Hanover — Ben Hagaman lowered himself gingerly to one knee late in Wednesday’s Dartmouth College football practice on the Blackman Fields. The offensive tackle is 6-foot-4 and 305 pounds, and his strained expression showed that everyday life isn’t easy for a gridiron warrior of that size.

“My heels will bruise if I stand too long, and that definitely didn’t used to happen,” said the senior starter, who began his college career as a 226-pound tight end. “Linemen just generally like to limit our movements. We always take the elevator.”

Pity the elevator, for Dartmouth has 12 players who weigh at least 300 pounds. Offensive linemen Matt Yohe, Matt Kaskey and Tanner Aiono are 325 pounds. Defensive tackle Jordan McGriff is 345, and position mate Davaron Stockman is 320.

The 1988 Big Green team featured no player weighing more than 275 pounds. The 1997 squad had just one competitor checking in at 300 or more pounds, and the 2007 edition had five. Cornell’s current roster features eight players listed at 300 pounds or more, while Columbia and Yale each have five. Pennsylvania and Princeton each have two such competitors, and Brown has none.

Hagaman and Yohe present opposite ends of the Dartmouth lineman weight spectrum. The former had to work like mad to gain weight, while the latter tipped the scale at 305 while in high school. As soon as their careers are over, however, they’ll switch focus to trying to shed bulk, instead of gaining it.

“Bigger guys tend to move smaller guys,” said Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, whose team hosts No. 25 Holy Cross tonight for its home opener. “But is what our guys are gaining good weight or floppy weight? We want to educate them on how to do it correctly, because food is fuel. Put regular in the tank and you’re OK, but put high-test in and you run a lot smoother.”

Dartmouth’s freshmen linemen these days tend to arrive with 300 pounds already in sight, so it’s more a matter of refining their bodies through near-constant weightlifting and nutritional education. Some, however, have to follow Hagaman’s path and pack on the pounds, and virtually all linemen must eat copious amounts of food to avoid losing bulk during the season.

Three and four plates of food at a meal are not uncommon, and neither are daily calorie counts surpassing 6,000. Everyone interviewed said eating even after being full was a fact of life, with former standout Sean Ronan comparing the discipline and work of consumption to taking an additional academic class.

“A meal is like game time, and you really have to get after it,” said Hagaman, who recalls having the most trouble pushing above 260 pounds. “I think it was my body’s way of saying it didn’t want to be this big, but I pushed it there.”

Teevens struggled for years to get Dartmouth’s dining plans to include an all-you-can-eat option, because his linemen were either not able to consume enough food or, if they did, were spending considerable money for extra charges. Now, his players are free to scarf down five or six grilled chicken breasts in one sitting and can make repeated trips for vegetables and salads, the latter often smothered in dressing.

“It takes a bit longer for linemen to grow into their roles, and a lot of guys, when they’re grasping for answers for why they’re struggling, they decide they’re not big enough,” said former guard and 2016 graduate Niko Mamula. “But you have to put it on slowly and get the best-value combination of size and strength. A lineman who can’t move is pretty useless.”

Keith Clark, Dartmouth’s longtime offensive line coach and a former offensive tackle at Lafayette, said recruiting linemen requires the ability to judge a player’s frame and project how much weight he’ll be able to carry while remaining agile.

“It’s what he’s going to be in three or four years, not what he is when he gets here,” said Clark, who looks for big hands, broad shoulders and long limbs. “Does he have the bone structure, and is he a willing participant?”

Teddy Reed, a former Dartmouth defensive end and 2013 graduate, gained 20 pounds by “eating Texas beef brisket and drinking a lot of beer” during a summer internship after his junior year. He returned to Hanover at 295 pounds and found the extra weight helpful in holding up against opponents’ running games. He then lost nearly 50 pounds so as to be able to play a single season of varsity lacrosse as a Big Green defenseman.

“I had hair down to my shoulders and wore cowboy boots, and I was just huge, an animal,” Reed said of his senior football season. “It was a fun time, but I work in sales and trading for an investment bank now, so I don’t think I can pull that off anymore.”

Clark somewhat wistfully recalls eating four peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches at a college sitting, wolfing down three cheeseburgers in his fraternity’s dining room for lunch and casually splitting a pizza with a buddy a couple hours after dinner.

“We ate vast amounts of food,” said Clark, who’s 6-3 and played at 280 pounds in the early 1980s. “The problem is some of those habits still manifest themselves occasionally. I can eat a couple dozen chicken wings in a heartbeat if I let myself.”

There’s the rub. Weighing three bills is a ticket to future bad health. Heck, Yohe’s ankles and knees crack repeatedly when he climbs stairs now, and he said an X-ray for an ankle injury last spring showed leg bone deterioration. Hagaman said his mother is anxious about what his size must be doing to his blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Rob Bathe, a former starting center for Dartmouth and 2013 graduate who settled in at 285 pounds, remembers the exhaustion when he tried playing at more than 300 during his sophomore season.

“I could barely breathe by the end of a 10-play drive because I was dragging around so much size,” he said. “Guys look forward to losing it.”

To that end, Teevens has for the past several years sponsored a “Biggest Loser” event in which players on track to graduate in the spring compete to see who can lose the largest percentage of their mass. The winner claims a free, custom-fit suit from a downtown Hanover store.

Ronan came out to watch a 2015 spring practice his senior year, and some former teammates didn’t recognize him because he was on track to lose 65 pounds. Zach Husain, a defensive lineman, last spring was so intent of beating out eventual winner and offensive lineman Zach Davis that he worked out three times a day, took saunas and fasted for 36 hours down the stretch shortly before graduation.

“It’s fun because it gives you a different way to compete, and Coach T plays to that,” said Husain, who fell to 211 pounds from 280. “Being that big does you no good in the real world.”

Bathe said competing in amateur martial arts and strongman competitions has given him exercise goals for which to aim after football. Ronan works out seven days a week, powerlifting and sprinting as a stress release. Mamula noted that shrinking down and staying there has made a difference socially.

“People were more guarded and cautious around me before,” he said. “I don’t know if they were intimidated, but their first impressions now are more open and welcoming.”

Hagaman hasn’t noticed any outright negative reactions to his size, but he said that others tend to respect his personal space more than they did nearly 100 pounds ago. Few people dispute your claim to riding in a car’s front passenger seat, Yohe added. And when a herd of three or more linemen ambles around campus, the sidewalks and fraternity bar rails tend to part ahead of them.

“Being massive is fun,” Hagaman said. “I’ll miss it, but I have very good memories of what it was like to be 220 pounds.”

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.

]]>