After a 9–3 campaign came to an end in the second round of the NCAA Championships in 2023, the Ithaca College football team is back with a new look and the same hunger as the last two conference championship rosters.
“We have a different team this year,” sophomore quarterback Colin Schumm said. “In the last few years we’ve had success, the last two years we’ve won the Liberty League Championship and we’re going for a third. We have the same standard, but we have new goals.”
Head coach Michael Toerper, entering his third season in command for the Bombers, said the large presence of underclassmen will prove to be the highlight for this upcoming season.
We’ve got a lot of first-time players, we’ve got a lot of guys looking to make another step, and we’ve got fifth years and seniors that are going to anchor us from a leadership standpoint and teach these young guys what it means to be a Bomber,” Toerper said.
One of those anchors, senior wide receiver Sam Kline, embodies the drive the Bombers have to bring more hardware home to South Hill this year.
“My goal is just to keep winning,” Kline said. “We’re going to take it one game at a time, but I just want to win as much as possible. I don’t really care about individual stats or anything like that.”
Kline and company have spent the offseason learning an offensive strategy masterminded by new Offensive Coordinator Brandon Maguire. Maguire, who previously worked with Toerper at the College of the Holy Cross, joins the Bombers staff after running an explosive offense at the University of Chicago. Toerper said the team has quickly adjusted to the new playbook.
“I’ve been impressed with the way our offense has adapted to the new system with a new offensive coordinator,” Toerper said. “We’re doing some different things with our presentation and making sure we find ways to get our best players the football.”
This focus on getting the ball to the best players on offense likely means more touches for senior star running back Jalen Leonard-Osbourne, whose thousand-yard season in 2023 earned him a preseason Third-Team All-American recognition from D3football.com. When speaking on the team’s offensive philosophy, Toerper simply describes it as “run and hit.”
The upcoming season will also be the first full season with Schumm under center. Schumm, who performed well in relief of the injured AJ Wingfield ’23 last season, threw for 808 yards and four touchdowns as a first-year student. Schumm said he looks to take a leap forward with added experience and improved chemistry with his pass-catchers.
“For me, it’s just getting the ball to the guys who make plays,” Schumm said. “Knowing who is on that play and getting it to them and making sure that they’re doing what they need to do in space. We have great guys on the line blocking for us and on the perimeter, so we’re just going to keep doing that.”
On the defensive side of the ball, Ithaca looks to keep that same mentality. The Bombers lost star defensive back Derek Slywka ’23 and stalwart linebacker Ben Stola ’23, but several familiar and formidable faces remain. Senior defensive back Jake Connolly returns to hold it down for the Bombers in the secondary, while senior defensive lineman Isaiah Couser will look to pick up where he left off causing damage in the backfield after leading the team with 15 quarterback hits last year.
The 2024 season will start with a bang, as the Bombers host two nationally ranked teams to open the season. The early adversity will give a young Bombers squad an opportunity to prove themselves before conference play opens at Hobart College in October.
Kline said this year’s team is a competitive bunch, and it’s shown during practices.
“Our identity is just about us being together,” Kline said. “It’s a different group than I’ve experienced in the past, but we’re really close and I love being around these guys. We’ve come together and created a really good foundation. Everybody’s willing to do whatever it takes to win for each other.”
Kline also knows that overlooking games is fatal for a team with postseason aspirations. If he wants to see the postseason, he and his team need to bring maximum effort to every game this year.
“It’s always just another game,” Kline said. “You want to treat every game the same, no matter if it’s a team in our league, out of league. We’re just going to play the game and do our jobs.”
This Bombers roster is no stranger to success, with an undefeated regular season only two years behind them. This history of success, however, means nothing to a young team looking to make their own mark on the program’s history books.
Toerper said the team is staying present and avoiding the pitfalls of past accomplishments.
“Every year is independent of itself,” Toerper said. “We can look at the past as a learning tool of how we accomplished our goals, but we can’t expect it to help us in the present … it won’t help us in the moment, but the lessons certainly will. When it comes to the DNA of championship football, we can certainly tap into that because we’ve been there before, but that alone isn’t going to win us any games.”
Kline, in his final year with the Bombers, said he wants to see his team continue their winning ways this season, and said he knows what it takes to get there.
“We always want to have the continued success,” Kline said. “Obviously every season is different, especially this season with all the younger guys, so it just comes in the preparation, listening to the coaches and putting in the same work day in and day out, and I think we’ll see the same success we’ve seen the past few years and hopefully we can elevate that.”
One surefire way to separate this season from the last is by avenging last year’s season-opening loss to Johns Hopkins University, who will pay South Hill a visit to open this season at 1 p.m. Sept. 7 at Butterfield Stadium. Schumm said the Bombers are ready to defend the home field and show the Blue Jays just how different this team is.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys who are going to get some experience here,” Schumm said. “We’re going to go in this season and grind games out. When teams come in [to Butterfield Stadium], we’re going to lock the gate and hope teams never leave the same.”
