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A L E X T HOM A S YALE FOOTBALL When Tom Williams was introduced in January 2009 as the new head football coach at Yale University, he stepped behind a lectern set up in a conference room at historic Ray Tompkins House, looked out at the gathered media and various members of the Yale athletic and academic communities, and proudly announced in his confident and boisterous voice, “Welcome to a new era in Yale football.” Williams later went on to add that Yale’s primary objectives were going to be, number one, to win Ivy League championships, and number two, beat Harvard, “And if we take care of those two things, we’ll be in a pretty good spot.” At that moment in t ime, Alex was anything but in a g ood spot. It was midway through his freshman year, and his life was in disarray. He’d just endured a terribly disappointing first season with the Bulldogs, when he’d descended from record-setting, much-ballyhooed local high school superstud recruit to benchwarmer on a middling Ivy League team, a comedown of epic proportion that dealt a m ental blow to his confidence. Now, Jack Siedlecki, the head coach who had recruited him, was retiring, and most of his staff was being replaced, so Alex would have to start from scratch and try to impress Williams and his assistants who had no emotional attachment to any of the holdover players. But none of that was even Alex’s primary concern. As Alex listened to Williams outline his plan to get the Bulldog program back on track, he knew he needed to get himself on track in the classroom before he could even entertain thoughts of helping the new coach achieve those gridiron goals. As the fall term ended and Alex wobbled wearily back home for Christmas break to Ansonia, Connecticut, fifteen miles east of the New Haven campus, he was officially on academic probation because he hadn’t completed the required course work for a s emester as outlined by the Committee of Academic F A L L 78 Progress. It’s no secret that at many Division I schools, academic problems have a way of getting swept underneath the carpet, but that wasn’t the case atYale. Alex had dropped two classes during the first semester, an intro to microeconomics course and a first-year English course. Also, while he received a passing grade in Spanish, he did not earn the credit and to this day, it has never been fully explained to him why. You need to earn at least three credits per semester to stay off probation and eligible to play sports, and he only had one, so the only way he would be able to return to the team for his sophomore year was to make up those lost credits in the spring, and then in the summer. “That first semester was tough for me because I was totally unprepared for what to expect here,” Alex said. “I was in trouble, and that was definitely one of the hardest times of my life. There were many times when I didn’t think I was going to make it here.” Had anyone who knows Alex heard him utter that comment, they would have gasped, because Alex had never failed at anything; not in the classroom, and certainly not on the football field. At Ansonia High School, Alex was an honor student who routinely compiled a ninety-plus average. The SAT gave him a little trouble, but he kept hammering away at it the way he used to pound on opposing defenders as Ansonia’s star running back, and he finally produced a score of about 1,200 (he can’t recall the exact number) that, along with his grade point average, class rank, and football prowess, would help in his quest to go to the one university he was aiming for: Yale. “I took school for granted when I wa s younger because it came pretty naturally to me, and when it got a little harder inhigh school I put more time in,” he said. “I always had a desire to succeed in school. I mean, why not do good in school? You’re there for that reason, to learn.” As competitive as he was in class, it didn’t compare to the brilliance he showed on Friday nights at Ansonia’s Jarvis Stadium where Alex became the most statistically accomplished player in the...

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