A reinvigorated Dartmouth football team will take the field Saturday against the University of Pennsylvania. The team's performance looks to be making a comeback as they embrace a new coaching staff and attitude.
Owners of a 1-1 record, the squad beat a solid Colgate team in the home opener and led the University of New Hampshire, one of the top Division I-AA programs, for much of the first quarter last weekend.
Head Coach Buddy Teevens '79 has worked hard to improve the football team's image on campus since taking over his post earlier this year.
"The dumb jock stereotype exists," Teevens said. "But it's a view we've got to change internally, by going to class, taking care of our work and being involved in organizations on campus."
The new coaching staff has placed a renewed emphasis on the academic lives of the players, and the team has responded. Last spring, the team's cumulative grade-point average hit its highest mark in several years, and the football office reports numerous positive remarks in recent weeks from faculty members who were pleased with the football program's redoubled academic efforts.
Other changes include allowing freshmen football players to go on pre-orientation trips organized by the Dartmouth Outing Club even if it means missing a sizable chunk of preseason practice.
While Teevens acknowledged that missing practice would set the freshmen back, he said he decided the program should not deprive its players of what so many Dartmouth students remember as a formative and fun beginning to the college experience.
While focused on remedying the losing ways of recent years, the program has bigger plans.
"Maybe it's an old-school mindset, but my goal and vision for our program is to be a positive representation for the institution, and my sense was that when I got here that it wasn't like that," Teevens said.
Students have responded positively to the new program and its on-the-field success.
"Hands down, everyone is happy with the direction Coach Teevens and his staff are taking the football program," captain Josh Dooley '06 said.
After being cheered off the field by a gauntlet of their classmates at halftime, freshmen football players capped the home-opening victory by leading the crowd in a rendition of the Alma Mater, a moment Teevens said reminded him of the institutional friendliness and strength that drew him to the College in the mid-1970s.
Teevens was hired several months ago after a local newspaper uncovered a personal note Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg sent to the president of Swarthmore College praising him for his institution's elimination of its football program and characterizing football and its culture as "antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours."
"I don't think [the letter] impacted the guys one way or another. They're here, they're doing well in school and they're going on to graduate programs," Teevens said.
Ultimately, Teevens said he sees his plans for the football program as compatible with and beneficial to the growth of the College.
"We don't want to force the football team into the public eye so much as we want to encourage our guys to become involved in things that will be beneficial institutionally and personally," Teevens said.
