Football
Yellowjackets Look to Top Record-Setting Season
The 2006 season was a record-setting one for the
Rochester football team, with 10 individual and team offensive
standards broken. The leaders of that offense are hoping to make
2007 even better.
RECORD SETTERS: Wide receiver Jay
Jay Vanderstyne ’08 (top), who was named a 2008 preseason
first team All-American by Street & Smith’s College
Football Yearbook, set a single-season record with 1,128 yards
in 2007; running back Matt Bielecki ’08 rushed for a school
record 1,390 yards last year.
“I just want to improve on what I did last
year,” says running back Matt Bielecki ’08, who rushed
for a school-record 1,390 yards, a 4.6 yards-per-carry average, and
14 touchdowns. “I want to do a lot better job of reading my
blocks and hitting my holes.”
Wide receiver Jay Jay Vanderstyne ’08, whose
1,128 yards receiving set a single-season record last fall, says
he’s committed to helping the team take the next steps up the
success ladder by competing for a Liberty League championship and
receiving a bid to the NCAA Division III playoffs.
“I just want to do anything to help us
win,” he says. “Whether it’s blocking on a run
play or catching a pass, I want to help this team any way
possible.”
The Yellowjackets posted an overall record of 7–4
and a Liberty League mark of 4–2 last season under first-year
head coach Scott Greene. The Yellowjackets proved to be an
offensive juggernaut, amassing a school-record 3,966 yards of total
offense, thanks partially to Bielecki and Vanderstyne, both of whom
earned honorable mention All-American and first-team All-East
Region status last season.
But graduation siphoned away several key components,
including offensive line anchor Nick Zappia ’07 and
quarterback Aaron Molisani ’07.
“We lost a lot of good players to graduation, but
we return many of our players from a team that was very
successful,” Vanderstyne says. “We will need to fill a
couple of holes offensively, but we have the players coming back to
do so.”
While the offense might have grabbed most of the
headlines last season, Vanderstyne expects the defense to be the
strength of this year’s squad. Defensive coordinator Nick
Grange thinks this year’s D will be tough, but it will need
several younger players to step up.
“We’re excited about it,” he said.
“We have a lot of youth, but we have some guys coming back.
We feel they can step up this year.”
Leading the defense will be free safety Jim Milks
’08, who tallied 56.5 tackles, two interceptions, and two
fumble recoveries in 2006.
“He’s going to be a killer,” Grange
says of Milks. “He’s one of the sharpest kids
I’ve ever been around. He’s going to be the glue that
holds the defense together.”
Grange says the linebacker lineup will be filled by a
committee of players, including Trent Tully ’10 and Richie
Canale ’08. Defensive tackle Brendon Reyes ’08 will be
counted on to fill the hole left by the graduated Pat Gallagher
’07.
“We’ve got experience back all the way
around,” Grange says, “but we also have some holes to
fill.”
The Yellowjackets kicked off the 2007 with a home game
against Carnegie Mellon Sept. 1, then faced nationally ranked St.
John Fisher in the Courage Bowl two weeks later.
Rochester also is starting to get noticed nationally,
with the ’Jackets receiving votes in a preseason poll issued
by d3football.com, but the players say they aren’t feeling
any added pressure.
“If we work hard like we did last year, we will
put ourselves in the same position to win games,” Vanderstyne
says. Bielecki says that in order to do that, the Yellowjackets
will need to avoid mental mistakes in crucial moments and come up
with big plays when they’re needed.
“We just have to play the way we can play,”
he says. “We have a lot of young guys who need to step up and
take (a leadership) role, and I know they can. If we just follow
our game plan and do what we did last year, we’ll be
OK.”
—Ryan Whirty
|