I've often wondered if Dartmouth teams should recruit more players from north of the border. Seriously, if Hanover's location is a concern for some high school athletes, wouldn't it be nice for coaches on the recruiting trail to be able to tell a kid, "Come south for college?"
That thought came to mind with news shared by a loyal BGA reader with eagle eyes that the Big Green has received a commitment from Zachary Lytle, a 6-foot-5, 230-ish defensive end from Winnipeg:
Committed!🌲
— Zachary Lytle 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@zlytle03) October 27, 2020
Find Zachary Lytle's Hudl highlights HERE.
Dartmouth's newest commitment gets a mention in a story about his father, Dean, a former Notre Dame player who played professionally in the World Football League, the Canadian Football League and in Arena Football. (LINK)
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The recruiting class as we (think) we know it. Please share corrections and additions:
• Ejike Adele, 6-2, 245, DE, Westminster School/Atlanta Ga.
• John Ballowe, 6-2, 215, LB, Collegiate School/Richmond, Va.
• James Coslet, 6-3, 255, OL/DL, Watchung Hills/Watchung, N.J.
• Cayman Duncan, 6-6, 295, OL, Kinkaid School/Houston
• Remington Gall, 6-4, 185, WR, Avon/Avon, Ind.
• Alex Geraci, 6-4, 215, TE/DE, Don Bosco/Cornwall, N.Y.
• Davis Golick, 6-2, 200, P, Woodward Academy/College Park, Ga.
• Sean Harmon, 6-5, 225, TE, Bishop Blanchet/Seattle
• Zachary Lytle, 6-5, 230, DE, St. Paul’s/Winnipeg, MB
• Jackson Proctor, 6-2, 195, QB, Kent HS/Kentwood, Wash.
• Painter Richards-Baker, 6-2, 170, ATH, Christ SchoolArden, N.C.
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The local Valley News has a column written by members of the college's defunct swimming and diving teams that asks the question: What did Dartmouth gain by cutting 5 teams? From the story (LINK):
. . . (Athletic Director Harry) Sheehy was given a directive by Dartmouth leadership to reduce the number of recruited athletes by 10%, to allow for greater “admissions flexibility.” Instead of trimming spots across all sports, which for many teams would have meant a reduction of just one or two recruits, Sheehy made the decision to create a disparate impact by concentrating the cuts in the five eliminated programs.
But the numbers don’t add up. A 10% reduction from the recruiting class of 2023 would have meant 22 athletes. Does recouping 22 non-athletic admissions spots really justify the elimination of five entire varsity teams?
A story in today's Harvard Crimson notes they've taken a different approach in Cambridge (LINK):
While universities across the country — including peer schools such as Dartmouth and Stanford — have recently axed a handful of athletics programs to improve their balance sheets, (Athletic Director Erin) McDermott said Harvard has not considered eliminating any of its 42 varsity teams — the most of any university in the country.
And this:
McDermott said two major sources of revenue the Athletics Department lost include the Harvard-Yale football game — which Harvard was scheduled to host next month — as well as the Boston Calling Music Festival, which takes place at the athletics complex every spring. As a result, McDermott said, a large part of her day-to-day job over the past four months has consisted of schmoozing potential donors virtually and soliciting their contributions.
Green Alert Take: Schmoozing, huh? ;-)
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An Orlando Sentinel column offers a few more thoughts on Bethune-Cookman eliminating intercollegiate competition for the rest of the school year. From the story (LINK):
This might be one of the few times in the history of college athletics where it’s beneficial not to be in the Power 5. If you could remove the financial ramifications, the network TV obligations, the political pressure and the keep-up-with-the-Joneses competition among the major conferences, I’d be willing to bet that most Power 5 athletics directors would have canceled the season long ago rather than endure the chaos and turmoil of trying to play college football during a raging pandemic.
And . . .
“There are institutions out there that might be leveraged to the point where they have no choice but to play (football),” Bethune-Cookman athletics director Lynn Thompson told me Tuesday.
“I thank God we are at an institution where this decision for us was predicated on health and safety first and foremost and not on finances. … We feel very good about our decision based upon comments from some of our colleagues across the nation who are saying to us, ‘Man, I wish we could make the same decision right now.’ "
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Pandemic or no, the powerhouse Colonial Athletic Association has announced six-game spring schedules for its football teams. (LINK)
Of (somewhat) local interest:
University of New Hampshire football schedule
March 6 – Albany
March 20 – Delaware
March 27 – at Villanova
April 3 – at Rhode Island
April 10 – Stony Brook
April 17 – at Maine
Green Alert Take: Good luck with those March games in Durham and make sure the plows are all gassed up.
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Following up on a recent story questioning the number of students booted from campus for violating COVID protocols, The Dartmouth has a story headlined, Here Today and Gone Tomorrow: Students React to Classmates Being Sent Home. Some of the story sounds a little, uh, Orwellian. (LINK)
From the story:
As rumors abound and friends disappear, ’24s are responding in a variety of ways to the growing numbers of students removed from campus.
In a matter of hours, Sophie Lachenauer ’24 said she witnessed her dorm go from around 30 residents to only 20 and has since felt a significant impact on her dorm’s dynamic.
And Anjali Dhar ’24 told the paper:
“I have friends whose whole floors have been essentially wiped out over a weekend. Any friend groups that they might have are torn apart by getting sent home, so (my friends) are kind of stranded in a way. It's easier to make friends here, but when your whole floor goes home and you're still here, you end up alone.”
And . . .
In normal times, college students everywhere view the weekend as a break following a stressful week. Dartmouth students now approach Friday and Saturday nights with uncertainty and unease. Dhar mentioned that her floor practically celebrates if they’ve all managed to still be on campus by the end of the weekend.
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The Dartmouth has another piece headlined Marriage Story: Dartmouth Edition. From the story (LINK):
Katie Gayman ’01 met her future husband during her freshman fall. “We both reported early for preseason. I was a soccer player and he was playing football. There was nobody else in our dorm. He was the first person I met at Dartmouth,” she said.
Read the story up and down and you won't find out who that player is. But if you are curious, you've come to the right place.
The former football player in question is Caleb Moore '01, captain of the 2000 team, a third-team All-American offensive guard, a two-time, first-team All-Ivy League selection, Bob Blackman winner as Dartmouth MVP and an Academic All-Ivy and Academic All-District selection.
Big Green wide receivers coach David Shula '81, who met wife Leslie '81 at Dartmouth, is quoted in the story regarding how the D-Plan can make a relationship at the college challenging:
"Now it’s much easier to stay connected with social media and cell phones. Back then we were writing letters and calling."
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EXTRA POINT
Last night Mrs. BGA and I had a FaceTime call with That Certain Dartmouth '14 in Gunnison, Colo. As wonderful as it was talking with her and seeing her smiling face it's way too easy to take the technology that made the call possible for granted. I'll always remember grabbing Popular Science off the magazine rack at the school library when I was a kid and reading about how video phone calls were just around the corner, as this screen grab from the 1965 "The Telephone Story" poster suggested:
FaceTime etc., took longer to come about than Popular Science predicted, of course. Now I wonder, can the flying cars I used to read about in Popular Mechanics be far behind?
