The College of Wooster's Lake Barrett is among the 201 semifinalists for the National Football Foundation's William V. Campbell Trophy, as announced by the organization on Wednesday morning.
One of Wooster's most accomplished scholar-athletes has a strong research and field work portfolio, headlined by spending this past summer as an APEX Fellow with Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon in Peru. There, Barrett worked on wildlife monitoring projects, reforestation projects, and an independent research project on amphibian conservation. While in the Amazon River Basin, Barrett learned more about issues of deforestation and climate change to take forward with future field work. Additionally, Barrett helped lead educational outreach initiatives in local communities, and his research is being utilized by Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon as it works to lobby the Peruvian government for additional support for reforestation projects. In 2022, Barrett studied abroad in Panama researching if agroforests can serve as a habitat for amphibians by looking at conservation, species diversity, evenness, and richness. His molecular biology-based Independent Study (equivalent of a master's thesis) was on squirrel melanism and looked at genetic origins and possible functions of melanism mutation. As part of his Independent Study, Barrett secured a $2,000 grant to conduct research in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. His Independent Study research has been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and a second academic paper based on his Independent Study project is already in the works.
As a research assistant for Dr. Rick Lehtinen, Barrett spent two semesters and a summer conducting squirrel, salamander, and frog surveys in the field, maintaining and working with the College's poison dart frog colony in the on-campus greenhouse, and organizing the College's natural history museum collection of thousands of specimens. He also provided research and field work with a bee colony on campus and helped create a website for the College's pollinator gardens which aided with Bee Campus USA accreditation for Wooster.
As to his play on the football field, Barrett has earned two College Sports Communicators (CSC) Academic All-America®, two CSC Academic All-District®, one D3football.com Preseason All-America, one D3football.com All-Region, and three All-North Coast Athletic Conference awards. The five-year standout is tops all-time in the program's 125-year history in extra-point percentage (99 percent; 132-of-133), second in field-goal percentage (77 percent; 24-of-31), second all-time in field goal and extra-point makes, and is three field goals shy of matching the program's career record. The only placekicker in program history to go an entire season with over 40 extra-point makes and no misses is 106-for-106 in that department since the start of the 2021 season.
This year, Barrett is 3-for-3 on field goals with a long of 35 and has made all 20 of his extra-point tries. The 29 points brought his career total north of 200, and he ranks sixth all-time in program history in points and second among placekickers.
In the community, the Allstate American Football Coaches Association Good Works Team nominee assisted with beach litter cleanup in Panama, volunteered for the program's Be the Match bone marrow registry event in the spring, and helped host events with the STEM Success Initiative on campus. He tutored students in a cellular and molecular biology course in 2020 and is a youth kicking coach.
The NFF will announce 12-15 finalists on October 25, and each finalist will receive an $18,000 postgraduate scholarship as a member of the 2023 NFF National Scholar-Athlete Class Presented by Fidelity Investments. One of the finalists will be named the winner of the 34th Campbell Trophy during the 65th NFF Annual Awards Dinner Presented by Las Vegas on December 5 and have his postgraduate scholarship increased to $25,000. Each school is permitted to nominate one student-athlete each year for consideration for the Campbell Trophy and the NFF National Scholar-Athlete Class.