Feb. 7 8:20 a.m. They made the All-Ivy League first team playing alongside each other two years ago and they'll be back in action this spring. But not alongside each other. And not even in the same sport. Former defensive end Ryan Conger, who played his last football game in 2004, will complete his college athletic eligibility this spring as a defender on the 17th-ranked Dartmouth lacrosse team. Conger, who is in the college's five-year engineering program, was an all-conference lacrosse players as a New Jersey high schooler and at 6-foot-2, 245 pounds, will add some size and speed to the Big Green's defense. While Conger has taken his stick out of cold storage, senior Anthony Gargiulo is putting his helmet on the shelf -- at least for a while. The 6-2, 235-pound defensive end who flirted with playing lacrosse himself a year ago, has decided to give rugby a go and has been training with the Dartmouth squad for several weeks. Although he has heard from pro scouts and agents, Gargiulo said last night that after eight years of football he's interested in trying something else and intrigued by a game that he can continue to play on the club level after graduating. He'll be heading to Argentina with the Dartmouth rugby team during the break. ... In an era of the Internet, it's gotten a little harder to tell fibs because people who know better can read and disprove them. Such is the case with the strange story English rugby trainer Thibault Giroud tells of his days as a football star at Dartmouth. The story in the Guardian reads:
Born in France to Tongan parents, Giroud's improbable journey began at the age of 17 in Grenoble. "I was lucky I was running a track meet and there was a scout there from Dartmouth College in the US," he recalls. "He was on holidays but after the race came to me and said do you want to play football. I didn't know what he meant by football, but four months later I had a scholarship.
"I didn't speak any English, didn't know anything about the game, and in my freshman year didn't play much. In my sophomore year I started to play well, then I was drafted by the (New York) Jets."
That's not quite the way it happened, of course. I recall writing a story when I was with the newspaper about a European who had played some football over there (I think it was Thibault but I can't be sure because I can't find the story) who came to the U.S., to train with the then-Dartmouth conditioning coach. But he was never a Dartmouth student. He never got a scholarship. He never played for Dartmouth. And he was never drafted by the Jets. Strange story, indeed.
Feb. 6 1:05 p.m. A picture and note on linebacker Zechariah Glaize "signing" with Dartmouth can be found on The Citizen web site. The piece says that Glaize had "58 solo tackles, 44 assists, 102 total tackles, seven quarterback sacks and an interception."
12:30 p.m. I just posted two pictures that show the uphill battle it is going to be to get the snow sculpture on the middle of the Green finished for Thursday's opening ceremonies of the Dartmouth Winter Carnival. As the pictures show, the sculptors are trying to make something out of nothing because the Green is, well, almost green right now. The sculpture is supposed to be modeled after comic strip characters Calvin and Hobbes. To learn more about the plans for the sculpture, click here. ... Wandering through Alumni Gym I learned some good news about Dartmouth senior Joe Killefer. The former tight end, who opted to concentrate on rugby this year instead of football, has been promoted to the U.S. Sevens rugby roster.
8:15 a.m. The Daily Dartmouth has a story today about a poll conducted for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. Under a headline, "Most Americans value academics over sports," The D includes the following comments from Dartmouth Admissions Director Karl Furstenberg: "While it's good that these studies come out, Dartmouth and Dartmouth athletics are very different from the rest of the country. We don't offer athletic scholarships. Our students are students first, and they have to have other interests outside of their own teams. When they apply to Dartmouth, they know that." And ... "Many D-1 schools have significant financial and alumni ramifications tied into their sports teams, and so poor behavior and low graduation rates may be overlooked. Dartmouth's large endowment prevents issues like these from arising." To borrow a line from Saturday Night Live, "Discuss among yourselves." ... Former Dartmouth quarterback Brian Mann was 24-for-43 passing for 270 yards and four touchdowns yesterday in his second start with the Los Angeles Avengers, who lost in Philadelphia. From the game story on the team site: Mann went the distance against the Soul, but Hodgkiss said the quarterback position hadn't been salted away: "He's only going to get better and better the more he gets to compete. He just lacks experience. He's only got one way to go, and that's up, with each rep he takes." ... Harvard's Isaiah Kacyvenski was introduced as one of the Seattle captains and Brown's Sean Morey as one of the Pittsburgh captains before Super Bowl coin toss. It was a neat honor for both and for the Ivy League, but really, who wasn't named a captain? The Boston Globe had a nice piece on Morey, formerly known as a Super Bowl jinx. ... I'm not a big one for "grading" stories, but in this case I'd give the game a "C", (the Seahawks get an "F" for time management), the halftime show a "C-plus" (I'd have preferred Motown in Detroit) and the commercials a "B-minus." ... I survived a long weekend of covering the New Hampshire high school indoor track championships at Leverone. My headache from the noise should be gone in a few days.
Feb. 5 Former Dartmouth placekicker and Kansas City Chiefs star Nick Lowery writes in USA Today from Kuwait City about his group of former All-Pros bringing a little football to the American troops overseas. ... The Boston Globe writes about the relief three Silver Lake Regional (Mass.) High School athletes felt after making their college choices. One is Josh Doherty, a 6-foot-3, 220-pound wide receiver who "chose Dartmouth over Syracuse and Bucknell, among other schools." (Silver Lake is the Alma Mater of Buddy Teevens.) ... A few coaching moves to report: Former Dartmouth quarterback and assistant Chris Rorke has left Lehigh and will be an assistant at Trinity College in Connecticut this year. ... Recent Dartmouth assistant Jeff McNamara is the new offensive coordinator at Carroll College. ... And Bob Colbert, who coached the Dartmouth offensive line in the 1990 Ivy League championship season, will have a familial connection to the Super Bowl today according to this story. Colbert is building a new football program at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., not far from Pittsburgh. ... Off to cover the second day of the New Hampshire High School Track Championships at Leverone Field House.
Feb. 4 7:45 a.m. With a good deal of help from the men's cross country and men's and women's soccer teams, Dartmouth was the top-ranked Ivy League athletic program in the U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup rankings after the fall season. The Big Green was 34th overall in the nation. This is the same ranking system that seems to annually crown Stanford as the nation's best athletic program. ... Lee Stempniak, the rookie out of Dartmouth, continues to earn plaudits for his play with the St. Louis Blues. Writes Norm Sanders in the News-Democrat: "Now the Blues' faith in the 22-year-old forward has paid off as Stempniak has four goals in the last three games, including a pair of game-winners in shootout wins over Calgary and Chicago." Click here for the full feature story. ... The Ivy League's two players in the Super Bowl are suddenly on sportswriters' radar. Here's what a Sports Illustrated writer said in his online column: "Don't know much about Kacyvenski and Morey? I didn't either until recent weeks, and I cover the NFL for a living. But their stories, frankly, are what makes Super Bowl week, with its pack-journalism reality, a bit more bearable." ... Bill Reynolds of the Providence Journal is arguably the best writer to regularly cover the Ivy League and he has a piece today about fellow Brown grad Sean Morey's circuitous route to the Super Bowl. ... A former Harvard tight end who left Cambridge to walk on for the University of Minnesota basketball team but plans to graduate from Harvard? Check out his interesting story here. There's a little more detail about his football career here and a capsule bio here. ... Not much in the way of updates today.I'm off to cover the New Hampshire indoor high school track championships at Leverone Field House for a paper from across the state. The things I won't do to eat. ;-)
Feb. 3 2:45 p.m. I missed this one the first time around. His local paper has a feature story about 6-foot-5, 250-pound offensive lineman Evan Nogay of Wellsburg, W.Va., "signing" with Dartmouth. ... Hmm. The Daily D reports that the school's "sorority girls" favor the Steelers in the Super Bowl. How come I never had assignments like that when I worked for the newspaper?
2:15 p.m. Ya gotta love the "D-Plan." While sophomores at Yale and Harvard are slogging through a gray New England winter, nine members of the Dartmouth football team are studying in New Zealand and enjoying 80-degree temperatures. They are: tailback Chad Gaudet, linebackers Mike Whitticom and Ryan Mahoney, offensive linemen Tim Wheeler, Jarden Dowdakin and Ben Goeke, tight end Mark Brogna and defensive backs Jason Reid and John Pircon. Through the wonders of email, defensive coordinator Chris Wilkerson learned from Mahoney that the group has been lifting, running and hiking together and that the training facilities are better than expected. Mahoney also told Wilkerson about going on a 35-mile hike. (Suddenly those double sessons don't seem so daunting ;-) ... Mahoney reported that at least some of the players went "canyon swinging," a concession adventure that features a 180-foot free fall -- the longest in the world according to the venue's web site -- and a smooth swing in the canyon.
Feb. 3 12:30 p.m. I'm just back from campus with some construction pictures -- but not of construction (or demolition) on Memorial Field. As it turns out, coach Buddy Teevens was a little optimistic about the schedule for work on the visiting stands. It will indeed start in February, as he said earlier, but probably not for another couple of weeks or so. Among the other things I learned was that, contrary to earlier reports, there is a chance -- that's a chance -- the reconfigured visiting stands will be available by the Homecoming game against Harvard on Oct. 28. (And that it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that those stands will be usable even earlier.) When the new varsity house project was first announced there was talk of completely replacing the visiting stands with a new set of stands that was smaller but steeper. The decision to instead to cut down the current stands has opened up the possibility that they can be functional at some point this fall. If they are not usable, a second set of temporary end zone bleachers may be installed. More in a bit.
6:55 a.m. I'll be up on campus with my camera this morning and will post some pictures of the athletic facility construction later in the day. ... The whirlwind news about recruiting has slowed as quickly as it picked up. I believe there's one more committed player I haven't yet been able to uncover (the coaches are not allowed to comment on recruits at this point) and a running back on the fence if this news report is correct. ... There's a terrific story about Los Angeles Avengers quarterback Brian Mann '02 in the Philadelphia Inquirer with more information on his non-speaking roles in two movies and a commercial. Turns out Brian had to use the Penn locker room at Franklin Field during filming of the second movie and he found that kind of ironic. ... There are contrasting opinions about how solid Mann's grasp is on the starting role in LA. One story has this to say: "Last week was supposed to be part of an ongoing QB controversy in Los Angeles between Mann ... and QB Ryan Van Dyke, but Mann solidified his role as the starter, playing the entire second half and orchestrating a win." But the LA Times quotes coach Ed Hodgkiss this way: ""It's going to be pretty much the same deal," Hodgkiss said. "I'm going to start Brian Mann and if he plays well he could finish the game. If I feel that it would be good for him to sit down and take a breath like he did in the first game, we may do that again too. I'm just trying to keep it open because when I do name a guy he will be the guy. We will ride him for better or worse." ... Ice hockey's Lee Stempniak '05 is proving to be the man of the minute for the St. Louis Blues as this "lede" from a News-Democrat story makes clear: "Rookie Lee Stempniak is becoming the king of shootouts for the St. Louis Blues. As the Blues' final shooter, he scored his second straight home shootout game-winner Thursday in a 6-5 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks." ... No team in the NFL has been as Ivy friendly as the Tampa Bay Bucs, who drafted not one by two Ivy League tight ends (Casey Cramer and Yale's Nate Lawrie) a couple of years ago. Now the Bucs have Brown wide receiver Chas Gessner and Columbia safety Steve Cargile on their roster. ... The Brown Daily Herald issues forth on former Bear wide receiver Sean Morey and former Brown QB and coach Mark Whipple going to the Super Bowl. ... Finally, a Columbia Spectator story about freshmen making the transition to college athletics opens with a look at one of the Lions' first-year football players.
Feb. 2 12:35 p.m. The stories on Harvard grad and Seattle Seahawk Isaiah Kacyvenski keep piling up. There are quite a few out there and this one from the Philadelphia Inquirer is one of the best. Thanks to a subscriber for sharing the link.
11 a.m. The Q&A with Casey Cramer has now been posted on the Green Alert main page. ... Dartmouth recruit Jordan Kling has been chosen for the Illinois East-West Shrine Game set for July 22 in Peoria. Although he was selected as a defensive back, he could also see a few snaps at quarterback. The 6-foot-2, 190-pound Kling passed for 2,259 yards and ran for almost 1,000 last season for his Tuscola team. ... Now I better put Green Alert aside and get back to working on a few writing projects that actually put food on the table -- or my wife's gonna boot me out into the cold. ;-)
8:45 a.m. Speedy wide receiver Niles Murphy picked Dartmouth over Princeton, Penn, Wake Forest and several other schools according to this story. ... Dartmouth-bound quarterback Alex Jenny was officially chosen for the Massachusetts Shriners Classic game. ... Dartmouth applications jumped 10 percent to almost 14,000 according to a story in today's Daily Dartmouth.
8:20 I'll have a quick Q&A with Carolina Panthers fullback Casey Cramer on the Green Alert main site later today. True story: Casey and I played phone tag yesterday before we caught up with each other. He left a message on our answering machine and when my 11-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter heard the message, they made me pledge never, ever to erase it. Topping that off, when Casey called me back last night, I was helping my son with his homework in our "project" room off of the kitchen. I answered the phone and asked Casey to hold while I ran upstairs to the peace and quiet of my office. My son was supposed to hang up the phone but shortly after picking up the extension, I heard breathing on the other end of the line. I know I smiled when I told my son, "Say hi to Casey." Although I know he was nervous, he had a quick conversation with Casey, who told him to make sure he did his homework. I'm here to tell you there's one very excited sixth-grader at Hanover's Richmond School who is telling every friend he sees today that he talked with a "real, live, NFL player last night on the phone."
I wrote a story for the newspaper last spring about Dartmouth graduates using their final year of eligibility as grad students at other schools. I'll be honest. I've been writing about college sports for 20 years and the rule allowing student-athletes who sit out a year/season for (medical) redshirt reasons to finish up at other schools caught me by surprise. For the story I talked with a soccer player who finished up as a grad student elsewhere, Big Green track athletes who went on to Stanford, Northwestern and Villanova (among others) and a skier who won a national championship at Denver after graduating from Dartmouth. I never thought it would happen in football, but sure enough, a quarterback from Columbia signed a letter of intent to play football next fall at Missouri-Rolla as a grad student. Very strange.
7:45 a.m. The recruiting list on the Green Alert main site has been updated to 28 names. Four more names were added today with confirmation that they are headed to Hanover: Alex Stonehouse, a 6-foot-2, 290-pound offensive lineman from West Allis, Wisc., who was initially interested in Northwestern; Robert Mitchelson, a 5-10, 190 running back from Oklahoma City's Heritage Hall who has run a 10.76 in the 100; Marlon Alebiosu, a 6-1, 190 defensive end from King & Low-Heywood Thomas School (KLHT) Stamford, Conn., who was a Class C NEPSAC All-Star along with future teammate Zach O'Donnell, and Bo Hurley, a 6-6, 295 offensive lineman from Schertz, Texas.
Feb. 1 10 p.m. Thought I'd check to see what's popping on the computer at halftime of the Duke-BC basketball game. There's a mention of Texas running back Matt Dornak "signing" with Dartmouth, as reported earlier on Green Alert. Be sure to check back tomorrow when there may be a few more commitments and links. Also: Look for a surprise story on the regular Green Alert page. Back to the game ...
6:15 p.m. Too bad Dartmouth is locked into the opener at Colgate next Sept. 16. If not for that, the Big Green could be playing in Moscow that day. (Moscow, Idaho, that is.) From a web site for coaches: "ATTENTION 1-AA TEAMS LOOKING TO PLAY AN AWAY GAME AGAINST A 1-A OPPONENT: The University of Idaho (1A, WAC) is looking for a 1AA Team to play in Moscow, ID, on Saturday, September 16, 2006. They will pay a negotiable fee between $100,000 and $150,000."
A few in-house links tonight. A writer from The D says apathy by his classmates took the fun out of attending athletic events to the extent that he doesn't go anymore. ... The D reports the student assembly passed a resolution to establish a Club Sports Commission to take a good, hard look at how the club sports program is run. ... In addition to the Winter Olympics, Dartmouth will be well-represented at the Torino Paralympics March 10-19.
1:45 p.m. For more on Niles Murphy, click here. As I suspected, he is the brother of former Dartmouth basketball-football player Nick Murphy. The 6-footer's numbers on the season: 34 catches for 792 yards and 10 TDs before appearing in the SCISAA Shrine Bowl.
1:10 p.m. Mark down one more verbal commitment, this one from South Carolina's Niles Murphy, a speedy wide receiver and kick returner according to this Q&A published prior to his basketball season. For a picture of Murphy in action, click here. (Gotta love those quick guys who wear No. 1.) For a head and shoulders shot, click here. Niles also played free safety on defense. This "cached" story says he had 10 touchdowns and more than 500 receiving yards through 10 games. It reports: "Murphy has the potential of firing up the Dolphins on special teams. He had a 73-yard touchdown on a kick return against Colleton Prep. But most teams have chosen to keep the ball out of his hands." ... No word if Murphy is related to Nick Murphy '02, a wide receiver (who came to Dartmouth for basketball) also from Hilton Head and Hilton Head Prep, but it wouldn't be a surprise if he were.
11:30 a.m. Terrific news out of North Carolina! Defensive lineman Derham Cato '05 learned yesterday that he has been picked up by the Frankfurt Galaxy of NFL Europe. The 6-foot-4, 290-pound Cato won Dartmouth's John Manley Award as a senior for his work in the weight room. He had 44 tackles including four for a loss in his final season and should have won All-Ivy recognition. I remember a couple of years back talking with a coach who said Derham was the kind of kid who, with a redshirt season to get bigger and stronger, would have had a shot at pro football. He got his first shot last spring playing Arena2 ball and, after working hard and sticking with it, has earned a chance to impress NFL scouts overseas. ... The note below about a possible recruit from wonderfully named Muleshoe, Texas, elicited an email from a subscriber who pointed out that the Big Green has already had one pretty fair player from the West Texas town. That would be Joe Adams '70, an All- Ivy defensive back and honorable-mention All-American in 1969. ... And finally this: The Amazon.com Honor Page "tip jar" above is working again. Apparently I broke the link a few weeks back and never noticed because, well, because it's never been particularly active anyway. I must admit I feel a little guilty putting it up there, but that guilt is offset by the fact that I put way too much time into digging this stuff up. ;-)
9:30 a.m. Heading to Dartmouth according to a family source is Florida's Pete Pidermann of Miami's Belen Jesuit, a 5-foot-11, 173-pound defensive back who was named to the Florida Class 3A All-State first team. Pidermann played in the Nike Broward-Dade All-Star game and was named to the Miami Herald All-County team. He ran for 1,064 yards this year with 14 touchdowns. Defensively he picked off three passes. He also competes in the hurdles, triple jump and long jump in track. ...The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that Pine-Richland linebacker Phil McKeating has made a verbal commitment to play for the Big Green. McKeating transferred to the school from Pittsburgh's Central Catholic. ... According to the Clovis, N.M., newspaper, Dartmouth is still in the hunt for a running back-linebacker named Brady Black of Muleshoe, Texas. Black is 6-foot, 205 pounds and on the Class 3A all-state first team as a linebacker and second team as a running back. ... Muleshoe, by the way, was a favorite reference point for former Dartmouth athletic director Dick Jaeger. Invariably, whenever he spoke about how Dartmouth recruited far and wide, Dick would bring up Muleshoe. ... Also of note today, will Steelers coach Bill Cowher be watching the Princeton women's basketball team try to keep pace with Dartmouth atop the Ivy League standings this weekend? Uh, probably not. ;-) But don't completely rule out the idea of him showing up when the Tigers are at the Berry Center on Feb. 24. ... For another accounting of Seahawk linebacker (and Harvard grad) Isaiah Kacyvenski and his amazing life story, click here. ... And finally, a disturbing story from the Scripps Howard News Service about a possible outcome of football players becoming bigger and bigger. Here's the "lede": "The amazing athletes of the National Football League -- bigger and stronger than ever before -- are dying young at a rate experts find alarming, and many of the players are succumbing to ailments typically related to weight."
The full JANUARY BLOG has been archived here.
To receive a PDF file with 280 pages of Green Alert stories detailing the 2005 season, send an email to bruce.b.wood@psualum.com
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