Dartmouth: Teevens in Florida hospital after bike crash 

By TRIS WYKES

Valley News Staff Writer

Published: 03-19-2023 7:49 PM

Dartmouth College football coach Eugene “Buddy” Teevens is hospitalized in the St. Augustine, Fla., area after a Thursday crash while biking, the school said in a Saturday night release.

No further information was given. Teevens, 66, and his wife, Kirsten, own a second home in St. Augustine, where they spend significant time. The Big Green begin spring practice on April 4.

St. Augustine is a city of approximately 15,000, just south of Jacksonville. Teevens is a 1979 Dartmouth graduate who quarterbacked the Big Green to the 1978 Ivy League title and also played ice hockey. He is 117-101-2 in two stints as his alma mater’s head football coach.

Teevens is known for his fitness and in 2007 biked across the country from San Diego to New England, accompanied for part of the way by friend and former teammate David Shula. Now Dartmouth’s receivers coach, Shula was previously head coach of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” Teevens told Dartmouth athletics contributing writer Bruce Wood shortly before his trip. “I’ve gotten more into cycling as I’ve gotten older. It takes the stress off your knees and back.

Teevens then joked that the primary concern of his wife, Kirsten, was “that I’m well-insured.”

Kirsten Teevens wasn’t kidding around, however. She told SI.com that she went to the couple’s insurance agent and maximized their coverage before her husband set off.

“He does stuff like this and I’m like, ‘Honey, you’re a psycho,’ ” she said.

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Chuckled Buddy Teevens to the same outlet: “She’s just a worrier. It’s not like I’m a huge risk taker.”

There was a precedent for Kirsten Teevens’ concern for her husband, who has daydreamed out loud about climbing the Matterhorn and running with Pamplona’s Spanish bulls. In 2005, he announced shortly before a vacation to Michigan that he was riding his bike there and would meet the family upon arrival. It was a sort of test run for his cross-country jaunt.

“We were at the end of our driveway, like, ‘Okay, see you. Bye-bye,’ ” Kirsten told SI.com. “Honestly, the man is nuts.”

Moira Teevens Nobili, one of Buddy Teevens’ eight siblings, is a 1987 Dartmouth graduate and a star cross-country and track runner at their father’s alma mater.

Now a mother of four and an assistant high school track coach in Massachusetts, Nobili also biked across the country at one point. Nobili once suffered a serious head injury while biking on the West Coast during a different trip, leading to her brother and mother enduring a tense flight to her bedside.

Buddy Teevens coached Dartmouth from 1987-91, sharing one Ivy League title and winning another outright. He was the head coach at New Orleans’ Tulane University and at Stanford and returned to the Big Green in 2005. Dartmouth shared the league title in 2015, 2019 and 2021.

Teevens was honored as the New England coach of the year in 1990, 2015 and 2019. He has a daughter, Lindsay Knittle, and a son, Buddy Jr., who both live in Lebanon with their spouses and children.

Asked in 2010 when her husband might retire, Kirsten Teevens found humor in the question.

“It doesn’t really cross my mind because he’s always up and swimming or biking for three hours and then later he might go for a run,” she said. “I think a lot of that is how he handles stress. He’s not going to slow down.”

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.

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