Rick Rivers Report 2024- Vol 5: Dalhousie Football – A Tradition of Smart Football Players

On the return trip of our unfortunate, last-minute forfeited game on Saturday, I reflected on our recent listing of the2023-2024Dalhousie Football Academic All-Stars.

Our new Head Coach, Andre Goguen, a recent Dalhousie Law School grad (2021),wanted to know how many of his players would meet the Atlantic University Sport’s measure for Academic All-Canadian (receiving a minimum of a 3.7 GPA, being enrolled full-time in school (a requirement for all Dalhousie Football players, a minimum of 3 classes a semester and 6 per academic year), as well as dressing in two regular season games, or one playoff game in the season.)

Coach Goguen, along with six of his twelve current coaching staff, played football together at Mount Allison from 2013 to 2017. Goguen himself, three of his 6 Mt. A compadres, and one of our coaches who played at SMU were AUS Academic All-Canadians!

Well, it turns out we have 11 equivalent Academic All-Canadians (we call them Academic All-Stars) for 2023 - 2024. We had four honourable mentions who met most but not all of the requirements. See the list below.*

This made Jim Wilson grin from ear to ear as he recalled back in 2009 when he advised then-Dal President Tom Traves that we were bringing football back to Dalhousie (as a club sport, not Varsity) and that Dr. Traves’ response was, “But how will you get them into Dalhousie?” Jim responded, “I want smart football players, not dumb ones…”

Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when I played quarterback for Dalhousie, my O-Line consisted of some very smart young men who became Doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and we even had a Rhodes Scholar.

In the new era of Dalhousie Football, seven players or trainers have attended/graduated from Dalhousie Medical School. One of them, Dr. Casey Jones, leads the concussion research based on data from our Riddell Insite Helmets, which landed Dalhousie an $887,400 Canadian Institutes of Health Research Grant (over five years).

So, I am very proud to say that the tradition of smart football players (and coaches) continues at Dalhousie Football.

We are now 5 and 0 and it looks like we could have another year of the Tiger!

Go Tigers!

*Congratulations to these outstanding members of our team for their commitment to both the sportsmanship and the academic standards of our club!2023-2024 Academic All-Star Recipients:

• Louis Fiset
• Sam Martin
• Kevin Dickens
• Francis McMahon
• Dante Gabrielli
• Connor Strampel
• Matt Lawton
• Logan Steeves
• Owen Hamilton-White
• Noah Stevens
• Ronan Thompson

Honorable Mentions:

• Alessandro Ibarra Rodriguez
• Yassine Yassine
• Luke Smith
• Kye Swansburg