Saturday Stuff

Running back/slot receiver Christian Benson, a 5-foot-8, 180-pound dynamo from Parish Episcopal HS in Dallas, is the latest incoming Dartmouth freshman to show up on the football program's Twitter feed:

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Speaking of incoming freshmen, 6-2, 187 wide receiver recruit Jackson Gerard of St. Francis HS in Illinois was the subject of a story in the Daily Herald after a strong performance at the 2A state track meet at Eastern Illinois University. From the story (LINK):

Gerard, who committed to Dartmouth for football, said he spent part of the morning handling calls with his college coach to learn the football playbook.

"It's been a crazy (morning) especially with the weather," Gerard said. "Track is pretty complementary for me with football. It goes into football, but I felt I could compete this year and it was fun competing this year and being really good in track and getting to go to state was a whole new experience."

Gerard finished sixth in the state in the long jump and 13th in the 100 meters.

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Scott Caulfield, who worked with football, swimming and rugby as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Dartmouth from 2008-11, has been hired as the first director of strength and conditioning at Vermont's Norwich University. (LINK)

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If you root for Dartmouth athletes it really was the joy of victory and the agony of defeat watching the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field last night.

The joy:

Abbey D'Agostino Cooper '14, who saw her Olympics in Rio end with a tumble to the track, needed not only to finish in the top three in the 5,000 last night to advance to the finals, but was encouraged by her coach prior to the race not to wait for the finals and to try to run an Olympic qualifying time. Breaking from the pack, she ran out to a huge lead and in the final laps ran not against the competition but against the clock. From the Washington Post story above (LINK):

Cooper reached the last 200 meters with 35 seconds to spare. She pumped her arms and breathed deep. Every athlete on the field lined up near the inside lane, clapping and exhorting her. She heard noise but no voice, too focused on running, on finishing.

She made it across the line with time to spare and will now run Monday at 8:40 p.m. Eastern needing a top-three finish to punch her ticket to Tokyo.

Former teammate  Dana Giordano ’16 finished well back in the same race.

In the 1,500 Helen Schlachtenhaufen '17 advanced to the semifinals (9:40 tonight) with the final Monday at 8:05.

Also running tonight is Cha'Mia Rothwell '20 in the 100-meter hurdles. She's scheduled to be on the line at 8:04. The semifinals will be at 9:03 tomorrow and the finals at 10:43 tomorrow.

In constrast to Cooper's joy of victory is the agony felt by another former Big Green standout.

Dartmouth grad Ben True '08, who missed joining his wife on the last U.S. Olympic team at Rio by less than half a second in the 5,000, needed to finish in the top three in the 10,000 last night to make his first Olympic team in what has to be, at age 35, his last Trials.

He was in position to make the U.S. team until the final sprint and wound up in the worst position of all – fourth – one miserable spot away from Tokyo. He will have his final Olympic chance Thursday at 11:04 p.m. when he runs in the 5,000.

A lengthy story by old friend Glenn Jordan '85 in Maine's Portland Press Herald in advance of the Trials detailed True's almost desperate bid to fulfill his Olympic dream. The piece noted that he had lost his contract with Saucony after nine years and with his first child due shortly, had to keep racing and remain in the Top 20 in the world or he would "lose the health insurance plan provided to elite athletes by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee." Find the story HERE.

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EXTRA POINT
I'm not what you would call a car guy but I used to have an old Mitsubishi Expo (nicknamed "Vlad" after another old Expo – Vlad Guerrero) that I really loved. It was an odd car, so odd that for away Little League games players on the team I coached would race to ride with me. I like to think it was because of my jokes but I wonder sometimes if it was because they wanted to ride in a clown car. One of the players actually called it a "nursemobile."

Anyway, with about 190,000 miles or so on the odometer Vlad started misbehaving and I brought it to our longtime mechanic for a look-see. When I went by his shop a few days later to learn its fate I pretty much knew what he was going to tell me as soon as I saw his face.

I told him: "My goal was to drive this car until it died."

He responded with just two words: "You succeeded."

And with that, Vlad was headed to the great beyond.

I bring that up because That Certain Dartmouth '14, like her dad, is not a car person. But she's had a Subaru Baja, a car almost as odd as my old one, for seven years. She named it Betsy Baja and loved it the way I loved Vlad.

Betsy had 220,900 miles on the odometer this week when it decided it had no interest in going up a hill out in Colorado. Luckily, TCD'14 wasn't on a deserted mountain road and her boyfriend was able to bump/push the Baja a half mile or so to his house. When it was clear the car wasn't going to start a call went out to Triple-A and off it went on the back of a flatbed tow truck.

I don't know if the mechanic in Colorado had the same way with words that mine did. Either way, the message was the same.

Epilogue: The Baja has already been replaced by a 2013 Outback. It has 109,000 miles on it but unlike Betsy, it has working air conditioning and that's no small bonus with the current heat wave in Colorado.