Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Finally, A Day Filled With News

At the annual Celebration of Excellence event for Dartmouth athletics, senior longsnapper Josh Greene was one of the honorees:

From a Dartmouth release (LINK):

CLASS OF 1950 AWARD

Presented to "the varsity student-athlete who has demonstrated the most extraordinary commitment to community service."

Winner: Josh Greene (Football)

The Big Green long snapper for the past two seasons, Greene stuffs his schedule with numerous charity endeavors outside of his time spent on the field and in the classroom. As the philanthropy chair for Gamma Delta Chi, he helps create and facilitate philanthropic events, most notably small fundraisers to assist his late teammate, Josh Balara, who valiantly fought cancer. In 2012, Greene founded the Off the Bench Foundation, which has collected new and used sports equipment to donate to a number of organizations in Florida for over a decade. He also is a mentor for DREAM, which aids underserved Upper Valley youths, and has helped organize several Be The Match Drives that matches up bone marrow and stem cell donors with those in need.

Greene will be a fifth-year senior on the football team this fall.

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the father of two Dartmouth students and a friend of Big Green coach Buddy Teevens, spoke with the football team last evening:


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And speaking of the NFL . . .

Former Dartmouth defensive end Niko Lalos '20, whose last NFL address was with the New Orleans Saints practice squad, will be back in the Big Easy after re-signing with the Saints. He played this spring with the XFL's Seattle Sea Dragons and won a contract after a mini-camp tryout with New Orleans. Find a story HERE. 

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Still on the subject of pro football, the Toronto Argonauts have a story headlined Argos Go With The Flo about Flo Orimolade '17, the highest paid defensive end in the CFL. From the story (LINK):

“He is probably one of the most disruptive defensive linemen in the league, if not the most disruptive d-lineman,” said Corey Mace, who is not only the Argos defensive coordinator, but is Orimolade’s positional coach as well. “The first thing you think about with Flo is his professionalism. He’s a professional in how he approaches everything he does.”

The story finishes with a look at Flo off the field, including this:

He says he loves to learn, is passionate about the world of finance, and reads a lot of non-fiction, pointing to Malcolm Gladwell as his favourite author.

Orimolade also loves to travel, pointing to two diametrically opposed landscapes as his favourite destinations.

“Two different types of trips, but I would say Columbia and Iceland. In Iceland you see things that you have never seen, like a fantasy; volcanos, the landscape is crazy. Columbia was the best food I’ve ever had. It’s always warm and it’s an electric vibe.” 

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The Dartmouth has a story headlined The Game Ends, and a New Chapter Begins; One writer investigates the experience of student athletes who leave their teams that features former defensive lineman Marquist Allen. From the story (LINK):

“I ended up figuring out other things I love to do with my time, and [the athlete] lifestyle just started to kind of fade out of the picture of my life,” Allen said. “I had the injury side of the decision, and then also I really got into entrepreneurship.”

And . . .

“I don’t have the ability to go to practice and see everyone as normally as I once did, but I think (I’m still) really close with the football team,” Allen said. “I chose Dartmouth over other schools because it was a big family environment, and that definitely stood true for me.” 

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On a lot of days this would have led BGA Daily . . .

Reuters has a story headlined, Ivy League defends ban on athletic scholarships in antitrust lawsuit. From the story (LINK):

Lawyers for the universities in a jointly submitted court filing argued that college athletic leagues have authority to set rules for financial aid and compensation for student athletes. The filing said the Ivy League's member schools had "independently" sought to "foster campus cultures that do not prioritize athletics."

The defense lawyers also argued that the eight schools of the Ivy League do not form a "market" — a necessary threshold in an antitrust suit — since they are among more than 350 schools competing in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I, the top level of U.S. college sports. 

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EXTRA POINT
Brrr. The temperature here at our Vermont hillside home dropped to 36 degrees last night.

Friends have invited us to join them for a Memorial Day weekend at their lake house a little north of here in another week. I'm looking forward to it, but there better be a serious temperature swing – in the air and in the water – before I give any thought to even dipping a toe in the lake.

While there are people in and around Dartmouth who enjoy really, really cold water (LINK) I'm not one of them.

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