The New Coach

JOE YUKICA, in early January named Dartmouth's 18th head football coach, has a goal. "I refuse to call this a building year. To say this is a transition year or a building year would be wrong. Our objective is the Ivy League title," says the voluble 46-year-old successor to Jake Crouthamel. He comes to Dartmouth after a decade at Boston College.

Yukica is no stranger in Hanover; he served as an end coach under Bob Blackman from 1961 to 1965 and helped the Big Green win or share in three Ivy League titles. He left Dartmouth for the University of New Hampshire, where he picked up his first of two New England Coach-of-the-Year awards, and then moved to B.C. Yukica and Boston College shared aspirations to football prominence and scheduled the high and the mighty, Texas and Notre Dame among them. One of the coach's most satisfying moments was a victory over Texas; the low point was probably a loss last fall to lowly Holy Cross.

This was the second time Yukica had been offered the head coaching position at Dartmouth. "I was offered the Dartmouth job in 1970 [when Blackman went to Illinois], and I turned it down after thinking about it very seriously. I had only been at Boston College three years and the time factor was involved," he said at a news conference when the appointment was announced. Yukica decided to take the opportunity the second time around after a long talk with Athletic Director Seaver Peters, a close friend. "As I made the two- hour drive home I realized that the farther away I got from Hanover, the more I wanted to be there. So I made the final decision in the car. Even my wife didn't have a say in the decision. I made it based on football and where I wanted to coach."

As a player at Penn State from 1950 to 1952, Yukica was one of the outstanding receivers in the East under the legendary Rip Engle. He was an assistant coach at his alma mater in 1953 while earning a master's degree and was head coach of the local high school team the next year. He began his college coaching career in 1960 at West Chester State College in Pennsylvania and joined Blackman's staff in 1961.

The days have been busy since Yukica took up residence in the Davis Varsity House football office. He's hired Norm Gerber, his assistant at Boston College, and Curtis Jones, an assistant at the University of Missouri, and retained John Curtis, Jerry Berndt, Tom Kopp and Robert Weiss from the 1977 Big Green staff. During February, he completed a national recruiting and alumni club swing to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and St. Louis. Dartmouth's recruiting didn't falter before Yukica's appointment because Crouthamel and his staff continued on the job. "The previous staff did a good job on the road," says Yukica. "We didn't lose too much and were able to pick up and continue."

Yukica comments that his field coaching philosophy is based on experiences he had as a player and as a high school and college coach. "Probably my experience here was the most valuable," he says of his tenure during the Blackman years. "I enjoy the actual coaching — both the mental and technical parts — and the things connected with it, the recruiting, the public relations, and working with people. I enjoy that."

The new coach will inherit a team that finished with 6-3 records in 1976 and 1977. Dartmouth will lose 26 of its 47 lettermen from last year's team. "I'm going to take a look during the one-day spring practice and assess abilities," he says. "We're going to do the things we can do best with the people coming back."

Yukica doesn't feel the pressure will be any less at Dartmouth than at Boston College, where he won more games — 68, with 37 losses — than any previous coach. He does welcome the change from an independent school to one which plays in an established league. "I feel there are certain very strong advantages to playing in a league," he says, citing the various things that are comparable at the Ivy schools. Competitive balance is one of the things that pleases him most.

Yukica will see some familiar faces when he starts pacing in front of the West Stands at Memorial Field next fall. His mentor Blackman is now at Cornell; his high school line coach and former assistant at Boston College is John Anderson, now head coach at Brown; and Bill Campbell of Columbia spent five years on the B.C. staff. He is also good friends with Harvard coach Joe Restic.

Meanwhile, Yukica, whose wife Betty and teenage sons Joe Jr., Jim, and Jack will move to Hanover in June, is eager to get on with his new job. "I will be quite involved for the next three months," he says. "I haven't lost my enthusiasm."'

Football Coach Joe Yukica has friends allaround the league until September.