By Alex Kantor, Sports Information Director

Last year, the Amherst College football community gathered to remember the legendary late football coach and professor James Ostendarp. This year the school, the program, friends and family will gather to honor "The Darp," for all time, with the Professor James E. Ostendarp Bronze Plaque Memorial.

This weekend, at Amherst's annual Homecoming celebration, guests will gather beside the home team's bleachers half an hour before kickoff to dedicate a new landmark at Pratt Field. The nation's third-oldest NCAA football playing site is sure to be a fixture at Amherst College for many years to come, and alongside these hallowed grounds will now stand a memorial of the man who made the program special.

There are many big games, winning moments and stories that help explain the role of athletics at Amherst College, but nothing serves as a better reminder than the man who was the face of the quintessential team at Amherst for 33 years. 

The Darp was not just the most winning coach in Amherst football history (168-91-5)—he left a footprint on a number of other programs at the college. Specifically, the Darp left a lifelong impression on the 1962 National Championship lacrosse team. Dr. Laurence Beck '62 was a captain on that team and recalls the guidance that the team received from the coach:

Aside from his well-known football accomplishments, Coach Ostendarp was instrumental in the early development of the best lacrosse team in Amherst history. The Class of 1962 entered Amherst in the fall of 1958; the following spring, he was our freshman lacrosse coach. There were only five or six members of the class who had played lacrosse in high school (at Deerfield and Governor Dummer); the rest of us had never picked up a stick or seen a game. The Darp taught many of us the basic skills of the game and encouraged us to be as good as we could be. He focused on the fundamentals of stick handling and team play. The following three years, we built on those fundamentals and created a team that got better and better, under the coaching leadership of Dwight "Scully" Scandrett. In our senior year, we had a team of seasoned seniors (all of whom had benefited from the Darp's influence during freshman year) with the infusion of a number of very strong underclassmen. That year, 1962, Larry Beck and Ralph Ardiff co-captained a formidable team, with strong scoring potential and a stingy defense. We went into the final game against Williams undefeated and untied. We won the game 11-9. As a result of this record, the team won the National Class B Lacrosse Championship and remains to this day the only undefeated, untied lacrosse team in Amherst's history. On this 45th anniversary of that national championship, all of us feel that Coach Jim Ostendarp was a major contributor to that successful season: a marvelous man who taught many of us the skills and attitudes that allowed us to develop into a national power.

Separate from his on-field successes as a coach, the Darp was crucial in the development of the academically minded student-athlete at Amherst. "The Darp stood for everything that we still preach to our players now," says current head football coach E.J. Mills. "Amherst football has a great tradition of having the finest student-athletes in the country, and when you think about the overall program in this era, it is synonymous with one man: Jim Ostendarp."

Sean Clancy '78 played for the Darp at Amherst and adds that he has "never met anyone who loved Amherst and embodied the mission of the college more." Clancy explains that the Darp taught him about "the importance of family, hard work, fair play, artistic expression, intellectual curiosity and service to the community." In Clancy's view the Darp was a perfect personification of the Amherst mission statement as he "did, indeed, lead a principled life of consequence."

Each Friday evening during the football season, Coach Mills gathers the Jeffs together for words of wisdom and a recap of the following day's game plan. Starting this Friday, before the 2007 Homecoming match-up against NESCAC and Little Three archrival Wesleyan, Mills and the Lord Jeffs will start the new tradition of meeting at the Darp Memorial for these pre-game talks.

From 1959 to 1991, Amherst football had a single face: that of the Darp. That face, and everything for which the man stood, will forever be beside Pratt Field, overseeing the program that he helped build.