One former Dartmouth player's grad transfer season is slated to begin Nov. 7 against Arizona State, and another will have to wait until spring to get on the field.
From the USC preseason notes (italics are mine):
Four walk-ons also are available: senior graduate transfer safety Micah Croom from Dartmouth, soph safety Jordan McMillan (6 tac in 2019), junior cornerback Jack Drake and true freshman safety Tommy Maurice (Brookfield Central High in Brookfield, Wisc.).
Here's the Dartmouth piece of Croom's bio in the USC media guide:
The Trojans are slated to open Nov. 7 at home against Arizona State.
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Former Dartmouth defensive lineman TJ Simpson won't make his grad transfer debut until Feb. 27 when Indiana State travels to Southern Illinois. Find Simpson's Indiana State bio HERE.
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Speaking of spring football, the Ohio Valley Conference has announced its season will be played on Sundays, except for the Easter weekend game will be on Saturday. The OVC kicks off action on Feb. 21 and games will run through April 11
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From a Yale Daily News story headlined, Yale permits sport-specific training with start of Phase II (LINK):
As Yalies enter their second full month of classes, student-athletes across all sports began Phase II of the Ivy League’s three-phase plan for the resumption of athletic activities on Wednesday.
Phase II allows teams to engage in a maximum of two hours per day of weight training, conditioning and sport-specific training, as opposed to the one hour a day of strength and conditioning allowed during Phase I. Phase II policies require student-athletes to wear masks during practice and all participants to social distance during activities — although spotting is allowed.
For the first time this year, in-person team meetings of up to 10 people will also be permitted as long as student-athletes and coaches follow social distancing protocols.
And this:
At some other Ancient Eight schools, like Dartmouth, there exists a possibility that certain sports will enter into Phase III before others, as the Big Green’s Senior Associate Athletic Director Ian Connole told The Dartmouth last month. Cannoli explained that naturally distanced sports like tennis and cross country could theoretically progress faster to Phase III.
And:
The current Yale policy bans all school-sponsored events that exceed 10 participants unless the school or department health and safety leader approves an application. In Cambridge, Harvard Athletics spokesperson Timothy J. Williamson told The Crimson he believes Harvard is unlikely to move to Phase III because of the school’s group guidelines.
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Why a photo of the Big Green's career record-holder for 3-point shooting percentage? Dartmouth tried to entice his son, Connor, to follow his dad to Hanover but instead the four-star quarterback ended up at Missouri, where he has been named the starter heading into this weekend's game against LSU. Len is featured in the lede of a story about Connor in The Athletic. (LINK)
While Dartmouth missed out on the prized QB, so did Princeton and Yale, which also offered him.
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Ted Leland began his distinguished career as an athletic director at Dartmouth. That is somehow overlooked in a DI Ticker note about how Leland would address the pandemic if he were still heading up an athletic department. From the note (LINK):
Former Stanford/Pacific AD Leland in a webinar with Sparta Science focused on the balance between enabling employees and implementing long-lasting solutions explains that when facing a crisis such as the current pandemic as an AD, you “would hope you have been visible around the department. There’s nothing worse than trying to handle a crisis when you’re involving people you don’t know and don’t know you. I tried to spend one day a week just walking around the department with no meetings.” He goes on to discuss the importance of taking responsibility for the decisions rather than conveying they were thrust upon you by the president or the board. “Even if you don’t agree with it 1000%, you’ve got to own the decision. Otherwise, the people that are affected by your decision will find out who made the decision and they’ll go to that person. And you want them to go to you. … And you also need an appellate to be able to change a decision if you believe it needs to be changed.”
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A Big Green skier named Chelsea Moore writes in The Dartmouth under the headline Hanover's Double Standard, Hanover High students shouldn’t get a free pass on COVID-19 regulations that either rules regarding Big Green student-athletes (and students in general) are too strict, or rules regarding Hanover High School students are too lax. (LINK)
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EXTRA POINT
I've seen this sign in North Haverhill, N.H., many times before, but yesterday was the first time I noticed the familiar sweep of the front of the silhouette's hair. It is totally deserving of something like The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest.
