By Emily Harman
The Puget Sound football team had the crowd on their feet as they beat Lewis & Clark College on Homecoming and Family weekend. Ending a three-game losing streak, the Loggers conquered the Pioneers 39-28.
“It was really nice to be able to turn the tide at Homecoming and beat Lewis and Clark and get back on the winning side of things,” head coach Jeff Thomas said.
Senior quarterback Hans Fortune (Kenmore, Wash.) threw four touchdown passes against the Pioneers and tied the school record for completions in a single game, with 46 successful passes.
His performance in the Homecoming game earned him the title of Northwest Conference Offensive Student-Athlete of the Week. Fortune is currently ranked second in the NWC in both passing touchdowns and passing yards. He has also gained national recognition; with 374.3 passing yards per game, Fortune is ranked third in NCAA Division-III and seventh in the nation across all NCAA divisions.
Several members of the Logger football team are ranked in the NWC alongside Fortune.
Senior Brennan Schon (Spokane, Wash.) leads the league in receiving yards and yards per game. The wide receiver has received 751 yards for the 2016 season so far, and averages 125.2 yards per game. Schon’s seven touchdowns, including the game winner against Lewis & Clark, place him third in the NWC.
The success of the Puget Sound football program has been years in the making.
In 2012, the year the current senior class was recruited, the football team was 0-9. The seniors’ first year, the team won a single game. The next year they won 4 games, and last year they won 6 games and lost 3, the highest the Loggers have ever finished in the Northwest Conference.
However, the Logger football program prides itself on more than just results.
“The totality of growth of the win-loss record has been really exciting to see,” Thomas said. “But more important than that is that our team GPA has crept up to now being at the 3.0 mark.”
Along with academic accomplishments, Thomas is proud of his team’s ability to be active and engaged members of the campus community.
“The overall cohesiveness that the football team has with the student population has grown much more close over the past four years and our senior class is a major part of that. For me, that is really exciting to see,” Thomas said. “To want to be great in football and also be involved I think is unique and is what makes the Puget Sound football experience different than most.”
Another way the team is striving to be different is by giving players the opportunity to study abroad, an experience that is often limited by athletic commitment. The Logger football team is traveling to China in the spring of 2017.
“That is one of the tangible things that we are doing differently, and we are taking a lot of pride and excitement in it,” Thomas said.
The team will leave for China the day after graduation, and will spend nine days in the country.
For now, the Loggers are focused on finishing out the 2016 season, hopefully with another winning record. If they are successful, it will be the team’s first back-to-back winning record since 1986.
“To have back-to-back winning records for the first time since any of these players have been alive, that would be pretty cool.” Thomas said.