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Buddy Teevens, who had extra victories than any coach in Dartmouth Faculty soccer historical past, and who turned a nationally acknowledged innovator in participant security when he eradicated tackling throughout practices to restrict the incidence of concussions, died on Tuesday in Boston. He was 66.
His demise, at a hospital, was introduced by Dartmouth on its web site. The trigger was issues of the accidents he sustained in a bicycling accident six months in the past.
Mr. Teevens was bicycling along with his spouse, Kirsten (Anderson) Teevens, on March 16 in St. Augustine, Fla., close to considered one of their houses, when he was hit by a pickup truck. He suffered spinal twine injury, and his proper leg was amputated. He was not sporting a helmet, in response to a police report.
When Mr. Teevens was a scholar at Dartmouth, he led the Huge Inexperienced to the Ivy League championship as quarterback in 1978. And over 22 seasons because the workforce’s soccer coach, he had a file of 117-101-2 and guided it to 5 convention titles, most just lately in 2021.
In 2010, with concussive trauma to soccer gamers turning into a well being disaster within the sport, Mr. Teevens eradicated tackling in practices, in recognition of analysis that confirmed most concussions didn’t happen throughout video games.
Opposite to issues from Mr. Teevens’s friends that gamers would lose their edge if there was no tackling in apply, he mentioned, they sharpened their abilities.
“It hasn’t damage our degree of play,” he instructed The New York Occasions in 2016. “It’s really made us a greater workforce.”
Concussions fell to a handful. Missed tackles dropped. And the Huge Inexperienced went 6-4 in 2010, an unlimited enchancment over its data of 0-10 in 2008 and 2-8 in 2009.
Mr. Teevens augmented the ban on tackling in 2015 with the Cellular Digital Participant, a remote-controlled robotic tackling dummy that he developed with Dartmouth’s Thayer Faculty of Engineering.
The robotic dummy can transfer at practically 20 miles an hour and may mimic a participant by weaving, slicing, and stopping and beginning on a discipline. It lets coaches educate correct tackling strategies with out exposing gamers to bodily contact with different gamers.
“Once I got here up with the concept, my workers thought I used to be nuts,” Mr. Teevens instructed N.F.L.com in 2016.
Quickly, nonetheless, about half the groups within the N.F.L. have been utilizing the system. Mr. Teevens, who’s considered one of 5 holders of the patent on the “cell system which simulates participant motion,” was chairman of MVP Robotics, the maker of the robotic dummy, which received an award from the N.FL. in 2017 for innovation in athlete security and efficiency.
Eugene Francis Teevens III was born on Oct. 1, 1956, in Pembroke, Mass., a suburb of Boston. His father, Eugene Francis Teevens II, was a supervisor of Pittsburgh Plate Glass and a graduate of Dartmouth. His mom, Mary (Horn) Teevens, was a homemaker.
He was Dartmouth’s quarterback from 1975 to 1978, when the workforce’s 6-1 convention file earned it the Ivy League title. He additionally performed ice hockey. He graduated in 1979 with a bachelor’s diploma in historical past.
He started his teaching profession because the offensive backfield coach at DePauw College in Indiana and later was named offensive coordinator at Boston College. He turned the top coach on the College of Maine in 1985, however after two seasons, when the college had a 13-9 file, he returned to Dartmouth as its head coach.
He left after 5 profitable seasons, which included two Ivy League titles, to educate at Tulane College in New Orleans. However his 11-45 file there led to his dismissal in 1996. He spent the following 5 seasons as an assistant on the College of Illinois and the College of Florida.
He returned to go teaching at Stanford in 2002, however he had no extra success there than he had at Tulane: The workforce went 10-23 in three seasons, and he was fired. In early 2005, Dartmouth rehired him as head coach.
He had dropping data in every of his first 5 seasons again with the Huge Inexperienced. However with higher recruiting, stronger assistant coaches and the ban on tackling, Dartmouth had solely two dropping seasons in its final 11 years underneath Mr. Teevens. He mentioned that ending tackling in apply helped him recruit, as a result of dad and mom have been frightened about their sons getting hit an excessive amount of.
His marketing campaign to ban tackling was copied by the remainder of the Ivy League throughout the common season. However the different faculties nonetheless allowed tackling throughout spring and preseason practices.
Terry O’Neil, the founding father of Observe Like Execs, a bunch that advocates decreasing collisions in youth soccer, mentioned that Mr. Teevens’s ban on tackling made him one thing of a unicorn.
“He’s the one coach in professional or school soccer — some highschool coaches have adopted his lead — to by no means deal with at any time within the full calendar,” Mr. O’Neil mentioned by telephone, referring to Division I faculties. “It’s a unprecedented routine.”
However there was not less than one school coach whose anti-tackling rule preceded Mr. Teevens’s. In 64 years of faculty teaching, together with 60 at Saint John’s College, a Division III faculty in Collegeville, Minn., John Gagliardi didn’t permit tackling in practices. He additionally received extra video games than any school coach.
Mr. Teevens was additionally recognized for hiring two girls who’ve gone on to jobs within the N.F.L. In 2018, Callie Brownson turned the primary full-time assistant in Division I school soccer when she was employed as Dartmouth’s offensive high quality management coach. When she left, Mr. Teevens employed Jennifer King to switch her. Ms. Brownson is now the assistant broad receivers coach for the Cleveland Browns, and Ms. King is the assistant operating backs coach of the Washington Commanders.
“He gave me my first large probability to chase a dream I had endlessly,” Ms. Brownson, mentioned in a tribute to Mr. Teevens on the Dartmouth soccer web site, including that “he selected to do the correct factor, and it modified my life endlessly.”
Mr. Teevens is survived by his mom; his spouse; his daughter, Lindsay Knittle; his son, Eugene IV; 4 grandchildren; his sisters, Deborah Teevens-Gangl, Moira Nobili and Tara Manne; and his brothers, Scott, Shaun, Christopher, Kevin and Tim.
In 2016, after the Ivy League voted on a tackling ban, Mr. Teevens testified at a listening to on concussions in youth sports activities held by the Home Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
“Except we alter the way in which we coach,” he mentioned, “we received’t have a sport to educate.”
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