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