Wooster’s Lake Barrett Selected 2024 Hunsinger Award Winner

CLEVELAND, OH - Recent College of Wooster graduate and football student-athlete Lake Barrett (Columbia, SC/Hammond School) has been named the recipient of the 2024 North Coast Athletic Conference Don Hunsinger Award. 
 
Barrett wrapped up his collegiate football career as Wooster's all-time leader with 29 field goals and ranked second all-time with a 76 percent success rate on field goals. The kicker owns a 99.4 percent success rate on extra points, which rates him No. 1 in program history after going 155-for-156 over his career, making the final 134 extra-point kicks he attempted. Barrett graduated with 242 points, the second-most among placekickers and the fifth-most overall in program history. He is the program’s lone placekicker to have at least 35 extra-point makes with no misses in three different seasons and became the eighth player in program history to earn All-NCAC honors in four separate seasons this past fall. In 2023, Barrett was named the NCAC Special Teams Player of the Year, earned his second D3football.com all-region honor and was one of 10 finalists for the Fred Mitchell Award, presented annually to the best non-NCAA Div. I Football Bowl Subdivision placekicker for a combination of elite athletics, academics, and community service.
 
In the classroom, Barrett graduated with a 3.98 cumulative grade point average as a Biology and Education double major. The three-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-American® was selected as a recipient of the prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. Barrett was named to the Wooster AD Honor Roll, Dean's List, and NCAC Academic Honor Roll, and is a two-time National Football Foundation William V. Campbell Trophy semifinalist. He is an internationally published scholar, with his Independent Study on black squirrel melanin yielding groundbreaking research as Barrett discovered the mutation in black squirrels in Colorado is different from those found in Ohio. Leading up to the 2023 season, he spent the summer in Peru with Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon. Barrett studied differences in frog species in the local forest and contributed to the organization's reforestation advocacy efforts with the Peruvian government. He played a lead role in Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon's educational outreach initiatives in the local community.
 
On campus, Barrett was a lead zoology lab assistant, working with a colony of strawberry dart frogs. He was charged with ensuring the colony's survival and logging regular research observations. Within the zoology lab, Barrett conducted field research on squirrels, salamanders, and frogs. He planned out and organized a thorough catalog of the College's natural history specimens and volunteered with various STEM Success Initiative events on campus and the football team's Be the Match bone marrow registry event. Barrett has accepted a teaching position at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and will be attending the University of Pennsylvania for the Graduate School of Education's independent school teaching residency program.

Barrett was one of seven outstanding nominees considered for the selection committee. The other candidates included:
Liam Grennon, Men’s Tennis, Wabash
Payne Johnson, Men’s Golf, Ohio Wesleyan
Jack Nimesheim, Football, Denison
Conor O'Malley, Baseball, Wittenberg
Riley Orth, Men’s Indoor and Outdoor Track & Field, Kenyon
Robbie Sheffield, Men’s Swimming & Diving DePauw

This award commemorates former Oberlin administrator and coach Don Hunsinger, who had a far-reaching influence on the athletes he coached in a wide variety of sports. Over more than three decades, Hunsinger served Oberlin as athletic director, chairman of the department of physical education, had stints as head coach for Yeoman football, baseball, and men’s and women’s tennis, and assisted with the men’s and women’s basketball programs. Four times he earned NCAC Coach of the Year recognition, twice in men’s tennis and twice in women’s. Hunsinger, who retired from the College in 2008, also served as the NCAC Director of Tennis through 2022.

The award recognizes one male senior student-athlete who has distinguished himself throughout his collegiate career in the areas of academic achievement, athletics excellence, service and leadership. Each conference institution can nominate a distinguished male student-athlete for the honor. A committee of North Coast Athletic Conference administrators and faculty representatives, in conjunction with the conference office, makes the selection.
 
As this year’s NCAC winner, Barrett will also be nominated for the Division III Commissioners Association Student Athlete of the Year.
 
NCAC Don Hunsinger Award Winners
2024 - Lake Barrett, Wooster
2023 - Mart Niehoff, Kenyon
2022 - Marcus Hong, Kenyon
2021 - Wesley Slaughter, Wabash
2020 - Ahmed Hamed, Ohio Wesleyan
2019 - Erich Lange, Wabash
2018 - Jason Wesseling, Denison
2017 - Trevor Manz, Kenyon
2016 - Geno Arthur, Oberlin
2015 - Casey Cempre, Denison
2014 - Andrew Chevalier, Kenyon
2013 - Curtis Ramsey, Kenyon
2012 - Sharif Kronemer, Ohio Wesleyan
2011 - Kyle Herman, Ohio Wesleyan
2010 - J. David Gatz, Ohio Wesleyan
2009 - Kyle Holliday, Ohio Wesleyan

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