HANOVER — When Dartmouth College linebacker Danny Cronin chased down Cornell quarterback Jameson Wang and sacked him for a nine-yard loss late in the first half last Saturday, it was the biggest play of the junior’s collegiate career.
But with that sack, Cronin helped continue a long legacy of impact players Big Green defensive coordinator Don Dobes has recruited to Dartmouth from his hometown of Chicago and its surroundings.
The 2022 Big Green have five defensive players from Illinois, the most of any Ivy League team, and all are from suburban Chicago — an area generally regarded to be rivaled by only Ohio when it comes to producing football talent in the Midwest.
“It’s a great football state, and the kids there will travel. They don’t mind the cold, which is nice,” Dobes said. “Very few things intimidate a kid from the Chicagoland area. They’re used to being brought up in a manner where toughness is important.”
It all starts with Dobes, who grew up in Brighton Park on the city’s South Side. He called football an important part of his Catholic upbringing, although because his grade school could not afford equipment for tackle football, Dobes played flag football before high school. He attended St. Rita of Cascia High School on the Southwest Side, a founding member of the Chicago Catholic League.
St. Rita regularly sent football players to schools in the Big Ten, SEC and ACC, but Division I football was not in the cards for Dobes, who won a Division II national championship in 1975 with Northern Michigan before transferring to D-III Illinois Wesleyan.
“It was neat to meet guys I had played against in high school,” Dobes said. “It (also) broadened my perspective, that there was more to football than just Chicago-area guys. There were some guys in central Illinois and what they like to call downstate.”
Dobes has not spent any of his adult life in Chicago, but he has recruited the area at nearly every stop of his coaching career, which started as a graduate assistant at DePauw in Greencastle, Ind. It was at DePauw where Dobes first met Buddy Teevens, a running backs coach at the time, who was also beginning his coaching journey after graduating from Dartmouth.
From Penn to Rice to Temple to Princeton to Dartmouth, Dobes has brought in Illinois talent wherever he’s gone. Those he has helped bring to Hanover include three-time all-Ivy League first team linebacker Jack Traynor, 2018 first-team all-Ivy defensive lineman Rocco Di Leo and captains Stephen Dazzo (2014) and Will McNamara (2015). Di Leo’s younger brother, Luca, is now a fifth-year on the Big Green’s defensive line.
“I knew about Jack Traynor; he was a beast here,” Cronin said. “He sold me on the whole idea that you can achieve everything here at Dartmouth, you can go to the NFL and you can also get an Ivy League degree, which opens doors after football. Coach Dobes was probably the most straightforward coach with me in recruiting.”
The frequent recruiting trips Dobes makes to Chicago also give him the chance to visit friends and family — he said there are some pizza places his friend group often visits. His connections in the area have helped him find summer jobs and internships for the Chicagoland recruits as well.
Cronin and Di Leo both grew up in the western suburb of Elmhurst but attended different Catholic high schools — Cronin stayed in his home parish and went to IC Catholic Prep, while the Di Leo brothers played for St. Ignatius near downtown Chicago.
“Chicago guys are guys who stick together and look out for one another,” Cronin said. “Luca Di Leo, he was really helpful to me my freshman year, hauling stuff back and forth for me and being there if I had questions. There’s definitely a connection among the Chicago guys helping out each other along the way.”
Dartmouth’s defense this year also features sophomore linebacker Braden Mullen, who started three games while junior Macklin Ayers was out with an injury; senior lineman Hank Knez, who replaced the injured Di Leo in the starting lineup against Columbia, Harvard and Princeton; and freshman linebacker Thaddeus Gianaris, who made his first collegiate tackle in the Harvard game.
Mullen attended Chicago Catholic League powerhouse Loyola Academy in north suburban Wilmette, while Knez and Gianaris came from strong suburban public schools — Glenbard West in Glen Ellyn and Maine South in Park Ridge, respectively.
“They’re really a gritty, tough group that has good football intelligence and a great desire to prepare to be the best,” Dobes said. “They put a lot of time and effort into making sure that they’re prepared for the game and what’s going to happen on game day. It’s a love affair with the game of football.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.