HANOVER — The Dog Drill occurs every Monday during Hanover High football practice, an exercise in exertion that leaves players red-faced, gasping for air and sprawled across Merriman-Branch Field’s artificial turf.
For 10 minutes straight, the Bears sprint across the gridiron, stopping on each side to perform rapid-fire calisthenics such as squats, pushups and “mountain climbers,” in which they place their hands on the ground and alternate full-extension leg lunges.
“It tests everyone’s limits, and they really find out how uncomfortable they can get,” said Hanover lineman Patrick Elder, whose team visits Souhegan on Friday in a matchup pitting two of NHIAA Division II West’s three 5-0 squads. “Once you meet your limit, you can push yourself over it.”
If this sounds gung ho and militaristic, well, that fits Elder perfectly. The gregarious senior began the current season immediately upon returning from U.S. Army boot camp in Missouri and is in the best shape of his life.
“My advantage used to be my size, but now it’s my speed,” said Elder, a 5-foot-11, 200-pound center and defensive end who lost 45 pounds while in the Midwest. “I can get off the ball faster and squeeze through holes, but I still pack a good punch.”
Perhaps that’s because Elder scored first in physical fitness among more than 100 soldiers in his boot camp class, enduring a combined 250 pushups per day along with other hellish exercises and challenges that make one sweat just hearing about them.
Each day began at 4:30 a.m. and ended at 8:30 p.m., with Elder and his platoon mates falling into exhausted sleep despite the lack of air conditioning in their communal sleeping quarters. An enormous, aging fan nicknamed “Old Betsy” whirred and clattered at one end of the space.
“It just pushed the heat around,” Elder said.
This is a tough kid. Which meant his exit from last year’s Lebanon game, screaming in pain from a knee injury, was all the more discomforting to those who witnessed it. Elder was driven off the field on the back of an ATV, crying in the arms of Bears trainer Cassie Lapple.
Amazingly, Elder made it back to play in the Bears’ last two contests. The injury was eventually described as a pinched nerve in his knee, the excruciating pain of which didn’t ease for roughly six hours. Elder spent a week lying on his family’s couch before flummoxed physicians gave him a vague diagnosis and cleared him for a return to action.
It was six months later that Elder, who had long dreamed of a career in law enforcement or the military, started his path to combining the two. He called a local representative of the Marines, but the man was on leave. Two days later, an Army recruiter came through Hanover High, explaining to Elder that the national guard allows candidates to fulfill much of their boot-camp requirement the summer after their junior year.
Elder’s parents, Glenn and Torrey, signed their consent, having suspected since kindergarten that their boy was headed for a service career. His Halloween costumes were always along the lines of a firefighter or G.I. Joe, but the real thing awaited at Fort Leonard Wood in the Ozark Mountains.
Elder, who sacrificed his flowing, blond hairstyle for a buzz cut, also gave up the last week of school. After taking his final exams a week early, he began his 12-week camp in a 40-person platoon and was eventually made a bay leader in charge of 26 of his peers. Elder made sure their living quarters were spotless and that chores were done. He was also in command during certain portions of field and navigation training.
A significant challenge of the early weeks was acclimating to the weather. For those unfamiliar with a Missouri summer, picture yourself in a sauna with the repeated threat of tornadoes.
“I got used to sitting in a pool of my sweat every day,” Elder said, noting that most activities were undertaken in pants and long-sleeved shirts. “But I was in better shape that most people there.”
Twenty-five out of Elder’s class of 127 prospective soldiers washed out, cut down by injuries or illness, repeatedly falling asleep or failing to pass tests on the obstacle course or shooting range. Classroom learning makes up more of military training than you might expect, and coming up short in that area is another path to a quick exit.
Elder loved it all. He has National Guard obligations one weekend per month during the school year and will return to boot camp for another nine weeks immediately after Hanover’s graduation. It’s then he will receive specialized training to become a military policeman.
Early next fall, Elder can choose whether to go on active duty or remain in the reserves while attending college.
“It’s exactly what I was looking for,” he said after Monday’s practice, grinning broadly. “I wanted something different and to see a change in myself.”
His mother, chairman of Lebanon High’s math department, and his father, a onetime Hanover lineman now in the printing industry, have noticed a shift.
“He carries himself proudly, and he doesn’t have to be asked to do something more than once,” Torrey Elder said. “He listens better, and his responses are adult.
“There aren’t any more teenage snap-backs and he’s a little more serious, but he still has his smile, which has always been his radiating point.”
Elder last year successfully lobbied to be Hanover High physical education teacher Todd Bebeau’s class assistant, a post previously held only by seniors. Bebeau, who’s also Hartford High’s longtime boys hockey coach, generally issues measured praise, but he gushes over a young man he first encountered as a loud and sometimes irksome freshman student.
“He’s the true embodiment of leadership through service — to his school, to his team and to his country,” Bebeau said. “He’s an incredibly funny human being, but he’s also a mentor to the younger kids, and the respect they show him is incredible.”
Elder is similarly viewed by the football team, for which he started as a freshman during a winless 2019 season. Hanover’s undersized and inexperienced troops took a weekly pounding, and Elder missed significant time with a heel injury that required surgery. However, that trial-by-fire experience hardened him and the five other seniors who remain.
“We’ve lifted weights together three or four times a week for four years,” said Elder, referring to sessions that often take place before morning classes. “We get together for open gym at night, and we’ll have 20 guys running plays and working on their stances and pass blocking.
“It gives us that chemistry where we all know how we work best together.”
Hanover has long been a running team and can still pound the rock with a solid line and tailback Jeffrey Vidou. This season, however, the Bears and quarterback Roger Lucas appear to have a more polished passing game, although it’s hard to be certain, because they’ve outscored their opponents, 221-39, without having to truly air it out.
Friday’s clash at dangerous Souhegan could go a long way toward playoff seeding and indications of postseason success. Elder, however, isn’t yet predicting Hanover’s first title-game appearance since 2007 or its first championship since 2005.
“We have a lot of gaps to close,” he said. “We’re not the fastest team, so we need to work on execution, and our line has to do a better job of blocking. We can’t be concerned about what someone else is doing, but just doing our own job.”
Spoken like a true leader by someone who not only serves as his squad’s hype man but backs up his boisterous posturing. Hanover coach Sam Cavallaro said it’s routine to see Elder sprinting 20 yards to make a block or a tackle.
“He has a motor that never stops,” Cavallaro said, a smile spreading beneath his mustache. “Patrick gets the most out of every play in practice or a game.”
The freshman loudmouth who once looked for any attention, positive or negative, remains intense. However, he’s added dignity and discipline to his behavioral repertoire. Roughly once a month, Elder wears his military uniform to school, something not often seen at an institution known for sometimes overheated academics.
“Everyone sees me differently now,” said Elder, who regularly rides as an observer on patrol with Hanover and Lyme police officers and plans to become certified as an emergency medical technician in the spring. “The loudness is still there, but it’s not the same.
“I’ve changed, but that’s part of growing up.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.