Granted, Dodge knew how to kick a ball, having played sweeper on his high
school soccer team at the New Hampton School in New Hampshire. But he
had never suited up for football, a sport to which he was undeniably drawn.
“There was something that always intrigued me from being a fan of football,” he
says. “I would watch the kickers and say to myself, ‘I think I can do that.’” After
an informal tryout at St. Lawrence, football coach Mark Raymond asked Dodge
to sign paperwork and invited him to the next day’s practice.
Dodge says he was a little surprised because he never had a particularly
strong leg in high school. “When I called my high school soccer coach to tell
him I was kicking for the football team [at St. Lawrence], he laughed at me,” re-
calls Dodge. “There were kids on my team who were much stronger and could
kick farther, and he said, ‘Why are you doing that? You’re not even that good.’”
Dodge spent his first year on the team focusing on field goals, extra points and
kickoffs.
After learning the rules and refining his technique in the first season, Dodge
emerged as a leading kicker in the league. By 2010, just one year after he was
offered a spot on the team, he was racking up notable statistics. Dodge led the
Liberty League in field goal percentage at 85, led his own team in scoring with
35 points, and recorded the longest field goal that year in Liberty League play at
47 yards. The highlight of his career: a 32-yard field goal in a tightly contested
game against Hobart, a perennial powerhouse that had beaten St. Lawrence
for nearly two decades. At home in front of a Parents’ Weekend crowd, Dodge
took the kick late in the fourth quarter to lead the Saints to a three-point victory
over archrival Hobart.
Football and ski racing have more in common than you think, says Dodge. As
a kicker, he spent his downtime on the sidelines reflecting on the mental aspect
of the tasks that lay ahead, very similar to ski races in which such a short period
of the day is devoted to actual performance. “You only have two runs in a ski
race, and I only made maybe five-to-seven kicks in a football game,” he says,
“so controlling that mental talk-back is critical [in both sports].”
Despite his success on the football field, competing in both sports at such a
high level came into conflict this fall for Dodge, who ended up devoting himself
entirely to the ski team. “We had a kicker who had missed the previous season
Controlling the mental talk-back is critical in
both football and ski racing, says Dodge.
and a half due to injury who was returning, and I felt responsible for my role
with the ski team to lead practices in the fall,” says Dodge. “It was a very tough
decision, but I felt I was more needed on the ski team than the football team
this year.”
Head alpine coach Willi Steinrotter says he is thrilled to have Dodge at the
helm of his team this year. “Matt has been the ideal student-athlete in our pro-
gram,” he says, “and has developed into a great team leader.”
