Hall of Fame
Michael Dante Mori is one of the most accomplished individual men’s rugby players in the program’s 50-yearplus history. He was a four-time All-New England Collegiate Team selection and a two-time All-Vermont Men’s Team selection. As a freshman, he was selected to the All-New England Collegiate team, touring Australia and New Zealand. In his junior year, Mori was the first Norwich player selected to the USA Rugby East Collegiate All-Star program. Mori never missed a game in the eight Division I seasons (Fall and Spring) at Norwich. He also served as a player/ coach during his sophomore and junior year seasons when the program was without a head coach.
Mori was an active member of the Department of Communications, participating in the Guidon campus newspaper, radio station, and TV show. In his senior year, he served as the producer for the “Norwich Today” cable program. One of his segments was selected as a National finalist for the inaugural MTV/National Association of Broadcasters, College TV Programming awards. Mori was awarded the Wagner Award for Communications Excellence. In the summers, Mori served as a police officer in Maine and completed Officer’s Candidate School for the US Marine Corps resulting in his selection for the Marine Corps Law program and commission as a Second Lieutenant.
After graduating from Norwich, Mori attended Western New England School of Law and continued to play rugby with the Springfield men’s rugby team, captaining the team in 1993-94 when they finished second in the New England Division II Championship.
Mori went on to complete a 21-year military career with the Marine Corps as a Judge Advocate serving as Defense Counsel, Prosecutor, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, Staff Judge Advocate for the Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward, Al Asad, Iraq) and Military Judge. Notably, in 2003, Mori was the first lawyer assigned by the Department of Defense to represent a Guantanamo Bay detainee for the first military commission since World War II. He documented his unique experience in his book, In the Company of Cowards.
“I am so grateful for the opportunities and values that Norwich provided me,” Mori said. “I would not have been able to accomplish anything without my teammates and the Norwich ruggers that played before me. The bonds of friendship that still exist 30 years later is testament to the unique Norwich experience.”
Following his military retirement, Mori moved to Melbourne, Australia and worked in the social justice legal arena where he co-founded/ was a board member for the National Justice Project, a not-for-profit legal service advancing human rights by representing vulnerable individuals who would otherwise be unable to find legal representation.
Later, Mori returned to New England where he lives in Andover, N.H. with his spouse, Dara. They have twin boys, Dante and Enrico, who are attending Proctor Academy, and a younger son, Tony.
