Sharing the rock left a former Holy Trinity Academy Knight’s opponents green with envy.
That would be Big Green and Ivy green.
Ryder Stone, a 2013 HTA graduate, was the leading rusher for the Dartmouth Big Green which shared the Ivy League football title this season with Harvard and Penn with 7-1 league records (Dartmouth was 9-1 overall).
“That was our goal coming into the season to win the Ivy League and to be able to achieve that, it means a lot,” said Stone, a sophomore at Dartmouth.
His other goal for the season was to have a larger role in the Big Green offence. Stone saw limited action his freshman year with only five carries in Dartmouth’s first eight games. However, he exploded for 114 yards on 10 carries, with three touchdowns, including one of 63 yards in Dartmouth’s 44-21 romp of the Brown Bears in its ninth game.
He said seeing action in the final two games as a freshman, gave him a fresh, new outlook going into his sophomore season.
“I ended up splitting playing time with two seniors this year and one of my goals was to be the leading rusher and I was able to achieve that,” Stone said. “I was also the leading scorer on the season.”
Stone finished the 2015 season with 375 yards on 75 carries — a 5.0 yards per carry.
Back when Stone was hauling the rock for the HTA Knights more times than Fred Flintstone putting in a shift at the quarry, 375 yards would have been a two-game total.
Not so, with the pass-happy Big Green.
“We were a heavy spread offence and we did a lot of passing this year,” Stone said. “We had a really good quarterback (Dalyn Williams), I think he broke several Dartmouth passing records. Our run game was more of a complement to the passing game.”
It’s the final score that counts, not the rushing stats. Stone was delighted to be part of the league champion Big Green.
“This was really a good season for us to develop — this was the closest knit team I have ever been a part of and that was a big reason for our success,” he said. “We all worked really well together.”
The Big Green needed that cohesiveness in its late November 17-10 victory over the Princeton Tigers in its Ivy League finale to clinch a tie for the title.
“It was a battle the whole way through,” Stone said. “I had a touchdown late in the third quarter to tie the game (at 7-7) and that kind of changed momentum.”
Stone’s TD run was a 32-yard scamper.
While football titles are nice, the Ivy League is about academics.
Stone has produced in the classroom as well as the gridiron. He has a 3.5 GPA and is majoring in environmental science and is a public policy minor.
“Going to Dartmouth is the best decision I ever made,” Stone said. “Next year, I hope to be the outright starter and hopefully we will have the same success as a team.”
He hasn’t forgotten his roots — Stone was one of the guest speakers at the Holy Trinity Academy Knights awards banquet on Dec. 17.
“It really brought me back,” Stone said. “It felt like I just graduated and then I was the guest speaker.
“I loved having the opportunity.”
