Smith, Grace Join Football Staff

HANOVER, N.H. — Buddy Teevens, the Robert L. Blackman Head Football Coach at Dartmouth College, has announced that Ahmaad Smith and Mickey Grace have joined the coaching staff for the 2021 season.

Smith, who joined the Dartmouth football staff originally as a defensive assistant, has been promoted to the nickelbacks and assistant secondary coach. He replaces Big Green alumnus Kyle Cavanaugh '09, who stepped down from his post after four years with the team.

Smith spent the past three years as the defensive backs coach at his alma mater, Tennessee State, under head coach Rod Reed. Prior to his return to the Tigers, he coached the defensive backs at Catawba College in North Carolina for three years, producing two Super Region defensive backs, one of whom was a second-team All-American.

From 2012-14, Smith was the defensive backs assistant at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where he mentored five all-conference defensive backs. He also was a runner-up for the AFCA Division III Asssistant Coach of the Year in 2013.

A two-time recipient of the Bill Walsh Internship Program, Smith spent time with the Tennessee Titans in 2015 and the Minnesota Vikings in 2017. He also completed an internship with the Calgary Stampede of the CFL in 2016, and was a 2017 NFL and NCAA Coaching Academy Participant as well as a 2018 AFCA 35 Under-35 Coaches Leadership Institute Participant.

Smith graduated from Tennessee State in 2006 with a degree in business information systems and was a four-time letter winner on the football team. He then spent five years playing professional football in the Canadian Football League — BC Lions and Toronto Argonauts — and the Arena Football League, most notably with the Iowa Barnstormers.

Grace, meanwhile, joins a growing group of female personnel that have been a part of the football staff. She will serve as the defensive assistant, the same capacity in which Jennifer King served during the 2019 season. King became the first Black female assistant coach in NFL history with the Washington Football Team in 2020.

Most recently, Grace served as a scouting apprentice with the Los Angeles Rams while continuing her role as a math teacher and defensive line coach at Mastery Charter North High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she worked since 2016. She has also supported the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a training camp intern.

A 2014 graduate of West Chester University, Grace played rugby while earning her bachelor's degree in psychology. She played football throughout her days as a student at the now-shuttered Germantown High in Philadelphia as well.

Grace is the third female assistant to be hired for a season under Coach Teevens. Prior to King, Callie Brownson — now with the Cleveland Browns — was the first full-time female football coach at the Division I level for the 2018 campaign.