All-Ivy, All-America, All Abuhoff

By Bruce Wood

The fact that every team in the Ivy League has its starting quarterback returning this fall - with six of the QBs having earned some type of all-conference recognition - is a nightmare for defensive coordinators around the Ancient Eight.
But it's a dream-come-true for Shawn Abuhoff.
The 5-foot-11, 190-pound corner from Hialeah, Fla., begins his senior season with 10 career interceptions and needs just four more to break the school record of 13 shared by Scott Sims '89, and Lloyd Lee '98, who went on to play for the San Diego Chargers.
There's a huge Catch-22 standing in is way, however.
He may have gotten too good to break the record.
A starter since his freshman year, Abuhoff was credited with eight passes defensed in his first season, then 14 more as a sophomore. Last fall, however, his total remained at 14. Why the plateau? Offensive coordinators and quarterbacks wisely decided not to challenge him very often, with Abuhoff making the most of his chances to disrupt opposing offenses.
Abuhoff is hopeful that the wealth of strong arms returning there will be a few more opportunities for him this fall.
"For the first time since I've been here there's a chance that the ball is going to be in the air 20 to 30 times a game," he said. "I relish it. This is what I've been waiting for, any sort of opportunity.
"I am wondering if teams are going to throw on my side or not, but the thing is to not be discouraged if they don't. I've gone through practice, I've done everything I need, and I know my job. If my job is to lock down my side and get one ball thrown my way I've got to pick that one ball. Having a couple of dropped picks? I can't let it happen. Every opportunity I can get I've got to make the best of it."
While he was a member of the 2009 All-Ivy League first team as a defensive back, it is what Abuhoff has done with the ball in his hands that earned him not only a second berth on the All-Ivy first team, but also a spot as a return specialist on the first All-America team as chosen by The Sports Network/Fathead.com.
Last year Abuhoff brought a punt back 82 yards for a touchdown against Harvard, another 76 yards for a TD against Brown and a third 41 yards for a score against Yale. Just two FCS players in the country returned a pair of punts for touchdowns. Only Abuhoff returned three.
For good measure he also had a 56-yard interception return for a touchdown, making him the third-leading scorer on the Dartmouth team after tailback Nick Schwieger and kicker Foley Schmidt, and the 13th-leading scorer in the Ivy League among non-kickers. For good measure, he was third in the nation in punt return average (17.2) and 21st in kickoff return average (26.4).
But for as much as he enjoys being known as a return man, Abuhoff is well aware that it sometimes overshadows his performance as a cover corner. Despite opponents' aversion to throwing his way, last year he topped the Ivy League and was seventh nationally with 1.4 passes broken up per game.
"Punt return is one of the most fun things in the game to me and I love it," he said. "But I mean, I am a skill player. I can play corner. I can play anything that you want me to play. I want people to think, 'Hey, he is a multi-threat.'"
And a busy multi-threat he should be with all the quality quarterbacks returning in the Ivy League this fall, according to Teevens.
"It's a good year to be a corner, and to have a corner like Abuhoff," the coach said. "People know who he is and what he is capable of doing. We need him to play at a very, very high level for us not just on special teams but at defensive back, where he will take a lot more snaps.
"One of the things he's learned, and (coach) Sam McCorkle has done a good job with him on it, is he doesn't have to do everything. There's a frustration sometimes that you have with gifted guys who want to win so badly that they try to do their job and two or three others. That ends up hurting their performance, but I think he has really settled in."
Abuhoff comes into his senior season after spending the bulk of the summer interning in the marketing department of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
"It was an unbelievable education," he said. "You had to have a little bit of accounting. You had to have marketing. You had to have business sense. You had to have people skills. It was a lot of fun."
Some of that fun was even on the field, and he has the NFL lockout that made his first few weeks in Pittsburgh pretty quiet, to thank for that. With current players unavailable to work the Steelers' youth, fantasy and women's summer camps, Abuhoff not only was charged with helping track down former players to help out, but ended up alongside them as a counselor of sorts.
"In the first camp for men I worked corners," he said. "The next camp they didn't have anybody with the receivers, so that's what I did. I think I threw like 1,000 passes to these little kids. By the end of that I was walking sideways because of my shoulder.
"It is unbelievable how much enthusiasm that city has for the Steelers," continued Abhuoff, who lived with his sister in Pittsburgh and has been rooting for the team that represents his mother's hometown for about as long as he's been following football.
"Even up here I get a lot of heat about that," he said with a laugh. "Everyone says 'bandwagon' and all that stuff about Super Bowls and that's why I like them. When it comes down to it I didn't start watching football until 7th or maybe even 8th grade and at that time the Steelers were one of the prominent teams. Maybe at the start it was a bandwagon thing. That's why I like Duke basketball.
"Sure, I like the Dolphins. They are my home team. But I am a Steeler fan."
A top junior tennis player who ran on state championship 4x100 and 4x400 relays at Dade Christian, Auhoff is interested in working in sports after his (football) playing days are over. Whenever that is.
"That was my idea going to Pittsburgh," he said. "Trying to see the business side of things. One of my goals that I might like to look into at some point is trying to be an athletic director. Or working on the business end of sports.
"Whatever I do, I want to be around sports. I love sports, and even if my job or my career takes me away from it, I still want to give back and hope to be around sports my entire life."
The hope, of course, is that he's in a uniform again next year.
Teevens thinks that with his combination of speed, athletic ability and intelligence Abuhoff will have a good shot at getting into an NFL camp next summer. But that's not foremost in the corner/return specialist's mind these days.
"That's the dream," he said. "That's a dream come true for any football player. You don't play this game without trying to be the best. You hope you're on people's radar.
"But at the end of the day I'm here, I am focusing on the task at hand. After the season is done I can worry about all that."

A veteran writer and observer of Dartmouth athletics, Bruce Wood launched a web site in 2005, www.biggreenalert.com, specializing in Big Green football news coverage.

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Players Mentioned

Shawn Abuhoff

Foley Schmidt

Nick Schwieger

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