Dartmouth Athletics

Dartmouth Football wrapped up a their spring season on Saturday with the annual White vs. Green spring game. The game was held in the Graham Indoor Practice Facility due to heavy rain in the forecast and saw Team White beat Team Green, 44-43.

The theme of the day was competition according to Head Coach Sammy McCorkle.

“One thing we challenged our guys was to come out here today and compete,” said McCorkle. “It’s the final exam. It’s a chance for us, coaches and your teammates, to see how you’re going to perform in a game situation.”

“I thought our guys, first of all, took care of each other, but at the same time, you could see how it got physical, especially down in the red zone,” McCorkle continued. “The guys came out here prepared to play full speed the entire time, and we were able to accomplish all the things that we wanted to accomplish.”

According to McCorkle, the staff was hoping to get in between 90 and 100 snaps and ended up getting in 97 plays in the end.

“We were almost dead even on both groups getting the same amount of snaps,” he said. “That’s exactly what we wanted. We got two-minute situations, we got short-yardage situations.”

At halftime, the Big Green announced their captains, featuring rising senior offensive lineman Delby Lemieux, defensive back Sean Williams and wide receiver Daniel Haughton.

“We’re used to having the spring game and games outside, but this spring game was a nice little switch up,” said Haughton. “We always talk about sudden change and being able to adapt and improvise. It was good and we came out and played with energy. Defense played well, offense played well. We competed really well.”

The Big Green are happy, but not satisfied. As Haughton said, there’s always room for improvement.

“Definitely think we can improve,” he said. “We have to be a little more consistent, a little more detailed, but this spring was a great start.”

Specific to Saturday, the offense had a number of big plays, but so did the defense, including two interceptions. One by Samuel Washington was the last play of the day. The defense matched the offense for most of the scrimmage.

“The offense and defense challenge each other every day,” said McCorkle. “The offense has shown it can be explosive. You saw that a couple times today. The quarterbacks did a good job finding our guys down the field, wide receivers did a good job catching the ball and getting explosive plays, which forces the defense to have to be very disciplined and making sure they’re in the right spots.

“But I thought our defense responded,” McCorkle continued. “Guys are playing with confidence, and you can see that with each practice; they became more confident as a whole. I’ve been really impressed by the guys we were expecting to need to step up [this spring], who maybe haven’t played so much in the past

“They did that.”