Shrine camp: Future CU players at home

By Tom Haley
[email protected]
CASTLETON, Vt. — When the freshmen report for Castleton University’s preseason football camp on Aug. 15, many will be wide-eyed with at least some trepidation.

Brattleboro’s Kris Carroll, Mount Mansfield’s Harrison Leombruno-Nicholson and BFA-Fairfax’s Jared Salls will be among the more at-ease players in the new class of Spartans.

Those incoming freshmen have been getting acclimated to their new football digs this week in the training camp for the Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl. The locker room, weight room, dorms, dining room and football stadium will be familiar surroundings to them when they come back to campus in mid-August.

Leombruno-Nicholson, Carroll and Salls are preparing for Saturday’s Maple Sugar Bowl along with their Vermont teammates.

The New Hampshire team has also been at Castleton since Sunday.

Castleton head coach Tony Volpone is excited about the Shrine players that will be donning Spartan green.

He is eyeing Leombruno-Nicholson for a wide receiver position.

“He was highly recruited. He has talent and athleticism on a good frame,” Volpone said of the 6-foot-3 receiver.

“There is not a ball he can’t catch,” Vermont head Shrine coach Marty Richards said.

Volpone also likes Carroll as a wide receiver, although he will be an outside linebacker in the Maple Sugar Bowl.

Carroll will also bring plenty of value as a special teams player for the Spartans.

“We like what he can do as a long snapper and a short snapper,” Volpone said.

“He is a player with a serious motor,” Richards said of Carroll. “… Watch him on Saturday. He will stand out.”

Salls was originally going to go to Northern Vermont University-Johnson, just minutes from his home in Hyde Park.

But once he made the Shrine team, someone suggested he play college football.

The more he thought about it, the more appealing that prospect became.

“I am thinking about criminal justice, which Castleton has. And it is a really small campus, which I like,” Salls said.

Salls is 5-foot-10, 300 pounds and slated for action on the defensive line Saturday and at Castleton as well.

“Nobody moves him,” Richards said. “His job is to hold the play up until the linebacker can make the play. That’s his job and he embraces it.”

“We are looking at him to be an interior defensive lineman to clog things up in the run game,” Volpone said.

The new Spartans and their teammates launch the season on Sept. 7 at home against Plymouth State.

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Woodstock’s Caden White was recruited mainly as a fullback for the Maine Maritime Academy football program.

He is having so much fun playing defensive end for the Vermont team in camp this week, he is considering trying to switch to the defensive side of the ball when he reports to the Mariners’ camp in Castine on Aug. 14.

Maine Maritime, a program that made its living running the football for years, switched to the Spread offense last year.

“The fullback is a blocking back in the Spread,” White said at Thursday’s practice.

“Defense has been so much fun.”

A standout for the Wasps in both lacrosse and football, he plans to try to play both sports at Maine Maritime. He was All-State in both at Woodstock.

“The only thing I am not looking forward to at Maine Maritime is getting my head shaved,” said White under his flowing blonde locks.

White also considered the United States Merchant Marine Academy and SUNY-Maritime, rivals that are just across the water from one another.

Maine Maritime is in the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference, of which Norwich University is a member.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: White is one of two Woodstock players on the Vermont team, the other being guard/defensive end Gabe Marsicovetere.

The first Woodstock player in the series was James Paul, who was on the first Shrine squad in 1954 when the event debuted at Holman Stadium in Nashua.

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Richards loves his group of receivers — Burr and Burton’s Jake Baker, Rice’s John Rousseau, St. Johnsbury’s Renwick Smith, Fair Haven’s Jesse Tucker and Leombruno-Nicholson.

“They are all fast,” Richards said.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Vermont has had some outstanding receivers who made their mark in the game before wide-open offenses were a thing.

Mount Anthony’s Ron Pembroke caught two touchdown passes, one a play of 74 yards from Middlebury’s Mark Allen, in Vermont’s 28-16 victory in 1976.

Springfield’s Jeff Dick caught seven passes for 104 yards and a TD in Vermont’s 38-20 loss in 1969. The guy throwing the ball was another Middlebury quarterback, Pete Mackey.

Lebanon’s David Faulkner caught eight passes for New Hampshire and had 171 receiving yards in his team’s 27-12 victory in 1967.

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Richards has been delighted with what he has seen from his quarterbacks, Rutland’s Ryan Moore and Fair Haven’s Cam Coloutti.

“They have both picked up the offense quickly. They are throwing great balls and making good decisions,” he said.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: The most prolific performance by a quarterback in the series was by Mount St. Joseph’s Mike Keenan when he threw for 352 yards and a Shrine Bowl-record six touchdowns in Vermont’s 47-40 victory over New Hampshire in 2000. He threw 49 passes that day.

Rutland’s Dakota Peters and Mount Mansfield’s Jehric Hackney figure to get most of the carries in the Vermont ground game.

Peters will start the game with Moore’s unit and Hackney with Coloutti’s.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: One of the greatest rushing performances in a half by a Vermont back came in 1971 when MSJ’s Ricky Brodowski ran for 119 yards of his 121 yards and three touchdowns, all in the first half, to help the Vermonters to a 26-14 victory.

Salem’s Max Jacques rushed for a Shrine Bowl-record 248 yards for New Hampshire in 2011, a 45-21 victory for New Hampshire.

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Rutland’s Noah Crossman was showing pretty good range as he was practicing field goals on Thursday.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Essex’s Greg Sprout kicked a 34-yard field goal and booted the winning extra point with five seconds remaining for Vermont in the 22-21 comeback victory of 1973.

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There will be no tie on Saturday.

There will be an overtime if necessary and it will be the college overtime rules, meaning each team will get a chance to score starting from 25 yards out.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: There have been two ties in the 65 games.

The first was a scoreless tie in the third game in 1956.

The other was a 14-14 deadlock in 1960 with Rutland’s Lloyd “Dido” Flaitz the Vermont coach.

Vermont was trailing 14-7 and had to mount a 66-yard scoring drive with BFA-St. Albans star Ollie Dunlap doing most of the work on the ground.

That set up a 1-yard TD plunge by Spaulding’s Bill Aimi and Dunlap dove over the goal line for what was then a one-point conversion.

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Hartford High’s Nick Porter will be a safety for Vermont.

His senior year of football was marred by an injury he received in a game in early October.

He is heading to RPI, where he will play lacrosse, so this is his chance to leave football with a much better feeling after his injury-plagued fall.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Porter is following a long list of Hurricanes who have made their mark in this series.

Hartford’s Wes Doyle played in the first game back in 1954. He returned for years to take care of the ball boy duties for Vermont.

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Look for Poultney’s Jacob Allen to be used as a running back in goal-line situations and as a defensive end on passing downs.

Allen gained 142 yards and had a touchdown in the Blue Devils’ 28-21 loss to Woodstock in the Division III state championship game.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Poultney football coach and Vermont Shrine Athletic Director Dave Capman played in the 1965 Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl, a 20-13 Vermont loss. Also on that team was Poultney teammate John Towne.

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Captains were named for the Vermont team on Thursday. They are Moore, Allen, Mount Mansfield’s Mark Howland and Mount Mansfield’s Patrick Burke.

Burke is part of an outstanding hockey family. He and his sisters, Anna and Molly, each amassed more than 100 points on the ice.

Burke is heading to St. Lawrence University to play football.

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There are some people who are fixtures at the Shrine camp year in and year out.

Athletic trainer Ed Wozniakewicz has been tending to the medical needs of the Vermont players in camp for seven years now.

Ken Lewis is one of the Shriners who oversees the camp every summer. A Vermont high school football official in the fall, he can be seen at every practice the week of the Shrine camp.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Ken Lewis is the nephew of the late Ted Lewis, the Claremont, New Hampshire businessman who founded the Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl.

Ted Lewis attended the Shrine Game of the Carolinas in 1953 and brought the concept back for Vermont and New Hampshire.

Upon his return, he held a meeting at a Chinese restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, where plans were sketched out for the first game to be played at the venerable Holman Stadium in Nashua and the longtime summer classic was born.

Ted Lewis was not a very big guy but he played center at WPI. A headline in the Worcester newspaper proclaimed him to be the lightest center in college football.