View from the cheap seats
A weekly perspective on sports
Stratford senior football players Ben Barten and Easton Kilty planned to ink their National Letters of Intent today (December 18), in which they’ll officially shut down the recruitment process by signing athletic scholarships to play offensive line on Division 1 college football programs.
Barten is a member of a promising University of Wisconsin Badgers 2020 recruiting class, while Kilty will play for the North Dakota Fighting Hawks, which competes in Division 1-FCS.
Unfortunately, I won’t be attending these two young men’s college football scholarship signing ceremony outside the Stratford High School gym because my weekly newspaper deadline is 12:30 p.m., which is also the exact same Barten and Kilty planned to hold their ceremony. I will have a story on their big day in next week’s sports section.
Barten and Kilty are taking advantage of the rather new early college football National Letter of Intent signing period from today (December 18) through this Friday, Dec. 20. High school senior football players still can wait to sign their college football Letters of Intent on the traditional first Wednesday in February, which happens to be Feb. 7, 2020.
Barten will be Badgers teammates next fall with Kaden Johnson, an outside linebacker from Minnehaha Academy in St. Paul, Minn., who chose to sign with Wisconsin’s football program today (December 18) over signing with the universities of Minnesota and Nebraska. Johnson, who plays outside linebacker, is a huge addition for Badgers defensive coordinator Jimmy Leonhardt.
A few years ago, I recall covering former Edgar star football player Alec Hafferman signing his National Letter of Intent to play college football at Division 2 St. Cloud State. I am thinking about Alec during today’s early national college football signing day, because St. Cloud State. recently decided to discontinue having a college football program in the future because of the school’s budget shortfall.
Hafferman is now forced to reopen his college recruitment process, so he could visit other college campuses to discover where he wants to continue his college football-playing career.
Nathan Belisle, a former Athens football lineman, started every game at right guard during his college football career, a span of 45 consecutive games, on the Division 2 Minnesota State University Moorhead offensive line.
Belisle is known as an “Iron Man” in the Dragons’ football program, because he only missed a practice if there was a conflict with his class schedule.
Dylan Peterson, a former Stratford football defensive lineman who has concluded his Division 3 college football playing career with UW-Stout, was selected to the 2019 WIAC Conference All-Sportsmanship Team.
