.png&width=24&type=webp)
Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Soft Talker, Big Hitter
October 11, 2007 | Football
There's an Amish country in Ohio too, and just south of the Old Order farms and barns sits the town of Coshocton, a place where modern times meet small-town life in the form of high school football.
It was there that Princeton found one of its most consistent run stoppers, a South Korean by ancestry who, despite that fact, doesn't seem so out of place connected to those Amish farms. A stoic, hard-working, old-fashioned tough guy who spends his non-academic time watching film and his Saturdays making loads of plays and you never hear about it from him because, well, that's what he's supposed to be doing and why make a big deal out of it?
“I'm not outspoken about things,” says Doori Song, Princeton's starter at weakside inside linebacker for the 14th straight game today against Hampton. “I like to assume the coaches know I'll do the right thing for our team.”
“Doori is just a very humble kid,” says Princeton linebackers coach Don Dobes. “He does all of his talking on the field, and he talks awful loud with the way he hits you.”
It's not surprising for someone who was the first of his family born in the United States after his parents, Tae and Jin, moved from South Korea in the mid 1980's. The second oldest of four children, he was born in Los Angeles, his family's original American hometown before a move to Ohio in 1996. He visited his parents' homeland for the first time in 2002, the same year that South Korea was one of the hosts of soccer's World Cup along with Japan.
“That made it a pretty exciting time to be there,” Song says. “But I also got the chance to see relatives I'd never seen before and see the towns and places where my parents grew up. It was a great cultural experience.”
Truth be told, Song was a pretty big deal playing in Coshocton, a town of around 10,000 in Central Ohio about 75 miles from the state capital of Columbus and 100 miles from Cleveland.
Despite the fact that he didn't know anything about football until he moved to Ohio, his football profile fit the Division I-A mold more than the Ivy League one. He was a finalist for Ohio's “Mr. Football” Award. He started at linebacker in Ohio's North/South football all-star game. At 6-0 and on the way to a strong 230 pounds, he gained nearly 3,000 yards and scored 36 career touchdowns as a running back in high school, leading to I-A scholarship offers from places like Kentucky, Duke and Akron.
But Song, the salutatorian of his class and the president of his school's National Honor Society chapter who will apply to medical schools this year, had other ideas.
“The bigger programs recruited me as a fullback, but football-wise I wanted to go to a place where I could play linebacker. Plus, it was Princeton,” says Song, whose older sister Ahree graduated from Cornell's prestigious School of Hotel Administration in 2006.
His transition and his decision made sense both in the short-term and now in the long run. Admittedly a better running back than linebacker during his junior year inhigh school, Song tore three ligaments in his knee during the last game of 2002, a year in which he earned all-state honors as a running back. The next season, after two surgeries to repair those ligaments, he didn't have that same explosiveness on offense but still had an all-state season on defense.
In his first season as a starter at Princeton, the 2006 Ivy championship season, Song showed that his progression at linebacker had continued. He had 44 tackles, fourth on the team, and he had six tackles for losses. He was at the forefront of an opportunistic group, forcing a fumble at Cornell and recovering fumbles in wins against Penn and Dartmouth.
This season began with an eight-tackle performance against Lehigh, and his efforts then helped the Tigers win a tough game at nationally-ranked Lafayette the next week. Along with classmates Jon Stem, the team's defensive captain, and Tim Boardman, the team's leading tackler in the early season, Song has solidified the Princeton linebacking unit as one of the best in the Ivies.
“This group has established a good mentality,” Dobes says. “Tim has really developed into our emotional leader, and Jon has good smarts and the recognition you expect from a captain. Doori is the guy who brings the consistency on every play. Especially from tackle to tackle, he's our most consistent guy in the group.”
“I was pretty big-headed and had high expectations when I got here, and it was humbling to learn how hard you had to work to be successful,” Song says. “Playing behind guys like (Zak) Keasey, (Justin) Stull and Abi (Fadeyi) taught me a lot about how to play on the field and how to be in the locker room.”
Even with a championship ring in his dorm room, Song maintains that same humility midway through his senior season at Princeton. Today's game is Princeton's last before its six-game Ivy League swing to end the year, and, like he does with opposing ball carriers, the history major still has finishing strong on his mind.
“It might be hard to convince people of this, but I don't think anyone is content with last year's results,” he says. “It was a great year, but it was a shared championship and that's not as good as an outright one. I think that's still in the back of everyone's mind.”
Not unlike Doori Song, who may prefer to stay in the background but whose consistency ensures every one of his teammates and opponents remembers his name.
by David Rosenfeld