Yale’s Grooms groomed from young age for gridiron success
Leading a team onto the football field is nothing new for Yale sophomore quarterback Nolan Grooms. He’s only been doing it since he was 3 or 4.
“My dad was a high school football coach for 24, 25 years,” Grooms said earlier this week on Yale’s weekly media conference. “I’ve been going to football games every Friday night since I was like 2, 3 years old. I remember running out with the team when I was like 3 years old, 4 years old.
“I take pride in I’ve never missed a game on Friday night that he coached. So it’s been pretty cool to grow up around that environment.”
Yale coach Tony Reno said after last week’s win over Penn that one reason he had so much confidence in Grooms’ taking over behind center was because he was the son of a coach. Grooms gets his second start Saturday at the Yale Bowl against Columbia (noon, ESPN+).
“He’s got a very evenkeeled demeanor,” Reno said. “He’s a very competitive, fiery guy but also doesn’t let things bother him. When things go good or bad, he’s the same guy all the time, which serves him really well at the position.”
After a comeback fell short at UConn two weeks ago, Yale beat Penn last weekend as Grooms turned in a performance that got him named the Ivy League’s offensive player of the week.
He led the team in rushing with running back Zane Dudek out, threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more. Reno said Grooms’ execution is at another level from where it was before the season.
Grooms got occasional work in three games behind starter Griffin O’Connor, played about a full half in two other games, then got the whole game last weekend. On 46 carries, he has averaged over 5 yards.
“The D-line likes to joke around because in practice, we’ll get right up next to a sack, and then he’ll just outrun us by 20 yards,” Yale defensive lineman Reid Nickerson said. “We’ll just be screaming ‘sack’ the whole time, as if we could have ever caught him in an actual game.”
After his family moved from Georgia to South Carolina, Grooms came north to play four years at Taft. He said his father had sent a player there for a postgraduate year, so there was already a connection to Taft coach Tyler Whitley.
“I didn’t know anything about the school,” Grooms said. “I knew they had struggled a little bit in the football program. But once I got there, we realized we had some talent. So we got the ball rolling over there.
“Taft is pretty much just like a smaller version of Yale, a huge stress on academics year-round, talented people from all around the world, which was a really cool experience for me. And it definitely taught me I had to study a little bit to succeed in school, which has translated here to Yale pretty well.”
The Bulldogs (3-3, 2-1) are one of five teams within a game of the league lead three games in. Columbia (5-1, 2-1) is another, coming off a 19-0 win over Dartmouth, which had been unbeaten. Princeton is the only remaining undefeated Ivy team after knocking off Harvard last week.
Former Hand defensive lineman Ben Corniello, a sophomore, has been in on 18 tackles for the Lions.