Jan. 8, 2009
Center Valley, Pa. - The Patriot League maintained its history of having multiple players named to the ECAC Football Championship Subdivision All-Star team, as Colgate senior offensive lineman Nick Hennessey and Lafayette senior linebacker Andy Romans were each named to the squad on Thursday.
Romans joined Maine's Jovan Belcher as the only players to make the list in consecutive years. The Patriot League has placed at least two players on the ECAC All-Star team in each of its 23 seasons.
Hennessey's selection gives him six All-America honors to go along with his First-Team All-Patriot League honor. He became the first Patriot Leaguer since Fordham's Tad Kornegay in 2004 to be named to both the ECAC squad and the four major Football Championship Subdivision All-America teams. Hennessey earned a first-team All-America selection from The Sports Network, Walter Camp and American Football Coaches Association to go with a second-team honor from the Associated Press. He was also named to the College Sporting News Fabulous Fifty All-America team on Monday.
Hennessey led a unit that ranked fifth nationally in rushing offense with 267.67 yards per game and 12th in total offense with 416.5 yards per game. Hennessey started 34 straight games for the Raiders, who won their sixth Patriot League Championship by completing a perfect 5-0 mark in League action.
The Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year and finalist for the Buck Buchanan Award, Romans received a second-team All-America nod at linebacker from both The Sports Network and Associated Press. He made 96 tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, two fumble recoveries and one blocked kick for the Leopards, who finished 7-4 overall and 3-3 in Patriot League play. He led a Lafayette defense that placed first in the Patriot League and in the top 20 nationally in rushing, total and scoring defense.
Colgate had a player make the list for the seventh year in a row, while Lafayette had an honoree for the fourth straight season. It is the second season in a row that a Patriot League representative made the squad in back-to-back years, as Fordham's Ben Dato was named in 2006 and 2007.
The Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) is the nation's largest athletic conference and only multi-divisional conference, with 321 member institutions and over 122,000 student-athletes ranging across 16 states from Maine to North Carolina and westerly to Illinois. Established in 1938 with 58 charter members, the ECAC has since emerged as the nationwide leader in service. The ECAC honors more than 2,500 student-athletes during the academic year through its all-star and player of the week programs. Each week, the conference has recognized 12 football players of the week, including offensive and defensive, in the Football Championship Subdivision (I-AA), Division II, and Division III (Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest Regions).
