Fred Mitchell Award Finalist Release
The College of Wooster's Lake Barrett is one of the 10 finalists for this year's Fred Mitchell Award. The award's selection committee, which solicits nominations from over 700 non-NCAA Div. I Football Bowl Subdivision college teams, unveiled the select group on Monday morning.
The D3football.com All-America and all-region candidate captured the North Coast Athletic Conference Special Teams Player of the Year award this fall, becoming the first player in program history to claim the honor. The first-team All-NCAC performer is the eighth Fighting Scot to earn All-NCAC laurels in four different seasons and earned D3football.com Preseason All-America honors in 2022, D3football.com All-Region laurels in 2021, and was a two-time semifinalist for the National Football Foundation's William V. Campbell Trophy.
Barrett is set to graduate as Wooster's all-time leader with 29 field goals and is second all-time with a 76 percent success rate. He went 8-for-10 on field goals this fall, with a tri-collegiate-long of 42 yards coming in the season finale at Wittenberg University. Through the NCAA Div. III Championships quarterfinals, Barrett is ninth nationally in field-goal percentage and 47th nationally in field goals per game. The five-year standout is Wooster's all-time leader with a 99.4 success rate on extra points and was a remarkable 155-for-156 over his career. Barrett's 155 extra points are the second-most in program history and he is the lone placekicker in program history to go three consecutive seasons with at least 35 makes and no misses. Barrett ran his streak of makes to 134 and finished with 242 career points, a total second among placekickers in program history.
Barrett exploded onto the scene as a first-year in 2019. He broke Wooster's single-season record with 11 field goals and ranked 16th nationally with a 78.6 field-goal percentage. The then-first-year was in the top-20 nationally in field goals per game and had a long of 42 against DePauw University. In 2021, Barrett became the first placekicker in program history to make over 40 extra-point tries in a season without a miss. His 71 points that year were the second-most among placekickers in program history and he moved into the top-five lists in all of the career kicking categories.
Academically, the two-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-American® is back up for consideration for one of college athletics' highest academic accolades. The Athletes for a Better World Coach John Wooden Citizenship Cup and Allstate American Football Coaches Association Good Works Team nominee is a biology and education major.
Barrett spent this past summer interning with Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon in Peru. Personal research interests centered around studying the differences in frog species within the forest on property and a forest the advocacy organization is working to reforest. With the organization, Barrett assisted with reforestation projects, helped with educational outreach initiatives in local communities, and contributed to materials Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon is utilizing in its lobbying of the Peruvian government for reforestation support. Elsewhere, Barrett's groundbreaking research for his Independent Study at Wooster led to the discovery of mutation in black squirrels in Colorado is different than black squirrels found in Ohio. Barrett studied abroad in Panama and was a researcher in the field of tropical ecology. The senior has been a lead zoology lab assistant on campus, a field researcher in the areas of squirrel, salamander, and frog research, and contributed the organization and cataloging of the College's natural history specimen collection.
The recipient of this year's award is set to be announced by Fred Mitchell on the "Mully and Haugh Show" this Friday. Placekickers have to play at a NCAA Div. I Football Championship Subdivision, NCAA Div. II, NCAA Div. III, NAIA, or National Junior College Athletic Association school, be an elite placekicker, achieve a high level of success academically, and make an impact in the community to be eligible for selection.