HANOVER — Jace Henry’s high school football games frequently featured snipers on top of buses overlooking the field. You know, in case a polar bear ever happened to wander onto the playing surface.
Henry, now a junior tight end at Dartmouth College, played at Lathrop High School in Fairbanks, Alaska, where he was the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior in 2019. After his freshman season at Dartmouth was canceled due to COVID-19 and he touched the ball just three times as a sophomore, Henry has broken out this year, starting the last five games at tight end and also taking occasional direct snaps in the wildcat formation.
“The state of Alaska is a great state, and they really keep track of all the athletes who leave the state,” Henry said. “That’s something I very much appreciate, people back home keeping track and watching my progress. I’m really grateful for the community that I came from and how they stick with me as I keep going.”
Growing up in a military family, Henry moved all over the U.S. before settling in Fairbanks prior to starting eighth grade. Henry was born in Norfolk, Va., and his family also lived in California, Alabama and South Carolina before his father was stationed at Fort Wainwright, an army base in Fairbanks.
Henry played baseball in the spring of his freshman year before switching to track and field, where he became a team captain. But football was always his primary focus, even in a far-flung state where coaches may not always think to recruit.
“In my case, it benefited me a lot because I got to meet a lot of different people,” Henry said. “Living on military bases, I got to meet people from different backgrounds, so I had a pretty good worldview. Recruitment-wise, it was definitely harder because people don’t really think of Alaska for football, so that was more of a challenge.”
Alaska’s size and lack of population density meant long road trips for Lathrop, including plane flights when the Malemutes played in Kodiak or Juneau. Henry, a dual-threat quarterback, led Lathrop to the state finals his senior year, rushing for 1,573 yards and 23 touchdowns while passing for 1,296 yards and 14 scores. He also made 16 tackles and averaged 36.8 yards per punt.
But even with those stats, Henry was not seriously recruited until November of his senior year — after the season was over. He made visits to Dartmouth and Montana State, a frequent participant in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, but Dartmouth won out due to its academic reputation.
Big Green coach Buddy Teevens visited Henry in January to make his recruiting pitch to his family, braving the darkness and bitter cold.
“I was in San Diego the night before, and I flew up and I had a golf jacket on,” Teevens said. “I get off the plane, and I go and get my rental car, and you have to plug it in or it won’t start. It was cold, and it was pitch-black.”
Henry committed to Dartmouth without a clear position, but with his size, strength and speed, the Big Green were bound to find a place for him. Listed as a tight end and a quarterback, Henry saw the field in seven games in 2021 but received just one carry each in three of them, rushing for a total of six yards.
With fifth-year tight end J.J. Jones moving on, though, Henry jumped to the top of the depth chart alongside Joe Kramer. And he wasted no time making an impact, catching his first collegiate pass in the season opener against Valparaiso and dragging defenders with him to the one-yard line for a 42-yard gain. The play stood as Dartmouth’s longest completion of the year for another six weeks.
Henry scored his first touchdown at the college level later that day, plunging in from the one on a direct snap to cap a victory.
“He’s one of the hardest-working kids I’ve dealt with in my short coaching career,” said Wendy Laurent, who arrived this year as the Big Green’s tight ends coach. “He’s going to bring it every day, and that’s what everybody on the staff loves about him.”
After the strong start, Henry’s production stalled, but he made major strides as a blocker — as a quarterback in high school, he rarely had to block before coming to Hanover. His next catch, though, didn’t come until Oct. 15 against New Hampshire, and he made just one reception in each of the next two games as well. But he had a career day last week at Princeton, with his two biggest plays coming back-to-back late in the first quarter.
With Dartmouth down by 14 points but at the Tigers’ 31-yard line, Henry found an opening in Princeton’s zone coverage and got a hand on junior quarterback Dylan Cadwallader’s pass, then gathered it in for a gain of 25 yards. On the next play, he took the wildcat snap and followed his blockers into the end zone for a six-yard touchdown. Henry made another acrobatic catch in the second quarter, reaching back above his head to haul in a 26-yard pass from Cadwallader along the left sideline.
“A lot of stuff worked out exactly how the coaches drew it up,” Henry said. “It was amazing to be able to get the ball and have those opportunities.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.