Football team may just deliver surprises

Oberlin football hopes to duplicate last year's premiere performance in their opening game Saturday versus Kalamazoo. The 2 p.m. contest opens a season where hopes are among the highest in recent years for the Crimson Thunder.

The game is a first meeting for the two squads, which Yeoman head coach Pete Peterson said will work in Oberlin's favor. "The biggest plus for us is that they've never played us before," Peterson said. "We are better than people think we are."

Oberlin's greatest strength lies in its standout veteran receiving core, headed by seniors Felix Brooks-Church and Anthony Johnson. Last year, Johnson led the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) in receptions with 78, which also broke Brooks-Church's team record of 76 from the previous season. Johnson was also 9th in all of Division III in receptions, and his 986 receiving yards swept away the old school record by a hundred yards and was good enough for second in the NCAC. These numbers earned Johnson and Brooks-Church second-team honors on both the All-NCAC and Division III All-North lists.

Peterson sees the receiving pair and the passing attack as Oberlin's greatest strength. "It's unusual for a Division III school to have two receivers of this caliber. They're two of the best in the country, and two of the best I've ever coached," he said.

The passing game combined with Kalamazoo's unfamiliarity with Oberlin will be the Thunder's number one asset, in Peterson's estimation. "They know we've got a good passing attack, but they don't know how good it is," he said.

The air attack will not go uncontested, however. Returning for Kalamazoo is junior defensive lineman Nick Lachapelle, who won All-MIAA Second Defensive Team honors and won a Defensive Player of the Week award in addition.

The Thunder, though, are prepared for the Bees' defensive front. "Size-wise, we're almost comparable," offensive line coach Thomas Smith said. "But they're going to be more experienced. We've got three freshmen starting, but they've shown a lot of promise," Smith said.

Sophomore tailback Adisa Chaney also feels the Thunder are ready for the regular-season gridiron, and the Bees in particular. "The linemen have been going over a lot of their plays for defense. And on offense we've been practicing lots of passes and runs that we think will work well against them. We're pretty set," Chaney said.

Though Kalamazoo vastly outnumbers Oberlin in terms of sheer bodies, senior defensive back Sean Wesolowski is optimistic. He conceded, "When you've got a team with 60 or 70 players, it's okay if one guy doesn't know the system." But Wesolowski thinks Oberlin is up to the challenge: "The game will be hard, but we've been practicing for two weeks for Kalamazoo," he said. "We know what we're supposed to do, it's just a matter of execution."

With the extra line of substitutes on the Bees' sideline, intensity level will be one of the deciding factors in the Yeomens' fate. One Yeoman is very sure of Oberlin's mental preparedness: "The overall intensity and excitement level is extremely high," he said. He also was confident of the Yeomen's intellectual readiness for the Bees. "We've studied scouting reports and dozens of hours of film, with another film session tonight," he said. "We're just as prepared as any other college team."

Kalamazoo, which at 4-5 finished fifth of six teams in the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in the 1997 season, was 3-1 against non-conference opponents. However, despite the positive record, the Bees managed just 80 points to their opponents' 84 in those non-conference games.

Last year's opening game come-from-behind victory ended a 40-game losing streak. The Yeomen, however, did not win again last season, and so carry a nine-game losing streak into Saturday's contest.