Giving the Rush to the Record books

Only two Dartmouth College players have carried the football for more than a mile during their collegiate careers. Rick Klupchack '74, the College's career rushing leader, gained 1,788 yards and scored ten touchdowns from 1971 to 1973. Jake Crouthamel '60 was the other miler. He rushed for 1,763 yards and 12 touchdowns from 1957 to 1959. Richard Weissman '85 has the opportunity to become the Big Green's third miler and, barring injury, the College's career rushing leader. Weissman passed the half mile mark during the fourth game of the 1983 season when he lugged the football for 79 yards in 28 carries during a heart breaking 21-17 loss to William and Mary at Memorial Field. That performance gave the 20 year old junior tailback a total of 898 career rushing yards. It was also the ninth consecutive game in which Weissman had been the Big Green's leading rusher. Weissman scored a touchdown against the visiting William and Mary team in the second quarter on a four yard run. The score was the 11th six pointer Weissman has chalked up for Dartmouth. Weissman, however, is not a one dimensional football player. Through the first four games of 1983, Weissman had caught 11 passes for 106 yards, returned seven kickoffs for 170 yards (fifth best in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference), and completed a 24 yard option pass to tight end Matt Burke '86 in the disappointing 13-12 loss to Army at West Point.

Weissman has been a tailback since he was ten years old. "I'll work my way out of it yet," quipped the six foot, 195 pounder. Weissman spent the first eight years of his life in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 20 minutes from the Bronx. His family then moved to Sudbury, Mass., 20 miles due west of Boston. Weissman's football career began with the Pop Warner town team, which competed in a youth football league in the Boston area. Weissman was in the fifth grade. He still has fond memories of that league. "There's one game that I will never forget," said Weissman. "We were playing Brookline and were down 20 to 0 at halftime. We were getting destroyed. I was playing corner back on defense during the second half and they swept to my side. I stripped the guy of the ball just took the ball out of his hands and then ran something like 60 yards for a touchdown. Then I broke a couple of runs from scrimmage for 50 to 60 yard touchdowns and then I threw a touchdown pass. That's the best half I've ever had even though I was a youngster." Weissman played Pop Warner League football until he entered the 1,800 - student Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Sudbury. Weissman still holds all of his high school's rushing and scoring records. As a senior, he scored 20 touchdowns and two extra points. His 124 points made him the leading scorer in Massachusetts's Division III. He received all league recognition during his junior and senior years, was named to the BostonGlobe's all scholastic team, and was selected as "Athlete of the Year" at Lincoln Sudbury High, where he had also been an all state lacrosse player and runner for the winter track team. College football scouts did not overlook Weissman's gridiron efforts. The University of New Hampshire offered him a full scholarship. The Ivy League was also interested. He was recruited by Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Princeton, and Dartmouth. "But this was definitely the first choice," Weissman said. "Once I was accepted here, that was it."

As a member of the Pea Green fresh man football team, Weissman rushed the ball 29 times for 189 yards and one touchdown. His 6.5 yard average was the team's best. He caught eight passes for 62 yards and returned seven kickoffs for 221 yards an average of 31.6 yards per return. As a sophomore, Weissman saw limited playing time, except for kick off return duties, until the second half Of the Harvard game when co-captain and tailback Sean Maher '83 injured his ankle and was forced to leave the game. Weissman carried the ball nine times for 22 yards. Weissman got his first opportunity to start a game for the Big Green during the next week. It was the sixth game of the season and the opponent was Cornell. "It was a memorable game," said Weissman. "Because it was my first game starting in college, the pressure was on, I guess, but I was very excited about it. And we played a super game even though we almost blew it in the end." W zeissman carried the ball 32 times for 156 yards in the 14-13 victory over Cornell and scored the Big Green's first touchdown on a two-yard run. He also caught two passes for 19 yards. In a 22-21 loss to Yale the next week, Weissman scored a touchdown while gaining 63 yards. He scored two touchdowns and rushed for 103 yards in 12 carries during the wild 56-41 victory over Columbia, and scored one touchdown and rushed for 64 yards in the Brown game. Weissman saved his finest game for the season finale against Princeton, in which Dartmouth won a share of the Ivy League championship with Pennsylvania and Harvard. Weissman rushed for 174 yards against the Tigers. It was the fourth best performance ever by a Dartmouth back and the best ever by a Big Green sophomore. Weissman scored touchdowns on three- and seven-yard runs during the 43-20 triumph. Weissman said the victory over Princeton was personally satisfying because he didn't like some of the things the New Jersey school had done while recruiting him. "It was more of a personal thing there," Weissman observed. "But it was a big game and a lot of my family from the New York area was there." During the 1982 season, Weissman rushed for 605 yards in 124 carries, caught four passes for 29 yards, and returned eight kickoffs for 171 yards. He finished second in team scoring with seven rushing touchdowns and was named to the second team All-Ivy by league coaches.

If Princeton hadn't seen enough of Weissman during the 1982 season finale, the Tigers got to see more of him during this fall's opener at Memorial Field. Weissman carried 24 times for 125 yards and scored three touch downs. "That was a great team effort," said Weissman of .this year's Princeton game. "Everything was working well. The team was dominating and we were controlling the game. The three touch-downs were not very long runs one was from seven yards and two were from one yard. It was not so much of an individual thing as it was a team drive for a score. It's sort of like putting icing on the cake, I would say." The next three weeks were disappointing ones for Weissman and other members of the football team as they were defeated by Army, Holy Cross, and William and Mary. "We should be 3-1 rather than 1-3," noted Weissman. "Now that we're back in league play, I hope things will return to the way they started out."

Weissman is aware that he has a shot at establishing several rushing records if he stays healthy. He's been hearing that he's only a few hundred yards away from this record and so many yards away from that record. "The record is there right now," said Weissman. "Of course I have goals, and records are nice to be broken. But you can't put priority on that over the team and winning. Some of my goals would be, for example, to rush for 1,000 yards this year, what I guess has never been done here." John Short '71 holds the single season rushing mark. He gained 787 yards in 165 attempts during 1970. "That's something I've been thinking about a little bit. We definitely have the team to do it, because it's more than just myself." Weissman would also like to receive All Ivy recognition again this year, although he notes that members of the 1982 first team are all returning this season. "I guess the biggest goal is to take the title, take it undefeated by ourselves," he said. "Rushing for 1,000 yards isn't that great if you're not on a winning team or a championship team when you could be."

Weissman is a modified government and economics major who hopes to go to business school following his graduation from Dartmouth in 1985. "What I'd like to do is to work in a corporate or finance-type organization and eventually work into something on the international level," said Weissman, who became interested in traveling while participating in the College's Language Study Abroad program in Spain. Could there be a career in football awaiting him following his Dartmouth graduation? Weissman said that would be a possibility, but dismissed even thinking about it now. "To make up my mind right now about something like that is really almost ridiculous. Because you don't know what's going to happen between here and graduation. I know if I was to continue on I would have to do some lifting to strengthen my body up."

Weissman has been playing football for a decade now and the sport means a lot to him. "I've been playing for a long time and something like last week [the loss to William and Mary in which the visitors scored three unanswered fourth-quarter touchdowns to win 21-17 shows me how much it really does mean to me," he said. "People say it's just a game . . . and I totally agree with that. But when you put so much time and effort into something like this, I don't want to say it's more than a game, but it does mean something. It's an emotional type of thing. Depending on how you play and how the team plays can influence how you are and how you act and react."

Above, Richard Weissman '85 (number 33, with the ball) makes his way through heavy traffic during the William and Marygame on October 8, while opposite, he is on the ground after scoring a touchdown against Princeton in the season opener onSeptember 17. The junior tailback has a shot at breaking the College's career rushing record.