Dartmouth Engineer

For engineering major Ryan Conger ’05, senior year is more than the final leg of his undergraduate studies. It’s also the end of his Dartmouth football career. A co-captain of the Big Green team, defensive end Conger started every game of his college career and was First Team All-Ivy his junior and senior years. He succeeded on Thayer School turf as well, serving as a teaching assistant for Professors Ursula Gibson in ENGS 1 (Everyday Technology) and William Lotko in ENGS 21 (Introduction to Engineering) and working in the ice lab with Professor Ian Baker and Research Associate Daniel Iliescu. Recently Conger spoke with Dartmouth Engineer about his senior year transitions.

Q. What did it feel like to walk off the field at your last varsity game?
A. In a word, bittersweet. During the week going into my last game I actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about how lucky I was to be on such a long, strange, and wonderful trip. Rather than being overcome with sadness, as I expected to be, I started to look back and actually appreciate the times I’ve had playing a game I love. When the time came, I was fortunate enough to spend the moment with my family, a few friends, an old coach, and of course my teammates. After playing football since I was nine years old, I was sad at the end of the last game, but I will always be happy for the experiences I have had playing such a great game.

Q. How did you deal with the 2004 season 1-9 win-loss record?
A. Unfortunately things didn’t follow our plan for the season. It is heartbreaking to put so much time and effort into something and not reap the benefits of your labor. In the end we can look back on the season and we can say that we never gave up, no matter how poorly it seemed the cards were stacked against us. We put everything we had into it, and I feel that is the only way we should have done it.

Q. You were known for visualizing games and plays. Is this how you approach engineering?
A. I think almost any engineer would agree that there is a huge element of visualization in any problem solving. While the visualization is quite different between the two, I think they are closely related. Most people believe that football is almost entirely a physical game, but there is a tremendous amount of mental preparation that goes into it as well.

Q. What’s ahead for you in engineering?
A. I plan on pursuing my B.E. and M.E.M. at Thayer in the future. Ultimately I think I’ll pursue a career related with engineering, though I’m not sure how at this point.

Q. Will you still play football?
A. For the time being, I’m trying to pursue a career in professional football. I’ve been training for the NFL draft at home in New Jersey. I had some flexibility in my D-Plan that allowed me to take my winter term of my senior year off to devote my time and energy to pursuing a dream I have always had. Hopefully, things in that field will work out and I’ll put off my graduate studies at Thayer for a few years.

Big Wheel

For most collegiate athletes their sporting careers end the day they collect their undergraduate diplomas. If that were the case in collegiate cycling, however, then Mike Barton Th’04 wouldn’t have been able to win two national championships for Dartmouth at this year’s National Collegiate Cycling Association Championships. Barton won both the criterium and road race events at the May NCCA championships in Madison, Wisconsin.

Sports governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) allow athletes five years in which to complete four years of eligibility, but since collegiate cycling operates outside the NCAA umbrella no such eligibility rules apply. As long as you’re enrolled in a college or university, no matter your status, you can race. Having raced as an undergrad at the University of New Hampshire, Barton enrolled in Thayer School’s M.E.M. program in the fall of 2003 knowing cycling would remain part of the academic experience. And racing and training while in grad school turned into an altogether better experience than his undergrad racing.

“Racing as an undergrad was way harder because you were forced to do five classes or more each term and you had really short timelines,” says Barton, “As a grad student you have bigger objectives and longer timelines so you can make your own schedule. You don’t have as many quizzes and exams to get in the way, so I actually had more time [to train] as a grad student.”

Barton took a circuitous route to college in the first place, not starting UNH until he was 25. By the time he enrolled for his first semester in Durham he’d already packed a lifetime’s worth of excitement into his early-20s, and cycling was just the next step.

“I raced stock cars for six years semi-professionally, local speed tracks and the Star Speedway in Epping,” explains Barton, a Grantham, New Hamp­­shire, native. “It got to the point where the best driver wasn’t always the guy who was winning the races, it was the people who had the most money in their car. That’s why I like cycling so much: Equipment matters to a point, but you really have to bring your own motor.”

Barton credits his friendship with a former Dartmouth rower, Mark Nathe, with jumpstarting his training and allowing him to improve his cycling while in Hanover. On top of his two national titles, Barton also won the East Coast collegiate series, at one point reeling off five race wins in a row. While maintaining his research studying heat transfer of the cornea of the eye, Barton still managed to train upwards of 15 hours a week starting in January.

“I bobbled along for the first three or four years and I never trained in the winter, I’d only start training the first week of racing in the spring. The year before last I started training in the winter with a friend of mine and he was a former crew guy so he’s basically a training lunatic. We trained every night, all winter. I won a bunch of collegiate races that summer and saw the benefits of the winter labor and last winter I trained even more.”

Barton faces a new race for time. Now an engineer at Creare in Hanover, he says, “It’s tough to balance a full-time career and cycling at the elite level.”

— Chris Milliman

On the Right Track

Two Dartmouth track and field stars, B.E. candidates Mustafa Abdur-Rahim ’04 and Sean Furey ’04, competed in the U.S. Olympics Trials in July. And though they didn’t make it to Athens, they racked up competitive points and experience.

“I felt like a superhero — I felt like an animal,” says Abdur-Rahim ’04, a three time All-American decathlete, of his shot-put attempt.

“Track is the purest sport in the world,” he says. “You don’t need teams or officials to make calls. You just get out there and be an animal.”

His strategy served him well at the trials, where he finished sixth out of 25 competitors. With 7,844 points, he had the highest collegiate finish at the event.

All-American javelin thrower Sean Furey ’04 placed 16th overall, with a throw of 221 feet, 5 inches. “I’ve always wanted to compete at the highest level,” says Furey. “A lot of people throwing the javelin are bigger, stronger, and more technical than me. Those guys are where I want to be soon.”

Furey and Abdur-Rahim, who co-captained Dartmouth’s indoor and outdoor track teams last year, will continue competing for the Big Green while they complete their B.E. degrees. Both are taking aim at a new target as well: the 2008 Olympics.

— Annelise Hansen