Wooster Grad to Line Up for Team USA

Wooster grad Rick Drushal has been logging lots of time on the football field despite finishing his collegiate career last fall.

Drushal has been picked as a member of the first Team USA in the sport of football. The squad makes its international debut in the 2007 World Championship of American Football tomorrow against Korea.

The six-country tournament will run through July 15 in Kawasaki, Japan. This year’s event is the third staged by the International Federation of American Football (IFAF). Team USA will also face Germany in pool play. The other pool will consist of host and two-time defending champion Japan along with Sweden and France.

The 45 players selected to the team were chosen from a pool of 2006 college seniors and represent all levels of college football. NCAA and NAIA schools were asked by USA Football to nominate up to two seniors during the season. That list was pared down by the Team USA coaching staff through film evaluation. Drushal was one of just nine Div. III players selected for the elite roster.

During his college career, Drushal was a three-time All-American offensive lineman, who tarted at left tackle for Wooster a school-record 42 games the last four seasons (2003-06). He earned All-NCAC honors four times, including first-team as a sophomore, junior, and senior, and was named to various Div. III All-America Teams. After the Scots’ perfect regular season in 2004 (10-0), Football Gazette tabbed him a second-team All-American, followed by honorable mention on D3football.com’s 2005 All-America Team, and as a senior, he was one of 18 Div. III players selected on to the Associated Press Little All-America Team and to the American Football Coaches’ Assoc. 25-member All-America Team.

Equally impressive in the classroom, Drushal was a member of the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America® First Team and a recipient of a prestigious NCAA postgraduate scholarship this past year.

Since he last took the field as a Fighting Scot, Drushal has played in Mexico as part of an NCAA Div. III all-star team and at the National Football League’s Cleveland Browns’ rookie mini-camp.

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