Monday, February 20, 2006
11:15 a.m. Defensive tackle recruit Kyle Brong of Lehighton, Pa., won the 2006 Scholar-Athlete Award presented by National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame Lehigh Valley Chapter Sunday night. There's a full story here.
9 a.m. The first of what I hope will be a series of "10 Questions" email interviews with this year's recruits is up on the main Green Alert site. This edition is with quarterback/artist Max Heiges of Novato High School in California's Bay Area.
8:15 a.m. I recently freelanced a story about the upgrading of Dartmouth athletic facilities for the Big Green Sports News. Bob Ceplikas of the college's athletic department told me: "When people visit campus this fall they will have a sense of tremendous change and progress. They will see a completed Alumni Gym project, a completed field and track, a varsity house rising out of the ground and construction on the soccer facility." The whole story can be found in the newsletter, available as a PDF file here. ... When I was working at the newspaper we would always check when new Dartmouth coaches were hired to see if they had kids who would boost the local high school athletic teams. Former basketball coach Dave Faucher had two sons who starred on the hardwood at Lebanon and later at Middlebury College and his youngest is now starting for Lebanon. Former football coach John Lyons' daughters were terrific athletes at Hartford High School and his youngest has been invited to national-caliber camps for ice hockey. Hockey coach Bob Gaudet has one son starring on the ice at Dartmouth and another who graduated last year and will be skating for his dad next winter. Basketball coach Terry Dunn's son is playing basketball in a prep school in Pennsylvania while Coach Buddy Teevens' son is at a Connecticut prep school. Yesterday I took the kids to Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester for the New Hampshire Class I girls basketball quarterfinals and one of the starters for a very good Hanover team in a commanding win was Cassie Hodgson, daughter of tight ends coach Mike Hodgson. She had six points for the deep and talented team. Word is she's even better on the softball field. ... Brian Mann's first year as starter for the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena Football League has been a mixed bag, but wide receiver Kevin Ingram sounds confident of the former Dartmouth star. In this story, he said: “He improved during camp this season, and every game he gets better and better, we as a team need to protect him which will help him become more comfortable.” According to the author of the story, "In the AFL, a high powered offense is a must and Brian Mann continues to grow as the Avengers quarterback."
Sunday, February 19, 2006
5:45 p.m. Former Dartmouth standout Brian Mann's grip on the starting quarterback position with the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena League loosened a little more after Saturday's 65-46 loss to the Chicago Rush. (Some name for a team in the pass-dominated Arena League, huh?) Mann completed 21-of-37 passes for 274 yards and four touchdowns but he also threw two interceptions in the first quarter. He was pulled in the fourth quarter in favor of newly activated rookie Sonny Cumbie. Here's what coach Ed Hodgkiss had to say in the aftermath of the game according to the Los Angeles Times:
"Do I see a light at the end of the tunnel? Yes, because we'll get some [injured players] back next week … but we have to get our quarterbacks playing better, whoever that may be.
7:45 a.m. It's a quiet morning in the Ivy League football world. I've gotta run but be sure to check back Monday for the first installment of a new Green Alert feature that will be announced here and posted on the regular web site. ... In the meantime, pencil in June 17 for the annual Dartmouth football golf tournament at Hanover Country Club. I met a number of you at the event last spring and look forward to saying hi (but not golfing) this spring.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Former Gridder is Golden
8:15 a.m. Thanks to Tony Lane for sharing this tidbit. Ray Rochester, the tantalizing 6-foot-2, 210-pound running back who chose not to play football last fall, won the super heavyweight division championship at the Vermont Golden Gloves Boxing Tournament before a sellout crowd in Burlington. According to the Burlington Free Press story, Rochester "hammered Burlington's Shane Kimber to claim the super heavyweight title." Rochester came to Dartmouth with mind-boggling offensive statistics but never had the impact that had been widely anticipated. Slowed by injury before his freshman year, he began his career as a linebacker on the junior varsity. Switched to tailback the next season, he show hints of tremendous promise but was hurt late in the season and found himself behind Chad Gaudet on the depth chart coming out of spring ball last year. ... Dartmouth's three members of the Canadian women's ice hockey team will be playing in the gold medal game at Torino. For more on that and the Green's other Olympians, click here. ... And finally, kudos to the Dartmouth men's basketball team for an exciting win over Yale last night at Leede Arena. I was covering the game for both the wire service and Basketball-U and the win certainly made for a nice report.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Lyons Heading Back to NFL Europe
3:30 p.m. Former Dartmouth coach John Lyons is heading back to Germany to coach the Cologne Centurions' defense once again. Lyons' return to NFL Europe for a second season was no sure thing after Cologne head coach Peter Vaas took an assistant's job at Notre Dame and Lyons assumed coaching and adminstrative responsibilities at Kimball Union Academy. But word has reached Green Alert that somehow, some way, it all worked out at the last moment, KUA generously gave him the green light and Lyons is packing his bags.
12:20 p.m. Hey alums! Do you have a vintage Dartmouth Winter Carnival poster tacked up somewhere in the attic? You could be sitting on a little cold cash. According to this story out of Philadelphia, a 1947 Dartmouth Winter Carnvial poster sold at auction recently for $5,290. ... Penn, which has had tremendous stability on its coaching staff under Al Bagnoli, lost several assistants this offseason. Heading to the Quakers as offensive coordinator according to today's Daily Pennsylvanian is Shawn Halloran, the former Boston College quarterback who had been head coach at Division III Franklin and Marshall. ... The latest on Brian Mann and his role as starting QB for the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena League from the Los Angeles Times: "There's no doubt that we're struggling offensively," (Coach Ed) Hodgkiss said. "But Brian has gotten a little better each week and hopefully he and the rest of the team continue to improve." ... Today's Daily Dartmouth reports that all sophomores will be able to be housed on campus next fall. ... According to The D:
"This fall, completed residence hall construction will allow the Office of Residential Life to guarantee housing for all sophomores for the first time since at least the expansion of the student body during co-education. Previously, students with high housing lottery numbers were forced to fend for themselves when it came to housing. Typically, about 200 students were placed on a waitlist for housing, while 500 lived off campus."
The Brown Daily Herald has a story about sophomore Kai Brown playing football and competing in track. ... Crazy weather up here on Moose Mountain this morning. It was 44 degrees when I walked the kids out to the school bus. A couple of hours ago, it got very dark, thunder and lighting started and the wind began to howl. It's supposed to get down to 10-below tomorrow night and my suspicion is the fronts are colliding. (I'm no meteorologist of course, but I did go to Penn State, which has the best meterology program in the country ;-) ... Updates on the Blog may be a little skimpier than usual over the next two-plus weeks because all of a sudden deadlines are looming for a variety of writing projects I'm doing. I'm also trying to finish up one multimedia project, so wish me luck!
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Five Letters in Kling
4 p.m. Apologies for the time the new Blog is taking to load and quit. Thinking it might be something I did, I pulled the pictures off the site to try to speed it up -- only to learn that Blogger was having issues. Argh! Hopefully everything will be back to normal before long. ... For updates on how Dartmouth athletes are faring at the Winter Olympics, click here.
8:15 a.m. Incoming recruit Jordan Kling of Tuscola, Ill., will letter in five sports this year according to a story in the Herald & Review. (8:30 a.m. update: suddenly the link isn't working. Hopefully it will be back up.) (Just dug up a new link that works fine.) With his high school allowing athletes to compete in two sports in the same season for the first time this year, he played golf in addition to football in the fall. He's playing basketball in the winter and will do baseball as well as track and field in the spring. Oh, and he'll cap his winter as one of 64 athletes from "Class A" taking part in the state dunk competition! ... This reference in the Southern Mississippi school newspaper about the 1951 Dartmouth-Princeton football game sent me Googling away. Click here to read about a study of selective group perception entitled, They Saw a Game, based on the '51 Dartmouth-Princeton football game where the Princeton quarterback broke his nose and suffered a concussion and the Dartmouth quarterback broke his leg. (Princeton won, 13-0.) Interesting stuff. ... Gale Sayers coming to Dartmouth? Uh, no. But according to this story, incoming women's hockey player Sarah Parsons has a little of the Kansas Comet in her according to Olympic coach Ben Smith. Smith, by the way, spent one forgettable year as the Dartmouth men's coach, suffering through a 1-24-3 season in 1990-91. Suffice it to say he's had a lot more success in the Olympic arena than in Thompson Arena. ... Former Dartmouth left-hander Mike Remlinger will have a new pitching coach this spring as he tries to resurrect his big league career with the Atlanta Braves at age 40.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
I-AA QB Recruits Rated
11 a.m. The thing about Division I-AA is you have to take recruiting information where you can get it. I can't vouch for the folks at showingblitz.com but they are rating what they consider the top 25 I-AA recruits at each position, starting with the incoming quarterback class. They list Dartmouth recruit Max Heiges as the No. 14 quarterback in the class. (Yale's Matt Kelleher is their top-ranked quarterback and Princeton's Dan Kopolovich is No. 16.) Three Ivy League recruits are listed in the running back class with a Yale recruit at 15, a Cornell recruit at 24 and a Columbia recruit receiving honorable mention.
8:30 We told you last week about former tight end Joe Killefer being called up to rugby's U.S. Sevens national team. The Daily Dartmouth has a story today about Killefer '06 and his whirlwind debut with the squad. The Dartmouth reports that Killefer got a phone call from the U.S. coach saying he had been promoted to the national team at 10 p.m., and was on a flight to Los Angeles to play with the team at 7 the next morning.
8 a.m. The Arena League's Los Angeles Avengers yesterday released Alex Van Dyke, who had been competing with Dartmouth grad Brian Mann for the starting quarterback position. While Brian has started two of the team's first three games and has taken the majority of the snaps, the 1-2 Avengers are last in the league in scoring and Mann could still be in a fight for his job. Said coach Ed Hodgkiss of the move: "We haven't been productive on offense and this is the first of several moves that we will make until we find a mix that works." ... Not all accomplished football players at Dartmouth are on the field. I recently wrote a story on Rob Kerris, a thrower on the track team who captained a small-school powerhouse in Pennsylvania. A second-team, all-state selection, Rob told me he flirted with the idea of giving outside linebacker a shot at Dartmouth but a bad knee kept him from getting serious about it. Although his high school coach told football recruiters he wanted to do track in college, Division II schools tried to recruit him and Penn gave him a look. When Dartmouth tried to recruit another player from his high school, the coach was told they already had a pretty good player from the school in Hanover. ... Wondering how all those Dartmouth athletes are doing at the Winter Olympics? Here we go: Gillian Apps '06 had three goals in Canada's 8-1 women's hockey win over Sweden yesterday. Teammate Katie Weatherston tallied once while Cherie Piper '06 had three assists. . ... Incoming freshman Sarah Parsons had two goals and an assist in the U.S. hockey victory over Finland. ... Alpine skier Scott Macartney '01 was 16th in the men's combined. ... Carl Swenson '92 was the top U.S. skier when he finished 40th in the men's 30K pursuit. ... More updates on the Olympians as they become available. Just found this story in The D that has a little more information.
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