By Ryan Tipps
D3sports.com

The Salisbury defense has been forced to overcome some hurdles this year, especially in terms of injury, but no blow may be as significant as the suspension of five defenders who have started at least one game this season.

According to a story posted online by WBOC-TV, free safety Justin Sykes, cornerbacks Justin Acker and Reginald Gooch and linebackers Thomas Fontaine and Ricardo McCain were arrested after a fight at a night club early Sunday. Their names have been removed from Salisbury’s online roster, and a school official told D3football.com that the players have been suspended from the team pending a police investigation.

The team, though, still retains on its roster at least one significant bright point and leader.

It’s not uncommon for a Division III school to draw players from its own neck of the woods. But what about right from its own backyard?

That’s essentially where defensive lineman Jarrell Chandler came from. While many Salisbury players and students are from the Baltimore and Washington areas, they don’t really know "local." Chandler, a homegrown preseason All-American, grew up just 15 minutes from the university that bears the same name as the town.

And with a population hovering at around 24,000, the town is very much a part of the university.

As Chandler tells is, “Everybody around here loves Salisbury football. ... Everybody is a friendly face. Everybody comes together and looks out for each other.”

The relationship between the town and the school are good, Chandler said, and games draw scores of fans. In this year’s opener, Sea Gull Stadium welcomed more than 2,200 spectators. Often while growing up, Chandler was counted among that group.

But for all of love Chandler says he had for Salisbury in his younger years, he felt the pull of conference rival Wesley just out of high school, something he calls “a bad decision.”

“At first I wanted to get away from home, or at least I thought I wanted to get away from home,” he said of his choice to start college at the college in Delaware. But “after getting there, I realized that wasn’t the college for me, and I wanted to get back home.”

He never took the field for the Wolverines, which means Salisbury, where he transferred to the following year, is where he truly got his start -- and where he truly grew into a star athlete.

“My 2006 year was my first year stepping onto a college field,” Chandler said. “It was the first time I had ever played in a college game. I had a lot of things to learn: technique, the scheme of things at Salisbury.

“About five or six games into it, I started maturing into those schemes and techniques Salisbury had.”

That’s what’s brought the 22-year-old senior to today, who in four games this season has posted 34 tackles and four sacks. He missed Saturday’s game against Newport News Apprentice because of a knee injury he suffered the previous week. Rumors about it being a season-ending injury have been circling, but Chandler and a Salisbury official both say that he is on a day-to-day status and that he is walking well without any need for crutches.

And, his preseason honors and expectations aside, Chandler hopes to be back on the field for a much larger reason than himself.

“I don’t feel that I’ll be All-American until my team is at the Stagg Bowl with the championship trophy in our hand. … I feel like it’s just a name (right now). I got to come and play hard, and until I really show that I’m an All-American by doing my thing out on the field, helping my team make it to the championship,” he said.

The atmosphere at the university also gives special meaning to Chandler, the youngest child in his family and whose parents attend all his games.

At SU, “I met a lot of friends. The relationships I’ve made with other players here, it’s like a brotherhood. It’s amazing,” he said. “The guys come together with common goals, to play football. I think the thing was that I made a lot of friends.

“And then the fact that I get to play in front of family. My parents come to the games, they don’t have to travel.”

Depending on how his class schedule rounds out, the communications and marketing double major will wrap up his undergraduate career in either December or May. But with graduation might come a need to see the world beyond the town of Salisbury. And the nearby hangout of Ocean City hardly qualifies.

“I actually want to travel,” Chandler said. “I’ve been in Salisbury most of my life. I need to expand and go to other places.”