Many Happy Returns?

Information on which members of the Dartmouth football class of 2021 will be returning next fall has been hard to come by but per a story in today's issue of The Dartmouth quarterback Derek Kyler named five teammates who are planning to join him in the fall and another who is still weighing his options. In addition to Kyler those named in the story as coming back are offensive lineman Donald Carty, linebacker Tanner Cross, second-team All-Ivy League center Evan Hecimovich, linebacker Thomas Hennessy and honorable-mention All-Ivy safety Niko Memigas. The story reports that corner Darren Stanley, may join his teammates in returning.

The story in The D Ivy League grants seniors eligibility extensions, breaking with precedent and previous votes. It conflates the extra year of eligibility with the one-time/one-year waiver for eligibility as graduate students and doesn't indicate which football players in the Class of 2021 are planning to graduate this spring and which will attempt to return as graduate students. Kyler, for one, was planning to return as an undergrad but is considering the graduate option. From the story:

(Competing in graduate school) is brand new to us because we didn't know this was an option, so I definitely have to talk it over with my family a bit,” Kyler said, noting that he is still planning on playing as a fifth-year undergraduate for now. “... This is kind of unique, where we could get into Tuck, which is obviously one of the best business (graduate) schools in the country.”

Not every Dartmouth student-athlete has the option that Kyler has. From the story:

Men’s basketball forward Chris Knight ’21, who will play at Loyola University Chicago next year after recovering from an Achilles tear, criticized the timing of the decision and said he and his teammates did not believe they had enough time to apply to graduate programs at Dartmouth. Knight said he would have considered the Master of Arts and Liberal Studies program, but the application deadline for summer and fall 2021 enrollment passed on Monday.

“They could have made the decision a lot earlier, and they chose not to,” Knight said. “… I don't know how many people this rule will actually benefit just because of timing, but I appreciate them for at least making the attempt to make up for the lack of time (and) lack of care that they were giving us.” 

A men's hockey forward and sprinter headed to UMass and Duke respectively, "said that if the Ivy League’s decision had come earlier, they would have considered staying at Dartmouth if they were accepted into a graduate program."

And more from the story . . .

(F)or senior athletes considering competing as graduate students, financial barriers may prevent them from applying to Dartmouth’s graduate programs, which do not offer the same level of “need-based” financial aid as the undergraduate program, according to Knight. Knight said that since the Ivy League does not offer athletic scholarships, he would have had to apply for outside scholarships to stay at Dartmouth. Spearman noted that the athletic scholarships offered by other Division I schools are often more attractive to graduate transfers.

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The Wall Street Journal chimes in with a story headlined, The Ivy League Is Still on the Sidelines. Wealthy Alumni Are Not Happy. The story (behind a paywall) starts this way (LINK):

Before Joe Tsai co-founded Alibaba Group Holding Ltd . , made billions and bought the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, he played lacrosse at Yale in the 1980s. His devotion to the sport grew along with his net worth, and recently he brought the two together in the form of an unusual offer. 

Tsai offered to pay several million dollars for the Ivy League to build a sequestered “bubble” that would allow its men’s and women’s lacrosse teams to compete again during the pandemic. Ivy League conference presidents rebuffed the proposal almost immediately, conference executive director Robin Harris said.

And this . . .

The Ivy League was the first conference to call off athletic competition back in March 2020. Nearly one year later, the conference is still on the sidelines with no clear plans to restart. 

The extended pause that was once seen as prudent is now a point of contention. 

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Sportsnet has a lengthy story about a former Dartmouth softball player making history under the headline, How Bianca Smith became the first Black woman to coach pro baseball. (LINK)

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Headline in The Dartmouth : Applications for Class of 2025 spike 33% from last year. (LINK)

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And finally, what has Winter Carnival been like in the pandemic era? Find a story HERE.

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EXTRA POINT
Today – a correction to yesterday's BGA Daily, thanks to Mrs. BGA, a bit of an idiot savant when it comes to these things.

Monday's BGA Daily began this way: "It was one year ago today that the Dartmouth women's lacrosse team opened its season . . ."

Mrs. BGA points out that because 2020 was a Leap Year that line should have started, "It was 366 days ago that the Dartmouth women's lacrosse team opened its season . . ."

For what it's worth, the next time you see Mrs. BGA, ask her the order of colors in her crayon box when she was a kid. Or the "shapes" she associates with each day of the week.

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Here's hoping Dartmouth and Ivy League fans and families across the country are successfully dealing with the miserable winter weather this week. We were expecting 6-12 inches of snow last night but rain and sleet knocked that down to only a couple of inches or so. And as this is being written it is 28 degrees warmer here in Vermont than it is in Dallas (31 degrees to 3.)

When it gets cold here this winter I go into our guest room and spend a little time marveling at the "cascading petunias" overflowing our old AeroGarden.

In case you are wondering, the flowers are growing hydroponically without benefit of dirt or sand, they go through a pint of water a day, and are thriving on two small capfuls of plant food every two weeks.