Hello, ’02s. Remember the glittery sparkling football that Lady Gaga caught as she leapt off the stage at the end of the Super Bowl halftime show? That ball was skillfully tossed to her by none other than our classmate Brian Mann. Brian, who was quarterback of the Dartmouth football team and holds the Dartmouth single-season record for passing yards, works at Rice University in Houston as associate athletics director. Just a few days before the Super Bowl, Lady Gaga’s team contacted the Rice athletics department looking for someone to make the throw. Brian was a natural choice, having prior performance experience as Adam Sandler’s stunt double in the remake of The Longest Yard and as quarterbacks in the films Invincible starring Mark Wahlberg and The Game Plan with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. After a few days of rehearsals and fine-tuning, the play was set for Super Bowl Sunday. “I was nervous I suppose. We had practiced it so many times, I felt like I knew where I had to put the football for her to catch it,” said Mann. “But there was one point during the show, where they tell everybody in the stadium to turn on their flashlights on their phones as a way to light up the stadium, and when that happened I realized just how big 70,000 people can look. Then I decided at that point to put my head down and worry about what I had to do and not look at the crowd.” The play was a great success and Mann came away from the experience with a new respect for Lady Gaga, “What I found one of the coolest things to be was the way she empowers young girls. You could hear that in her voice and what she said to them, to be themselves, to be individuals and love who they are.” Mann said the performer was very friendly and down to earth and it was an experience he won’t soon forget!

Ariel Diaz and his wife welcomed a daughter, Sophie Mia Diaz, on November 26, 2016. Sophie is doing well and the happy family lives in New York, where Ariel is starting his third startup.

Alice Lam, and her husband, Jeff, welcomed their son, Alon Choi Federman, on December 13, 2016. Claude, his fluffy Samoyed older brother, is excited to play ball with Alon in Central Park in the years to come.

Adam Green and his wife, Stacey (Morris) Green ’99, welcomed daughter Juliet last March, joining her brothers, Andy (6) and Dylan (3). The family lives outside of Boulder, Colorado, and Adam works as a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, where he runs a lab investigating new treatments for childhood brain tumors. Adam and Aaron Fiske have set up their own little Patriots Fan Club West and get their families together many Sundays during football season.

Thanks for all the updates! Keep sending them along.

—Anne Cloudman, 315 West 99th St., Apt. 2D, New York, NY 10025; acloudman@gmail.com