The Dartmouth Way

The News & Observer from Raleigh, N.C. ran a lengthy story recently under the headline, Is this football's future? How a North Carolina high school protects players' heads.

It was behind a News & Observer paywall until the Chicago Tribune picked it up. I commend it to everyone.

The story tells of Adam Sanders, a onetime fullback at Furman and now head coach at Apex Friendship High School on the outskirts of Raleigh, spending "three days at Dartmouth in May as a guest of coach Buddy Teevens and his staff observing the Big Green practice without hitting each other, without even tackling each other. That's how Dartmouth has done it for a decade."

It turns out there's another Dartmouth connection.

From the story:

Sanders was sitting in the stands at Friendship's baseball stadium last spring, watching one of his wide receivers, Payton Bloom, play center field. Next to him was Josh Bloom, Payton's father, who is the medical director of the Carolina Sports Concussion Clinic in Cary and the team doctor for the Carolina Hurricanes. He also played football for Teevens at Dartmouth in the mid-'90s, a hard-hitting linebacker who was voted team MVP as a senior.

And this:

Bloom had sent Sanders some of Teevens' videos on "The Dartmouth Way," but he proposed Sanders take it a step further and see it firsthand.

"My son wants to play, so No. 1, I want him to be in a good environment," Bloom said. "No. 2, frankly, I want it to be competitive. As I got to know Sanders, I knew his heart was in the right place. I also knew their limitations on the field, that they needed to have their guys be healthy, that the guys they needed in Week 1 needed to be there in Week 10."

Find the story HERE.

Apex Friendship, in case you are wondering, is 7-3.

Here's the video The Dartmouth Way that the story references:

•

That Hail Mary against Harvard is the gift that keeps on giving. You can't make this stuff up . . .
Yep, that's right. Masaki Aerts' grab of the Hail May at Harvard is Lindy's U.S. FARM RAISED CATFISH CATCH OF THE WEEK ;-) (LINK)

•

Dartmouth quarterback Jared Gerbino is on the College Football Performance Awards Midseason FCS National Performer of the Year Trophy Watch List. (LINK) There are 34 players on the list with the Ivy League also represented by quarterbacks Kevin Davidson of Princeton and Kurt Rawlings of Yale.

•

Jay Greenberg, who writes for PrincetonTigersFootball.com, has a column celebrating the Dartmouth-Princeton game. He writes about why "an era likely to be forever defined at both schools by two epic head to head showdowns needs to be completely savored Saturday at Yankee Stadium."

Find the story HERE.

•

Found this list of all of the undefeated-undefeated November Ivy League games on the always readable TigerBlog. Turns out there have been six before this year and this will be the third pitting the Big Green and the Tigers. (LINK):

1964 — Princeton (7-0) def. Yale (6-0-1), 35-14
1965 — Dartmouth (8-0) def. Princeton (8-0), 28-14
1968 — Harvard (8-0) and Yale (8-0) tied, 29-29
1993 — Penn (7-0) def. Princeton (7-0), 30-14
2001 — Harvard (7-0) def. Penn (7-0), 28-21
2018 — Princeton (7-0) def. Dartmouth (7-0), 14-9
2019 — Princeton (7-0) vs. Dartmouth (7-0)

Old friend TigerBlog also wrote this:

The last time Princeton had a winning streak of 17 games was between 1964 and 1965. That run ended with a loss to a Dartmouth team that came in having won nine straight. 

•

Snagged this from FCS guru Craig Haley's Twitter:

FCS career interceptions leaders among active players:
1. Will Warner (Drake): 15
2.(tie) Greg Liggs Jr. (Richmond): 14
2.(tie) Isiah Swann (Dartmouth): 14
4. Jeremy Chinn (Southern Illinois): 13
5. Rashad Robinson (James Madison): 12