Nine Big Green Named to Phil Steele All-Ivy Football Teams

HANOVER, N.H. — Phil Steele revealed its all-conference picks for the each of the FCS leagues today, and Dartmouth had nine players listed among those honored in the Ivy League with safety Quinten Arello and long snapper Josh Greene earning first-team honors.

Four defensive players garnered spots on the second team in defensive lineman Shane Cokes, linebackers Macklin Ayers and Joe Heffernan, and cornerback Robert Crockett III. The trio of running back Zack Bair, cornerback Tyron Herring and offensive lineman Nicholas Schwitzgebel were all on the fourth team.

A 6-1, 210-pound senior from Kansas City, Missouri, Arello was one of the Big Green's three captains this season and anchored the defensive secondary. He started all 10 games, ranking fourth on the squad with 53 tackles, two for a loss, while also picking off a pass, breaking up three more and forcing a fumble. Twice he collected a career-high 10 stops — against Sacred Heart and the eventual Ivy champion Yale — and he intercepted a pass against Harvard for the second straight year.

Greene, a 5-11, 230-pound senior from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, was pinpoint accurate on all of his snaps throughout the 10 games, a big part of the Big Green not having a single punt blocked all season. He was also generally one of the first men down the field on punt coverages, recording one tackles and recovering a fumble this year as well.

Cokes, a 6-3, 275-pound junior from Dayton, Ohio, was another team captain and the most feared Big Green player on the defensive front, regularly facing double teams. He still managed to collect 54 tackles (third on the team and most among Ivy defensive linemen) while ranking in the top 10 in the league in both tackles for a loss (8.5, ninth) and sacks (4.5, seventh). Twice he made a career-high eight tackles in a game, and his 2.5 tackles for a loss with an 11-yard sack against FCS Playoff-bound New Hampshire matched a personal best.

A 6-3, 230-pound junior from Elizabethville, Pennsylvania, Macklin Ayers stepped into a starting role and simply made plays, leading the Ivy League with 10.0 tackles per game, a rate that ranks 13th among FCS players. The Academic All-Ivy selection recorded at least 10 tackles in five of the eight games he played, including a career- and team-high 16 at Yale.

A native of Brookfield, Wisconsin, Heffernan topped the Ancient Eight with 98 tackles, and his 9.8 per game is 17th in the FCS. The 6-2, 230-pound fifth-year senior also posted 7.0 tackles for a loss with 1.5 sacks, forced a fumble, recovered another and broke up a pass. Five times he recorded at least 10 tackles in a game with a career-high 15 on the road at Princeton, and he had at least six stops in every one of the 10 contests.

Crockett may have been one of the smallest players in the league at 5-8 and 155 pounds, but he was as tenacious as they come, tying for second in the Ivy League with 11 passes defended. Hailing from Miami, Florida, the cornerback had 30 tackles, 26 of the solo variety, picked off two passes and blocked a punt that was recovered by a teammate for a touchdown for good measure.

Of the fourth-teamers, Bair, a fifth-year senior from Rumson, New Jersey, averaged 5.8 yards and scored a pair of touchdowns on his 69 rushing attempts for an even 400 yards, plus caught 13 passes for 97 more; Herring, a senior from Delray Beach, Florida, posted 44 tackles in seven games while breaking up three passes and intercepted another; and Schwitzgebel, a junior from Cleveland, Ohio, started all 10 games on an offensive line that ranked among the top 25 in the FCS in fewest sacks allowed.

The top individual awards went to Princeton wide receiver Andrei Iosivas for Offensive Player of the Year, Harvard defensive end Truman Jones as Defensive Player of the Year, Yale center Nick Gargiulo for Offensive Lineman of the Year, Yale running back Joshua Pitsenberger as Rookie of the Year and Penn kick returner Julien Stokes as Special Teams Player of the Year.

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