Two years after the passing of legendary Dartmouth football coach Eugene “Buddy” Teevens, the Kirsten and Eugene F. “Buddy” Teevens ’79 Center for Peak Performance is set to open for athletes in the fall. The Center will focus on elevating the Big Green’s varsity athletic performance by providing student-athletes with support in key areas such as academics and mental health and innovating research in sports science, according to the Center’s inaugural director, Duncan Simpson.
The Center was funded by alumni, friends and former teams, who have pooled together over $40 million since the project began last fall to celebrate the legacy of Buddy Teevens, according to a release from Dartmouth Alumni. In his time at Dartmouth, Teevens was the Ivy League Player of the Year as the Big Green quarterback in 1978 before leading the Big Green to five Ivy League championships in his 22 seasons as head coach. For current Dartmouth football players, the center symbolizes Teevens’s long-lasting impact on the program.
“We’re super excited to honor Coach Teevens and to carry out his legacy through this center,” football player Grayson Saunier ’27 said. Coach Teevens was “a phenomenal leader of our team and a lot of our values and morals today have been set in a foundation from him.”
Robert L. Blackman head football coach Sammy McCorkle echoed Saunier’s appreciation for Teevens, adding that the center’s purpose will reflect Teevens’s growth-oriented values.
“Buddy was a humble, modest guy,” McCorkle said. “He did not do things because he wanted to be ‘the guy’; it was because he wanted to help individuals and I think that’s exactly what the center is all about. It signifies who he was as a person and what he was able to develop in our football program.”
Simpson is leading the creation of the center. He spent his last eight years as the head of mental conditioning and the director of personal development at International Management Group Academy — a sports training preparatory school — in Bradenton, Florida. Simpson said he hopes to apply his extensive experience in sports psychology to elevate Dartmouth athletes’ performances by improving their mental strength and balancing the demanding scope of being a student-athlete.
“At IMG, I learned that performance is complex and every student is on their own personal journey,” Simpson said. “You have to take the time to understand their goals and then align support to help get them there.”
The center will build on the foundation set by Peak Performance, an initiative founded in 2011 to support Big Green athletes by providing them with individualized academic help, leadership development, training programs and more. For lightweight rower Grayson Lee ’27, the biggest benefit from the program has been the academic and nutritional support.
“As a lightweight rower, dieting is a really important aspect of the sport and I’ve really appreciated DP2’s dieticians,” Lee said. “Also, the academic support has been helpful because rowing’s a very time intensive sport and the biggest source of stress is balancing the academics with everything, and they’re always very available.”
Beyond academic support, the center will feature a sports psychology team and emphasize a community of care and accountability.
“Being an Ivy League student and competing at the highest level of college athletics is no joke,” Saunier said. “It’s full throttle all four years. But, having resources like the Teevens Center coming up will help us take that next step as student-athletes and we’re super pumped about it.”.
McCorkle said he and the football coaching staff are already looking at ways to develop their players through the services the Teevens Center will provide, such as leadership initiatives and psychology.
“We’re very fortunate to be able to utilize opportunities like these,” McCorkle said. “It’s all about having that edge, and … developing leadership, developing team unity…. the fact that our athletic department is providing these different ways to learn leadership, like the DRIVE program, is huge for the success of our athletic programs.”
Above all, the Teevens Center will be a physical location for student-athletes to stop by for support according to their own needs. Simpson said he envisions the center to be a “hub” for sharing ideas and developing healthy, high-performing athletes.
“In 10 years, I’d love for the Teevens Center to be a national leader in performance, leadership and well-being — a place where all students thrive,” Simpson said.
Sid Singh ’27 is a sports editor and reporter. He is from Bethesda, Md. and Singapore and is majoring in Economics and Quantitative Social Science. Sid is also an engagement manager for Consult Your Community and a member of the Raaz dance team.
