The Deregtory

Hello every­body and thanks for join­ing me for the penul­ti­mate in­stall­ment of The Dereg­tory. This week we played Brown and came up just short in an ex­cit­ing back-and-forth game. We trailed 17-7 at half­time, then scored 21 straight points to take a 28-17 lead be­fore even­tu­ally falling 35-28. RB Nick Schwieger ’12 had three touch­downs (two rush­ing, one throw­ing) and sur­passed the 1,000 yard mark for the sea­son. Shawn Abuhoff ’12 was re­spon­si­ble for the other score, re­turn­ing a punt 82 yards for a touch­down in the third quar­ter. Both Nick and Shawn have been vis­it­ing the crib with reg­u­lar­ity this year and their per­for­mances were not sur­pris­ing. On the de­fen­sive side of the ball, DE Charles Bay ’11 has been play­ing very well lately and had one sack to go along with a num­ber of other big hits. The game was close until the end but un­for­tu­nately we couldn’t fin­ish it and dropped to 5-4 on the sea­son.

Be­cause it was our last home game of the year, Sat­ur­day was Se­nior Day. The game was also na­tion­ally tele­vised, which was a great op­por­tu­nity for a backup to get some ex­po­sure. Big time play­ers make big time plays in big time games, and I stepped up and had the best per­for­mance of my col­lege ca­reer. I did some pushups in the locker room be­fore the game to get the blood flow­ing (for­tu­nately the warm weather al­lowed me to wear short sleeves and show­case my mus­cu­lar fire­power) and im­me­di­ately lo­cated the cam­era crews when we got on the field. By my count I got on TV no less than three times, in­clud­ing a big time ac­tion shot as we were run­ning onto the field to start the sec­ond half.

An­other se­nior, Tyler Green ’11 was cho­sen to carry the big “D” flag and lead the team out onto the field be­fore the game. You may re­call that this was an honor be­stowed upon me two weeks ago, and on Fri­day night Tyler asked me for ad­vice. We talked about flag hold­ing tech­niques (much trick­ier than you’d think) as well as the pres­sure of liv­ing up to the high stan­dard set by his pre­de­ces­sors (my per­for­mance was le­git­i­mately in­spir­ing). He seemed to gain con­fi­dence as the con­ver­sa­tion went on, and by Sat­ur­day morn­ing Tyler was clearly ready to rock.

About two min­utes be­fore we took the field, Col­lege Pres­i­dent Jim Yong Kim came in to give us a pump-up speech. As he was wrap­ping it up, he re­called: “Our last big home win was against Holy Cross, and I car­ried the flag out be­fore that game…so I’m car­ry­ing it out again today!” His procla­ma­tion was greeted with cheers from most of the team, but there were two no­table ex­cep­tions – Tyler looked like an eight-year-old who just caught his mom stuff­ing “Santa” pre­sents un­der­neath the Christ­mas tree, and I couldn’t cheer be­cause I was too busy try­ing not to laugh. I have to give Pres­i­dent Kim the ben­e­fit of the doubt not only be­cause we have a lot in com­mon (we are both in­flu­en­tial fig­ures on cam­pus, have spent hun­dreds of late nights on frat row (he tech­ni­cally lives there), and have per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with Tu­ber­cu­lo­sis), but also be­cause he reads the blog and says “The Dereg­tory!!!” when­ever he sees me at prac­tice. He clearly didn’t know that it was sup­posed to be Tyler’s job, and just got caught up in the ex­cite­ment. That being said, Pres­i­dent Kim, Tyler has been a lit­tle down since the game, and an apol­ogy note or hol­i­day gift might go a long way in cheer­ing him up again.

Last week I men­tioned that two of our play­ers, Tan­ner Scott ’11 and Lane Ship­ley ’11, were rec­og­nized as “Aca­d­e­mic All-Dis­trict” per­form­ers by ESPN. Since that time it has been brought to my at­ten­tion that a third de­serv­ing player on our team was snubbed. Now I know what most of you are prob­a­bly think­ing, “But Kevin, you don’t qual­ify for the award be­cause you haven’t played in enough of your team’s games!” Rest as­sured I am aware that ESPN val­ues ac­tu­ally being good at foot­ball and doesn’t con­sider can­did TV ap­pear­ances and hi­lar­i­ous blog writ­ing to be of­fi­cial cri­te­ria. That third player is ac­tu­ally Luke Hussey ’11, who is our sev­enth lead­ing tack­ler as well as an en­gi­neer­ing major with an im­pres­sively high GPA. He is clearly one of the nerdi­est ath­letes in the “dis­trict” and I think it is in­ex­cus­able that he was over­looked by ESPN.

We are now en­ter­ing the last week of our sea­son, and we fin­ish the year at Prince­ton on Sat­ur­day. A vic­tory would mean Dart­mouth foot­ball’s first win­ning sea­son since 1997. That is the year that Mother Teresa, Chris Far­ley and the No­to­ri­ous B.I.G. died, three peo­ple who I re­spect very much, and a win on Sat­ur­day will en­sure that I am in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to them for the rest of his­tory. It is there­fore a very im­por­tant game not only for us as a team, but for me per­son­ally. Next week will also be my final blog post, which tech­ni­cally makes it the “ul­ti­mate” Dereg­tory, which def­i­nitely means you should check it out…I have some crazy ideas. Any­way, thanks for read­ing and I will (hope­fully) see you back here next week after a big win!