Larry Beavers recently signed with the NFL as a Car­olina Panthers

By Geoff Goyne

When fans look at the ros­ter for the Car­olina Pan­thers, the col­umn for the play­ers’ col­leges reads like a list of who’s who in Divi­sion I col­lege foot­ball. Play­ers from peren­nial pow­ers like Penn State, Miami, Vir­ginia Tech, Geor­gia and Florida State lit­ter the page. But there is one player whose school jumps off the page more than oth­ers as it is not one with which many Pan­thers fans are famil­iar: Wes­ley Col­lege. That player is a rookie free agent wide receiver, Larry Beavers.

Try­ing to fig­ure out just who Beavers is, the local media and fans have per­haps talked more about the speed­ster from Divi­sion III than any of the Pan­thers’ high paid draft picks. While Lee Corso, Kirk Herb­streit and Chris Fowler on ESPN’s “Col­lege Game­day” were dis­cussing the alma maters of many of the other rook­ies try­ing to make the team last fall, Beavers was doing what he does best — out­run­ning oppos­ing defenses on kick and punt returns as well as play­ing wide receiver.

Stats that look like they are straight out of a video game brought scouts from 28 NFL teams to Dover to look at the Wes­ley stand­out. Beavers aver­aged 39.5 yards per kick return and 29.2 yards per punt return. He brought back five kicks for touch­downs and added three more on punt returns. For good mea­sure, he aver­aged 19.9 yards per catch and scored six times as a wide receiver. He ended his career with 13 com­bined kick and punt return touch­downs, more than any player in NCAA his­tory — regard­less of division.

Beavers drew more atten­tion after he ran a 4.37 in the 40-yard dash at the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware’s Pro Day, but there is a video on YouTube of him rac­ing to a 4.28 dur­ing a work­out at Miller Sta­dium on Wesley’s cam­pus. The native of Annapo­lis, Mary­land put his speed on dis­play with the Wolver­ines’ track & field team too. He posted school records in the 100-meter (10.74 sec­onds), 110-meter hur­dles (15.33) and 200-meter (21.62). His times in both the 100 and 200 qual­i­fied him for the Divi­sion III NCAA Cham­pi­onships. One ques­tion scouts asked, how­ever, was why the senior’s receiv­ing yards and recep­tions went down from his junior year. But Wes­ley Head Coach Mike Drass had a sim­ple expla­na­tion. “He had eight return touch­downs, so we had less offen­sive pos­ses­sions. Plus, when he didn’t score, he short­ened the field on the pos­ses­sions we did have. There were just less yards for the offen­sive to cover because of what he did on spe­cial teams,” said Drass.

Through­out the spring, the Car­olina Pan­thers showed par­tic­u­lar inter­est in Beavers. They went as far as to send Spe­cial Teams Coor­di­na­tor Danny Cross­man to spend a day with him on cam­pus. The inter­est was mutual, as Car­olina was par­tic­u­larly attrac­tive to Beavers for one impor­tant rea­son. The team’s return man from 2008, Mark Jones, had signed a free agent deal with the Ten­nessee Titans, leav­ing the job up for grabs.

While Beavers’s name didn’t get called dur­ing the draft, sev­eral teams dialed his num­ber after­wards with inter­est in bring­ing him to camp. “Kansas City, Cincin­nati — they all wanted to [sign me],” Beavers told Mike Cranston of the Asso­ci­ated Press ear­lier this sum­mer. “But I wanted to be here [at Car­olina] from day one. There wasn’t a choice to go any­where else.”

So Beavers was off to Car­olina to chase every foot­ball player’s dream, a spot on an NFL ros­ter. He was also in exclu­sive com­pany among Divi­sion III play­ers. Only he and Wheaton’s Pete Itter­sagen were signed imme­di­ately after the draft. Beavers caught the eye of the Pan­thers’ estab­lished receiv­ing duo almost imme­di­ately. Muhsin Muham­mad got right to the point, telling Cranston, “He’s def­i­nitely fast.” All-Pro Steve Smith was quoted by Cranston as say­ing, “I think if you’re here and you have a uni­form, it doesn’t mat­ter what school you went to. Some of the best first-round draft picks gen­er­ally have flaked out.”

Because the Pan­thers and Beavers iden­ti­fied his biggest weak­ness to be his game as a wide receiver, the rookie is work­ing hard to improve. Mem­bers of the Wes­ley Ath­let­ics staff went to Char­lotte to watch a day of mini-camp when Beavers made a div­ing catch, draw­ing cheers from the coaches on the side­lines. A week later, Beavers proved Muham­mad right when he ran the team’s fastest 40-yard dash time. Aim­ing for a spot on the ros­ter, he returned to the Pan­thers for train­ing camp on August 3.

Beavers is just one of three for­mer Wes­ley stu­dent ath­letes on pro­fes­sional teams. Nor­man Bauer is cur­rently play­ing on the offen­sive line for the Albany Fire­birds of the Arena Foot­ball League 2. Defen­sive end Bryan Robin­son, who was in train­ing camp with the Ari­zona Car­di­nals last sum­mer, is cur­rently play­ing in AFL2 with the Man­ches­ter Wolves. W