2023 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team Nominees
Lake Barrett, The College of Wooster's returning two-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-American®, has added Allstate American Football Coaches Association Good Works Team® nominee honors to his distinguished and ever-growing list of accolades. Allstate and the AFCA unveiled this year's 136 nominees on Tuesday morning.
Barrett is spending this summer helping with reforestation projects in the Peruvian Amazon with Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon. He previously studied abroad in Panama, gaining field research experience in agroforesty. While abroad, Barrett studied if agroforests can serve as a habitat for amphibians by looking at conservation, species diversity, evenness, and richness. His research in both Panama and Peru is being utilized by Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon as it works to lobby the Peruvian government for support with reforestation. Additionally, Barrett is assisting with education outreach initiatives in local communities.
The biology and education major previously helped with reforestation of an area that used to be a forest and was cut down as part of a sophomore reach project in 2021, assisted with beach litter cleanup in Panama City while studying abroad, volunteered at elementary schools throughout his time in college, volunteered to help run STEM Zone events through the College's Stem Success Initiative, helped create a website for Wooster's pollinator gardens to aid with Bee Campus USA accreditation for the College, and he aided with the football team's Be the Match bone marrow registry drive this spring.
For his Independent Study, Barrett researched squirrel melanism, genetic origins, and possible functions of melanism mutation. As part of that research, Barrett secured a grant to perform field work in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. He has also worked with strawberry dart frogs and a bee colony on campus.
On the field, the 2022 D3football.com Preseason All-American has earned one all-region and three all-conference awards. The three-year Fred Mitchell Award nominee became the first placekicker in program history to make over 40 extra-point tries in a season without a miss in 2021 and enters this fall with a run of 91 straight extra-point makes. Barrett is 112-for-113 in his career on extra points and 21-of-28 on field goals with a career-long of 42 yards. He is third all-time in program history in career field goals, career extra-point kicks, and leads the College with a 99.1 career extra-point percentage.
Established in 1992, the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team is one of the top off-the-field honors in college football. Nominees must be actively involved with a charitable organization or service group while maintaining strong academic standing to be eligible for nomination and each institution whose coach is an AFCA member may nominate just one player per season. The Allstate AFCA Good Works Team will be announced in September. Alumnus Patrick Mohorcic made the prestigious team in 2017, won the fan vote for the team's captain, and was interviewed live on ESPN as part of The Home Depot College Football Awards.