Football Release (2005-06) - Guilford Gridders Land Regional Honors - Guilford College

 

      Greensboro, NC (12/8/05) -- Guilford College junior Chris Barnette and senior Ian Kirwan were selected to the D3football.com 2005 All-South Region Third Team Friday. The pair was chosen from a pool 163 nominees who compete at one of 53 NCAA Division III institutions from Pennsylvania to Texas to Indiana. South region sports information directors and D3football.com staffers selected the teams, the Web site's first regional all-star squads.

 

Barnette, Division III's leading receiver with 10.1 catches per game, set Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) and school records with 101 receptions. The 2005 First Team All-ODAC pick had six games with at least 10 catches and finished with a school-best 1,369 receiving yards and 15 touchdowns. An ODAC Offensive Player of the Week and two-time member of D3football.com's Team of the Week, Barnette tied the league and school standards with 17 receptions in Guilford's win over Catholic. He had a school-record 233 receiving yards and three scores in the game. Barnette ranks second in the land in receiving yards per game (136.9) and 50th in all-purpose yardage (133.9). He scored a team-high 96 points and stands 35th among the national scoring leaders (9.0 points per game).

 

      A 6-1, 270-pound offensive lineman, Kirwan centered the Quakers' line that yielded 16 sacks for an offense that threw a school-record 480 times this season. He started all 10 games and earned Second Team All-ODAC honors despite spending his first two Guilford campaigns on the defensive line. Kirwan and his mates were cited by D3football.com after this year's Catholic game where they did not yield a sack against the ODAC's sack leaders in a league-record 72 pass attempts. The Quakers' offensive line ranked third in the league with 16 sacks allowed.

 

      Barnette and Kirwan helped Guilford (5-5) enjoy its best season since the 1997 club shared the ODAC title with an 8-2 record (4-1 ODAC). First-year head coach Kevin Kiesel's Quakers matched the school record with four ODAC wins and finished the year on a four-game winning streak. Picked sixth in the preseason coaches' poll, Guilford shared second place in the league with a 4-2 record and expects 47 letter winners back in 2006.