By Adam Johnson
D3sports.com

In 1996, senior Kurt Ramler led a high powered St. John's football team as its savvy gun-slinging quarterback, to an MIAC championship.

Twelve years later, Ramler welcomes the Johnnies to his new home field at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he'll put a school's conference championship dreams on the shoulders of his own senior quarterback, Shane Henfling.

To appreciate where this Carleton team is, look no further than where they have been.

From Oct. 7, 2000 to Nov. 1, 2003 the Knights went 0-33. In that same span, the Johnnies were 39-7, including a loss in the Stagg Bowl to Mount Union and the first seven wins of their 2003 NCAA championship season. 

Even after losing the first 27 games of his coaching career at Carleton, former coach Chris Brann showed resilience leading the Knights to nine wins from 2003-05. However, Brann left Carleton after the 2005 season to coach at Beloit. Many of his recruits are the main contributors on this year's team.

The Knights had a perfect opportunity to bring in a young football mind that would build off Brann's momentum, yet put his own finger print on the program. It was just 10 years earlier that the women's basketball team had been transformed from a 4-16 doormat to a perennial conference power. That was proof enough that sports could succeed at the strongly academic Carleton. They just needed to find the right man to do it.

"We are excited to have Kurt Ramler as our new head football coach," Carleton athletic director Leon Lunder said in February 2006. "He has broad-based football knowledge, strong ambitions appropriate to a Division III program and understands what it takes to be a successful student-athlete. With Kurt Ramler excellence is a way of life."

If he was excited then, he must be ecstatic now.

As Carleton prepares this week for their first conference title since 1992, fans and followers will tell you they found the right man in Kurt Ramler.

The former offensive coordinator at Heidelberg, Ramler has a longer history with St. John's, four years, than he does with Carleton, three. He won the 1996 MIAC most valuable player award and still holds several St. John's records. Ramler ranks third all-time in NCAA career passing efficiency and is the all-time MIAC leader in touchdown passes with 87. 

While at St. John's, Ramler's teams beat Carleton by a combined score of 224-55 in four years. Now it is his job to minimize the disparity between Carleton and the rest of the MIAC; using St. John's as a measuring stick.

"I hear they're down," said Ramler. "It doesn't look like they're down to me."

Even though Ramler's first season produced the same record as Brann's last it was a much improved team. He had an improbable win over Bethel and lost four other games by five or less points. The Knights were now getting competitive in the league.

"My first challenge was to change the mindset and show the guys we could be competitive with anybody in the conference," said Ramler.

In 2007, Carleton played the Johnnies to the final minute before succumbing 10-7 in the fourth week of the season. The loss not only hurt emotionally but also physically as several players were injured in the game. A team short on depth can rarely afford injuries and this Knight team couldn't. They would finish with one win over their final six games and an overall mark of 3-7. Included in those seven losses were defeats to Bethel, Augsburg, Concordia-Moorhead and St. Olaf by a combined 136 points.

"We felt like we were pretty close to other teams in our league last year, there were just a few mistakes that would end up costing us games in the end," said quarterback Shane Henfling. 

This season the team has jelled on both sides of the ball; especially on offense led by senior quarterback Shane Henfling who has thrown for 2,814 yards and 29 touchdowns with nine interceptions. He also has three rushing touchdowns. Scoring is up by nearly ten points per game and those four teams that cleaned the Knights whistle in 2007 are 0-4 against them this year including a 71-point swing against in-town rival St. Olaf (85-28 loss in '07 to 21-7 victory in '08).

"Last year he was solid," said Ramler about his emerging quarterback. "This year he's explosive."

The consummate team player, Henfling knows it takes both sides of the ball to make a complete team.

"This year I feel it is our ability to 'pick up' the other side of the ball," said Henfling. "There are times when we really need a stop and the defense will get a turnover or force a punt, and other times when we are down, needing a score and the offense puts the ball in the end zone."

This is exactly what happened Saturday in a road win over conference power Concordia-Moorhead. In a back and forth affair in bitterly cold and windy conditions the Knights got the big plays when they needed them. Leading by a touchdown midway through the fourth quarter, the Knights forced the Cobbers to punt. Kane Bechstein blocked the punt and four plays later the Knights sealed the win on a 7-yard touchdown pass to Matt Frank.

"It's all about attitude," said Ramler, "We feel it's always a beautiful day to play football -- we'd play in a tsunami or a lunar eclipse if we had to."

So now the Knights prepare for the Johnnies and Ramler prepares to take on his former coach in legend John Gagliardi. 

Gagliardi is in his 56th year coaching at St. John's, so he's faced his former players on the opposite sideline before, and this week is no different. "I'm proud of him, happy that he's doing well," Gagliardi said. "I hope he doesn't do too well against us. 

"I knew he would do a good job, but I didn't know he would do this good a job this soon. He's a smart kid and a good guy and a lot of credit goes to him."

The Johnnies are synonymous with big games and Carleton is certainly the underdog but you wouldn't know it as they prepare for this Saturday.

"This game obviously means more than the others we've played," said Henfling. "But I don't think we'll change our mindset going into it. We know that they're a very good football team and that if we don't play as well we can we probably won't win the game."

The Knights already have as many wins in 2008 as Ramler's first two seasons combined -- seven. If they can secure the coveted eighth win they'll receive the automatic bid to the NCAA playoffs. 

"I was hoping this year we'd be this good but I think we're a little ahead of schedule," said Ramler, who would join Concordia-Moorhead's Terry Horan as the only other current MIAC coach to win the MIAC championship as a player and coach.

As a player or coach, Ramler exudes confidence and excellence and as a true leader, those around him follow him to the top.

UW-Whitewater kicker Jeff Schebler has always seemed to have a figurative foot up on the competition. In Saturday's 17-10 victory over UW-Stout, Schebler's 46 yard boot gave him the literal foot up on the competition -- except for one fellow kicker. Schebler field goal split the uprights for the 52nd time of his career, tying the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III career record, held by Ken Edelman of Mount Union (1987-90). Schebler will go for the record outright next week at UW-Platteville. A win should secure an opportunity to add to his record in the playoffs.

Willamette quarterback Grant Leslie had an efficient afternoon in the Bearcats 49-27 victory over Puget Sound. The senior connected on seven of 13 passes for 285 yards and five touchdowns. Every touchdown completion was longer than 30 yards, including a 93-yard connection that was a yard short of the school record. 

When UW-Stevens Point kicker Ryan Graboski kicked a game winning PAT with under six seconds remaining against UW-Eau Claire, it marked their sixth win of the season by three points or less. A win next week over UW-La Crosse and the Pointers will secure the WIAC championship. In bordering Minnesota, Hamline University knows how the other side feels. The Pipers are 0-7 in the MIAC and have lost five conference games by three points or less including three losses in a row by a combined four points. The Pipers finish the season against St. Olaf in an attempt to secure their first MIAC win of the season. 

Whitworth junior running back Adam Anderson ran 18 times for 144 yards, caught three passes for 73 yards and scored three more touchdowns in Saturday's 42-7 victory over Lewis & Clark. He finishes the season with single-season school records for all-purpose yards (2,194), touchdowns (25) and points (152). Perhaps most impressively, he now has tied Bill Condon (2000-03) for career touchdowns (37) with a season to play. He finishes the season with 1,259 rushing yards, missing the Pirates' single-season record by 34 yards. Damian Putney ran for 1,293 yards in 1999.

Wartburg freshman running back Lamar Harvey entered Saturday's game against Dubuque with 276 yards and no touchdowns on the season through eight games. When the dust settled and Wartburg claimed a 20-13 victory, Harvey had 214 yards rushing and two touchdowns including the game-winner on an 18-yard scamper in overtime. It was the first rushing total over 200 yards for a Knight back since 2004. It is the Knights first outright conference championship since 2003.

• Willamette's 49 points scored against UPS gave the Bearcats 395 points for the season, breaking the school record for points during a 10-game schedule (376). The previous record was set by WU's national runner-up team in 1997, which played 10 regular season games.
• St. Thomas has already improved by four wins from last year's 2-8 finish with one game to play.
• Occidental outrushed Pomona-Pitzer 301-19 and notched eight rushing touchdowns including three apiece by Jason Haller and Bryan Fiorito.
• When Augsburg wide receivers Mike Nourie (10 catches for 119 yards) and Royce Winford (six catches for 109 yards and three touchdowns) both tallied over 100 yards, it was the first time two opposing players totaled over 100 yards receiving against St. John's since Dec. 4, 1993 in a 56-8 loss to Mount Union in the national semifinals (Rob Atwood, 141 yards and Ed Bubonics, 101 yards).
• St. Olaf has now played nine overtime sessions through three games and are 2-1 with victories over St. Thomas and Gustavus and a loss to St. John's.
• UW-La Crosse has now won 16 straight vs. UW-River Falls.
• UW-Platteville has not given up a point in their last eight quarters in picking up their first two WIAC wins over UW-River Falls and UW-Oshkosh.
• Cal Lutheran has not allowed a passing touchdown in conference play this season; a span of five games.

Contributing: Pat Coleman

A special thanks to the West region SIDs and their respective school's athletic departments for their hard work in promoting their school's football teams.