Oberlin excited for return to football

Oberlin College has been playing college football since 1891.

But it’s safe to say they are coming off a season like none other. Actually, there was no season.

The Oberlin Yeoman will take the field for their Sept. 4 home opener against Kalamazoo College after not playing in 2020 because of the novel coronavirus.

This new season dawns with optimism and energy.

Most of that is generated in the form of head coach Steve Opgenorth, who comes to Oberlin via a winding trail of coaching jobs at both the Division II and Division III level.

Opgenorth was hired for the 2020 season. But Covid took that away. Instead, he spent that fall and this spring working with a small group of players who remained on campus but never played a game.

“We had at most like 27 players for a practice. We did what we could to get work done. I even lined up at receiver a few times,” said Opgenorth, who prior to coming to Oberlin was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Baldwin Wallace for five years.

On Saturdays in the fall, which are typically game days in college football, Opgenorth, and the players would work out in the morning and then go their own ways.

“A lot of walking in apple orchards and doing things with the family I didn’t usually get to do,” said Opgenorth of how he spent his fall Saturday afternoon in 2020, a time for years he’d spent walking sidelines and talking on headsets.

There will be n off weekends in 2021, though. The Yeoman welcome in a freshman class of 32 players, that includes Amherst Steele standout receiver, Ty Weatherspoon, a 6-5, 197-pound target, who was one of the top high school football players in Lorain County in 2020.

That incoming class of youngsters, combined with the returning players, who got all those practice reps last fall, foster hope the Yeoman can improve on their dismal 2019 record of 1-9 and maybe, just maybe, have a winning record for the time since the 1974 season, when they went 5-4.

They bring back experience at the most important position on the football field in junior quarterback Chris Allen Jr., who started as a freshman. Allen struggled his first year as a starter. He completed 46.2 percent of his passes while throwing for a total of 1,194 yards and four touchdowns and eight picks.

For Allen, 2020 included practicing and studying the position under the guidance of Opgenorth, who is also the team’s offensive coordinator and its quarterbacks coach.

“I spent a lot of time watching film from my first year. Just seeing where I went wrong and taking some of the things that coach O taught me. I got a year to learn under him and learn more about the game and I feel like it’s put me in a good position,” said Allen.

He’ll have plenty of help. Three of the starter on the offensive line return, including sixth-year senior Chandler Laird, an Olmsted Falls grad, who is listed at 6-4, 352 on the Oberlin roster.

The team’s leading running back from 2019, Kobe Brooks returns. He rushed for 663 yards his sophomore year, but emblematic of Oberlin’s offensive woes, he did not score a rushing touchdown.

As for ending Oberlin’s string of sub-500 seasons in 2021 and helping turn the football program into a perennial winner, Allen is confident he help be a start of that process.

“Definitely, it’s in the back of our mind,” Allen said of Oberlin’s string of losing records. “Obviously the goal is to go 10-0 You have to take it one week at a time and one game at a time.”

They’ll have to score a lot more in 2021. In 2019 the Yeomen were outscored 274-61.

Weatherspoon, who played baseball and also basketball at Amherst, but will only play football and baseball at Oberlin, said his transition to college football has been smooth. He’s asked to run a lot of the same routes for the Yeomen he ran at Amherst, but the terminology is different, he said, and the game is far more physical.

“It’s like playing against an Avon or Avon Lake every single week. It’s just being stronger physically, knowing every play you are going to have to get open,” said Weatherspoon.

Helping turn the Oberlin football fortunes around, Weatherspoon said, is doable.

“I definitely can see a turnaround within the next two years. With this big recruiting class we just had and the sophomore and juniors coming back, I definitely feel we can turn it around,” said Weatherspoon.

Opgenorth seems dedicated to turning the program around and he has some tools to do so. The school just built an $8 million athletic complex, that includes a beautiful 3,000 stadium. Oberlin also recently renovated the football locker room, which features new dark wood individual locker stalls for the players to dress at, leather couches, a flat-screen TV, and murals around the room playing up Oberlin’s rich college football history.

But maybe more important, Opgenorth said that Oberlin can provide as much financial assistance as needed for any players they believe can make the grade at the challenging academic school and contribute on the football field.

Weatherspoon represents the first building block in Opgenorth’s plan to rebuild the program. That plan would include recruiting highly skilled and athletic players who could probably play at a much higher level and bring them to Oberlin. In exchange, the player would leave with an Oberlin education and all the connections and prestige that come with that while not incurring any crippling student loan debt.

“We are one of few Division III schools that can provide whatever financial assistance is needed,” Opgenorth said,

Jacob Russell, a 6-0, 203-pound safety from Wadsworth is just entering his sophomore year and is a believer. Opgenorth, according to Russell, has instilled a mentality within the Oberlin locker room to keep everything internal. Don’t listen to the haters.

“Coach O has been really big on blocking out things like that. We can control what we can control. I think this is the foundation of a turnaround. We’re tired of people talking like that and were ready to prove people wrong,” said Russell.