Hanover
Zoom in past the Quakers’ defensive end and up close on No. 78, and the senior’s expression is clear. He’s grinning from ear to ear.
“I like messing around with the defense,” said Kaskey, whose 6-0 team hosts 3-3 Harvard this afternoon and hopes to beat its Ivy League arch-rival for the first time since 2003. “I’m a goofy guy who has fun playing football. I want to laugh right up until game time, because I like to play loose and at the end of the day, it’s a game.”
That being said, you don’t want to make Kaskey mad. At 6-foot-7 and 325 pounds, he’s not only immense, he’s agile. The Big Green tri-captain may be freckled and babyfaced, but he possess a mix of power, quickness and flexibility that allows him to slide with grace while pass blocking and to impersonate a bulldozer during running plays.
“I could put together a highlight tape from each game where he’s not just blocking a guy, but laying on top of him,” said offensive line coach Keith Clark, who’s fielded a steady stream of inquires from NFL scouts this year. “When you’re that size and can get your pad level down, you can generate explosiveness and some vicious blocks.”
Kaskey’s mother, Christy Kaskey, said her son was nearly 10 pounds at birth and “off the charts” as he grew. Matt is the second of four kids, two girls and two boys, in the Winnetka, Ill., family and competed in lacrosse, wrestling and track as well as on the gridiron. Still, he didn’t start for New Trier High’s football team until midway through his junior year — and even then only because of an injury to another player.
The Kaskeys spend time on Cape Cod each summer. It was while traveling between there and a summer football camp at another university that Matt asked his father, Bruce, to swing by Dartmouth, where his uncle, F.J. Fee, had lettered in football in 1991.
“It wasn’t an official visit; they pretty much knocked on the door and asked if someone could show them around,” said Christy Kaskey, whose 6-3 husband played at Ithaca (N.Y.) College. “Dartmouth wasn’t even calling him at that point.”
Kaskey’s other, eventual offers came from Cornell and Columbia, but he’d fallen in love with the Dartmouth campus and liked the coaching staff’s honesty in assessing him and selling the program.
He played in eight games as a freshman on Dartmouth’s 2015 Ivy League title team and started one contest against Columbia during which bad blood and penalty flags were flying, one of which he earned through unsportsmanlike conduct. It was clear Kaskey had the physical tools, but it was also apparent that he was a bit of a hothead.
“He’s an intelligent, introspective kid but he’s also very sensitive,” Clark said. “He wanted to know why, if a guy took a swing at him, couldn’t he hit back? He had to learn that lesson.”
Things boiled over during a Sept. 27, 2016, practice, when multiple fights erupted with Kaskey in their midst. Most such scuffles evaporate quickly, but this particular day featured genuine anger and Kaskey and several others had to be dragged apart while screaming insults. Clark said it’s a measure of his charge’s maturation that he’s developed thicker skin and no longer stews over perceived slights.
“He’s much less reactive,” the coach said. “Things used to really bother him and it would be 24 hours before he could get over it. I was hard on him in those situations, and it would be 72 hours before he got over me trying to help him get over it.”
Weight-room work has transferred some of Kaskey’s bulk from his waistline towards his shoulders, but the biggest transformation has been between his ears. He and Clark sat down early this year and Kaskey, a first team All-Ivy pick last season, said he wanted to be an All-American as a senior.
The coach explained that not only would there have to be a refinement in Kaskey’s lifestyle and a relentlessness in his work ethic, but a significant step-up in performance. At the end of spring practice, Kaskey was voted a team captain and Clark said his left tackle has accepted his challenge, often making multiple blocks during the same play while sprinting downfield.
“He’s a leader of the offense and I know the hours he puts in watching video,” said linebacker Jake Moen, who goes against Kaskey during pass-rush drills. “He’s quick enough on his feet that it’s like going up against someone half his size. He’s a really good athlete, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for that.”
Kaskey won last season’s Jake Crouthamel Award, given to the underclassman who contributes the most to Dartmouth’s success. Unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and practice skirmishes are a thing of his past. Yet he’s retained the playfulness that was once accompanied by a quick temper.
Before practice snaps, Kaskey will sometimes shimmy and shake to songs booming from the sideline speakers. He occasionally wanders into a pack of milling defenders between repetitions, just to absorb and dish out good-natured abuse.
“A lot of people think being captain is being serious and getting on guys to work harder,” Kaskey said. “But I got voted because I’m genuine and not too serious. When it’s time for business though, I’m always working.”
With a smile, no less.
Notes: Christy Kaskey invented and oversees a line of sports action figures called “Kaskey Kids” that have been featured nationally in toy stores and catalog and on television broadcasts and amazon.com. Matt, who was in elementary school when the figures debuted, is featured in some of the packaging photos. … Christy Kaskey said that her father, Frank Fee, briefly played football at Notre Dame before transitioning to the university’s rugby team. … By season’s end, it’s projected that Frank Fee will have seen 36 of his grandson’s 40 varsity games in person and that his wife, Barbara, will have attended 37. Much of the Kaskey clan will be in the Memorial Field stands for today’s contest. … Matt Kaskey’s paternal grandfather, Verne, played three sports and in the marching band at his small Iowa high school, occasionally making hurried transitions from athletic gear to musical garb. … Matt Kaskey, a history major, said one of his go-to karaoke songs is Miley Cyrus’ Party in the U.S.A.… The Kaskeys’ older daughter, Courtney, is a freshman lacrosse player at UMass. … Winnetka, population roughly 12,000, is 16 miles north of downtown Chicago and was ranked by Bloomberg Business News in 2017 as the 10th-richest U.S. town in average household income, at $312,000. … Winnetka is the setting for the 1990 Macualay Culkin film Home Alone, and notable people from there include actress Ann-Margaret, talk-show host Phil Donahue, actors Rock Hudson and Charlton Heston, musician Liz Phair and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.