recently started using John Scotford's iconic Lone Pine logo on uniforms. Now the college has devised a new mark (and new font). Read about them in The Dartmouth. Will we be seeing this on uniforms? On the side of an alternate football helmet? Stay tuned.

What I can say is that it is a huge improvement on this old logo, which I've been told was intended to represent the hills of New Hampshire, or something ;-)

Finally!

If the message board chatter is correct, Yale Bowl will be installing FieldTurf prior to next season.

Folks have suggested for years the problem was that the Bowl's surface is below sea level (sounds like an urban legend) but for whatever reason the grass/mud at Yale is frequently an unruly thatch of grass and mud. If you watched the Harvard-Yale game from New Haven last November you saw a good example of how sloppy the field can be. The shame is that Yale great Tyler Varga had to deal with that mess. It will be interesting to see how freshman phenom Zane Dudek performs on a clean, fast surface the next three years.