Griffin, Gilmartin-Donohue enter 2010 season
Adding to our look at former Northeastern football players beginning the season with new teams, running back John Griffin and tight end Conor Gilmartin-Donohue are profiled in separate articles.
Griffin will be playing for the UMass Minutemen this season:
Griffin has moved 13 times in his 21 years, mostly the result of his stepfather’s job. So when the former Northeastern running back decided to transfer to the University of Massachusetts after the Huskies folded their football program after last season, two hours of highway didn’t seem like much.
“It seemed natural,’’ Griffin said. “Almost secondary.’’
UMass coach Kevin Morris is hoping Griffin will make the transition to the Minutemen offense as easily as he has settled into life in Amherst. Griffin’s arrival means UMass will replace one all-conference running back — the graduated Tony Nelson — with another. Morris thinks the duo of Griffin and Jonathan Hernandez will give the Minutemen one of the best running games in the Colonial Athletic Association.
- Boston Globe: He already has all the right moves
Gilmartin-Donohue made the long journey to North Texas:
If it wasn’t for a lucky set of circumstances, Gilmartin-Donohue might never have ended up at UNT, despite his efforts to contact just about anyone he could in an effort to find a school at which to spend his senior year.
Gilmartin-Donhue sent highlight tapes of his junior season to about 50 schools across the country playing at every level from Division II to FCS to FBS. One of the schools he sent tape to was Division II power North Alabama, where John Pont was an assistant coach.
Pont brought the tape to UNT, where he worked as a graduate assistant coach last spring. The Mean Green’s coaching staff quickly recognized Gilmartin-Donohue.
The article profiling Gilmartin-Donohue has an interesting note about how Northeastern is accommodating players who wish to play their senior year, then return to NU in the spring to finish their degrees:
Northeastern set up a way its seniors could transfer, play their final college season, return in the spring and use the credits they earn at other schools toward graduating from the prestigious private school in Boston.
Gilmartin-Donohue is taking advantage of that opportunity in a part of the country he had never seen before visiting this summer.
- Denton Record-Chronicle: Tight end finds new home at UNT
