Ursinus football makes its return
Ursinus College football makes its return after canceled 2020 season
COLLEGEVILLE >> It had been 657 days since the Ursinus College football team took the field when they walked out of the locker room for their first game of the season against Alvernia University last Friday.
Samuel Ragland’s wait was even longer.
Ragland tore his ACL and several other ligaments in his knee Oct. 18, 2019. After surgery, he spent the next 14 months recovering and about nine more after that waiting for the Bears’ first game of 2021.
While his senior campaign was wiped by the COVID-19 pandemic, he worked with the administrators at the school to make sure he had one last chance to put on an Ursinus uniform.
It was all worth it last Friday night when the Bears opened their season under the lights with a 42-6 win over Alvernia and the senior all-purpose running back picked up right where he left off.
“It’s been around 700 days. Honestly it was surreal, just stepping on the field with my brothers, seeing the fans since COVID and everything,” said Ragland (Bear, Del./Tatnall School), who ran for 184 yards and a touchdown in the win. “It was an unreal experience. It reminded me of the reason I came back. This exact feeling, this exact moment right now and I’m looking forward to nine more times and even more than that.”
Coach Pete Gallagher leads the Bears for his 20th season this fall.
Ursinus went 5-5 overall and 4-5 in the Centennial Conference in 2019. The Bears’ last game before the win over Alvernia was a victory over Dickinson College on Nov. 16, 2019.
The Centennial Conference President’s Council last August canceled its 2020 fall sports season amidst the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bears were permitted to practice in the fall under Division III protocols, but COVID protocols significantly restricted how much they could do.
After a wait longer than they would have liked, the Bears were more than ready to return to the field last Friday night.
“We couldn’t even throw the ball (last fall),” said senior safety Aaron Diamond, a Pottstown High School product. “We were out here with masks on and jerseys, but we were making the most out of it, keeping that grit. And time really passes when you’re having fun and we tried to make the most of what God gave us and the situation that we were dealt with. Being out here now, I was salivating, I was drooling. I was ready to go.”
Despite missing his team’s final four games, Ragland was a first AllCentennial running back in 2019 after leading the Bears in yards rushing (538) and receiving (423) and combining for nine total touchdowns in just six games.
He is the only returning all-conference player for the Bears, who have about four other starters back on offense and two on defense from the 2019 team.
On offense, junior quarterback Jack Psenicska joins Ragland in the backfield as a first-year starter. He started two of the team’s final three games in 2019, tossing for 759 yards and five touchdowns while completing 54.2 percent of his passes.
Psenicska, a SpringfieldDelco
grad, tossed for 255 yards and tied a programrecord with five touchdown passes, including three to senior wideout Octavious Carter (19 catches, 374 yards, 2 TDs in 2019) on Friday night. Offensive linemen Matthew Bevan, Brandon Derby and Brett Johnson also return as starters to anchor things up front.
“I didn’t really play a lot freshman year, so this is kind of my first taste too,” Psensicska said. “(On offense), our Oline got a lot of experience and you know what Sam in the backfield does. Everyone else, we don’t have too much (experience), but we’ve practiced throughout the whole year. And everyone in the conference is (inexperienced) like that too.”
The Bears are a little greener on the other side of the ball with two significant contributors returning in Diamond (17 tackles, 1 INT) and junior linebacker Brett Gross (23 tackles, 1 sack).
Former Pottsgrove standout
Ryan Bodolus (the 2018 Mercury All-Area Player of the Year) transferred from Dickinson, where he tallied 25 tackles and five sacks as a freshman in 2019, to help bolster the defensive line. Freshman cornerback Aaron Anderson (Upper Merion) started Friday.
“We’ve got a couple big teams ahead of us,” Diamond said. “It’s been two years so we don’t know who we’re facing and they don’t know what they got coming to them. I’m really excited about the team we have behind us and I’m ready to compete and I know my teammates are too. The Bears are coming. The Bears are ready.”
Ursinus ranked 6th out of 10 teams in the Centennial’s preseason poll of the conference’s coaches and sports information directors.
Muhlenberg topped the poll with 151 points and 10 first-place votes, while Johns Hopkins (144 points, 5 first-place votes) and
Susquehanna (143, 5) split the remaining 10 first-place ballots. Franklin & Marshall was a distant fourth with 109 points, followed by Dickinson (90) and Ursinus. Moravian (73), McDaniel (45), Juniata (30), and Gettysburg (29) rounded out the forecast.
The Bears open their conference slate at Johns Hopkins Saturday at 1 p.m. They follow the next week with a road trip to Muhlenberg, They follow with home games against Franklin & Marshall and Susquehanna, meaning they’ll face the projected top four teams in the conference in their first four games.
Ragland believes this year’s group is ready for the challenge.
“I came back because I thought we could do something special,” Ragland said. “We’re going to take it one week at a time. 1-0 this week and we’re going to try and do the same thing next week.”