Former Dartmouth longsnapper Grant Jaffe '20 interviews his Big Green classmate Niko Lalos of the New York Giants:
After offering the coaches of the five reinstated teams the opportunity to return to their positions, the Dartmouth Athletics department announces the return of three coaches — the Bill Johnson Head Coach of Men’s Golf Rich Parker, lightweight rowing head coach Dan Roock and diving coach Chris Hamilton. Both Alex Kirk, the Carolyn A. Pelzel 1954a Head Coach of Women’s Golf, and Jamie Holder, the swimming and diving head coach, declined the opportunity to return to their posts.
(At) Columbia, where most students have not returned to its Manhattan campus, and at Cornell, which is in its initial phase of welcoming students back this semester, the baseball teams have not practiced. At Dartmouth, where the campus will be open only to freshmen and seniors in the spring quarter that begins next month, the baseball team would be almost all freshman and seniors. Princeton’s roster is down to 18 players, with four juniors taking a gap year so they could return next season.
And . . .
Robin Harris, the Ivy League’s executive director, did not respond to an interview request Wednesday, but a league spokesman said a decision could come this week. The Ivy League is alone among 31 Division I conferences in not having put out a conference baseball schedule. If the 2021 season is canceled, Ivy League baseball players will have lost almost two entire seasons to the coronavirus pandemic.
Green Alert Take: Aw c'mon. It's the New York Times, in days gone by the voice of Ivy League football. Harris could at least have gotten on the horn and said something along the lines of, "We're nearing a decision and expect to make an announcement in the next few day."
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The Yale Daily News had a piece after the one-year grad school exception was announced under the headline, Graduate school deadlines present roadblock for senior athletes, but individual programs may consider extensions. From the story (LINK):
The announcement’s timing left some athletes confused, as it came after final deadlines for graduate school applications — the latest of which was Jan. 2.
In an email to the News, Lynn Cooley, dean of Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, reiterated that the latest application deadline, Jan. 2, had already passed and that “admissions decisions are nearly complete.”
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From an NCAA release (LINK):
The Division I Council extended the recruiting dead period for all sports through May 31, continuing the ban on in-person recruiting activities that began when the pandemic hit last spring.
And . . .
“After careful consideration of all available information, the Council agreed that an extension of the dead period through May 31 was necessary,” said Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, athletics director at Pennsylvania. “However, there is a strong commitment to use the next several weeks to outline the transition plan back to recruiting activities post June 1 and to provide those plans to prospective student-athletes, their families and the NCAA membership no later than April 15.”
And . . .
Council members also provided a blanket waiver that increased the number of hours football teams can spend on countable, athletically related, out-of-season activities this spring from eight to 10 hours per week. The 10 hours may include:
• Up to four hours per week for meetings/film review
• Up to two hours per week for walk-throughs
• No more than six hours of physical activities (weight training/conditioning).
• All activities will be non-contact.
Green Alert Take: Given that the Ivy League hasn't made a public statement about spring sports there's no way of knowing what the conference's stance will be on spring football practice and whether the NCAA's "blanket waiver" will have any impact on what Dartmouth and the rest of the Ivies do.
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Dartmouth News summarizes the latest Community Conversation with Provost Joseph Helble headlined, Light at the End of the Tunnel? The drophead: Provost Joseph Helble expressed cautious optimism about fall 2021. From Dartmouth News (LINK):
The prediction that Dartmouth might be able to return to full operations in fall 2021 depends in large part on the campus maintaining or decreasing what (Provost Joseph) Helble calls the "very low" positivity rates for COVID-19 that the Dartmouth community has seen for much of the year—and on the expectation that much of the community will have received vaccinations by the end of the summer.
"There are a lot of caveats, and it may turn out that we are able to increase the number of students on campus substantially but not get to 100%," Helble said. "It's simply too early to answer that question. But we've structured our decision-making process in a way that will give us a maximum amount of time to make data-driven and thoughtful decisions in support of that goal."
Find the full video HERE and a transcript of the conversation HERE.
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The University of Maine has announced $110 million plan to improve athletic facilities. (LINK)
Among other improvements to the football stadium, "The track will be removed from the complex, which will allow for visiting bleachers to be shifted closer to the playing surface while the turf will be transported closer to the home grandstand to provide a more intimate gameday environment." (LINK)
Green Alert Take: It's still disappointing that Dartmouth didn't relocate its track when Memorial Field was renovated. Not only would it have made the viewing experience better, but it would have allowed for widening at least the first floor of Floren Varsity House with a dedicated hallway from one end of the building to the other.
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EXTRA POINT
Scrolling through the TV wasteland during these pandemic days Mrs. BGA and I stumbled across a remake of the 1990s sitcom Mad About You with Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt on Amazon Prime. Given that we enjoyed the original series we gave the revival a shot. It was OK, but when we discovered the original series was also on Prime we punted the new stuff and went back to the '90s.
After watching a bit of the two series I can't help notice that Paul and Jamie got older while the rest of us haven't changed at all, right? ;-)
