Foot­ball

BY GEOFF GOYNE

Bran­don Wright

MOST FANS WOULD not have pre­dicted the sea­son that the foot­ball team pro­duced if you had told them that 18 student-athletes would go down with season-ending injuries. Even more remark­able about the team’s suc­cess was the fact that many of the injured play­ers had titles such as All-American, All-Region and All-Conference attached to their names.

Despite the set­backs, the Wolver­ines showed they had as much depth as any team in the nation. Wes­ley over­came the rash of injuries to pro­duce the program’s sec­ond straight unde­feated reg­u­lar sea­son. The team not only earned a bid to the NCAA Cham­pi­onships for the sixth straight year, but was awarded the top over­all seed in the tournament.

That meant the Wolver­ines had home field advan­tage through­out the play­offs, and Wes­ley holds some of the best home field sta­tis­tics in small col­lege foot­ball. The Wolver­ines rolled through the first three rounds, claim­ing the NCAA South Region Cham­pi­onship and the right to host peren­nial con­tender Wis­con­sin– White­wa­ter in the national semi­fi­nals. Wes­ley took an early lead in the game, but the even­tual national cham­pion Warhawks proved too much, end­ing the Wolver­ines run at 12–1.

Defen­sive end Chris Mayes won nearly every defen­sive player of the year award imag­in­able, tak­ing home hon­ors in the D3football.com South Region, the East­ern Col­lege Ath­letic Con­fer­ence (ECAC) South and the Atlantic Cen­tral Foot­ball Con­fer­ence (ACFC). He turned in another dom­i­nant sea­son as a junior with 32.5 tack­les for loss and 17.5 sacks. He also was named an All-American by the Amer­i­can Foot­ball Coaches Asso­ci­a­tion, D3football.com and the Asso­ci­ated Press. Mayes helped spear­head a defense that led Divi­sion III in total defense and placed two other play­ers on All-America squads—linebackers Mike Asiedu and Jeff Morgan.

On the other side of the ball, backup quar­ter­back Justin Sot­ti­lare was forced into action on the first offen­sive series of the year, but the Wolver­ines offense did not skip a beat. The junior threw for a school and con­fer­ence record 38 touch­downs and was 14th in Divi­sion III in pass efficiency.

Many of those touch­downs went to wide receiver Ellis Krout, who topped 1,000 yards and scored 18 touch­downs before suf­fer­ing a knee injury in the South Region Cham­pi­onship. The 6’4” senior has drawn inter­est from nearly every NFL team.

Senior guard Anthony West turned in an All-American sea­son, help­ing keep oppos­ing defenses away from Sot­ti­lare and open­ing holes for sopho­more run­ning back Bran­don Wright, who rushed for over 1,000 yards on the season.

Head Coach Mike Drass also reached a mile­stone dur­ing the sea­son with his 150th career win. After the sea­son con­cluded, the Wolver­ines were proudly hon­ored with the ECAC Team of the Year and Lam­bert Mead­ow­lands Tro­phy, awarded for East­ern foot­ball supremacy.

For all the lat­est scores and high­lights, visit the ath­let­ics web­site at athletics.wesley.edu