Monday, May 23, 2022

Goodbye, Hello

With Coady Keller departing after three years as Dartmouth's football recruiting director to become Miami University's director of player personnel (LINK), the Big Green reached back into the same well for his replacement.

Like his predecessor, Landan Yount, who took over as Dartmouth's Director of Football Recruitment and External Relations this spring, is a graduate of Holy Cross College in Notre Dame, Ind. And like Keller, he also spent time as a "recruiting student-analyst' while at Holy Cross. The 2020 college graduate then spent two years as a "recruiting and scouting assistant" for the Fighting Irish.

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Dartmouth football also has hired a new "manager of creative services" and only time will tell if this is his work, what it will look like when it is finished and how it will be used:

and . . .

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Alert eyes spotted reports from Saturday that incoming tight end Sean Ward's St. Ignatius team won the national high school rugby championship with a victory over Gonzaga of Washington, D.C., 23-14. (LINK)

St. Ignatius had advanced to the finals with a win over St. Thomas Aquinas with Goff Rugby Report writing (LINK):

"For Aquinas, their set piece was excellent, with their lineout executed brilliantly. But they couldn’t break the Ignatius wall, and the Ignatius forwards, led by Sean Ward, John Reddy, and a commitment to winning rucks and winning the point of contact, carried the Wildcats to the final."

BGA Daily wrote about the 6-foot-4, 240-pound Ward, also a standout bowler, Saturday. (LINK)

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The Athletic had a lengthy story about New England Patriots special teams standout Matthew Slater in which coach Bill Belichick puts Slater in some elite company, saying (LINK):

“(He) will go up there, in the kicking game, with Tom Brady on offense and (Lawrence) Taylor on defense. So I feel very, very fortunate to have the opportunity to coach all the players, but I’d say those three in particular.”

Why is that of interest for the Dartmouth football faithful? From the story:

Slater initially planned to attend Dartmouth. But he couldn’t resist the lure of big-time football and went to UCLA to play wide receiver.

In his first season, he suffered turf toe. In his second, he had a stress fracture. After two years, he had not played much and his future in the program was in doubt. A teammate and friend, more pragmatic than tactful, told him, “Man, you’re never gonna play. Have you thought about transferring?”

Slater did think about transferring to Dartmouth but instead asked coach Karl Dorrell if he could switch to defense. He became a defensive back and also was allowed to start covering kicks.

While Dartmouth missed out on Slater, who the story suggests could end up in Canton, the family isn't without a Dartmouth degree. His wife, Dr. Shahrzad Ehdaivand, earned her medical degree from Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine.

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EXTRA POINT
Hard as it was to believe, the thermometer hit 90 degrees here both Saturday and Sunday. That being the case, Mrs. BGA, Griff the Wonder Dog and I headed off to a local ice cream stand yesterday afternoon to help beat the heat with a treat. ;-)

Because a camp of some sort had the same idea and delivered a bunch of high schoolers to the severely undermanned stand just before we pulled up, the wait in the hot sun for a cool treat wasn't much fun. 

While two of us were dressed in shorts and light shirts, the third was wearing his usual fur coat. And so when the heat seemed to be a little much for Griff, I brought him back to the electric car and turned up the air conditioning, a pretty neat trick because even standing right next to it you wouldn't have a clue the car was even running.

It may have taken close to a half hour before we got our ice creams. By that point the EV was chilly and Griff was no longer panting, of course.

Another benefit from being parked in the cool car that we didn't realize at first. While others sitting at picnic tables or Adirondack chairs might have been risking ice cream headaches trying to make sure their vanilla or chocolate chip cookie dough ended up in their mouths instead of dripping all over them, we could take our time and savor every last bit of the ice cream without it melting precipitously down the side of the cone and onto our hands.

Oh, and for the record, Griff received a small dish of vanilla with a dog cookie on top – for free.

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