For the first time in its 154-year history, William Woods is represented on the gridiron as the Owl football team took on William Penn University
For decades, dreamers and doers have headed to the cornfields of Iowa to find their dreams.
“If you build it, they will come” said the line from the storied movie.
On the last Thursday in August of 2024, after a year of building its own field and program from scratch, a group of WWU coaches and student-athletes did just that – they came to Oskaloosa, Iowa to face William Penn University and in doing so realized something that was once but a dream – intercollegiate football at William Woods University, for the first time in its 154-year history.
Of course, facing William Penn, a university that has fielded a football program since 1892 (just 22 years after William Woods opened as a college) a mere 15 months after The Woods announced it was adding football in May 2023 was going to be the tallest of orders, and it certainly was; the Statesmen, with a roster that was roughly twice the size of that of William Woods, blasted the Owls 59-0 in a game in which the home team ran up major advantages in both yards (568-146) and first downs (32-8). But the first-ever football coach in school history was undeterred.
“Of course, it is certainly not the result you want,” said WWU Head Coach Julian Mendez, making his own debut as a college head coach. “But at the end of the day, we were able to have some live reps against another long-time, established Heart of America Conference football program, which is something our whole team needed and hasn’t had the opportunity to do. Now, we have to learn from it.”
Win or lose, though, there was one thing for certain for the Owls football team, its coaches, and the contingent of green-clad supporters of The Woods who made the three and a half hour trek North to Oskaloosa for the contest: all of them were to witness the making of William Woods history.
“It’s amazing to be standing here, and watching this first-ever football game in William Woods history, something that you could say has been years in the making and really, decades in the dreaming,” said President Dr. Jeremy Moreland. “I am so proud of everyone who is making this happen, from the coaches and young men wearing the Owls uniform, to our talented cheer and dance team, to the fans of William Woods who are here supporting us tonight, it is very exciting for our university.”
“It is surreal to be here, after watching this entire plan to add football come to fruition, and watching a William Woods football team finally play a real game versus another university,” said Steve Wilson, Vice President of Student Engagement and Intercollegiate Athletics at WWU. “It has been a year and a half of blood, sweat, tears and really a whole lot of fun in planning this night, but to do so, you certainly don’t stand alone. We have to have great leadership in spearheading something like this, including President Moreland, Dr. (Ted) Blashak (WWU Provost), Andy Otto (WWU VP of Enrollment Services), and so many others. Adding football at The Woods has been the most complete team effort of anything I have been a part of during my career in athletics, and finally, here we are.”
Opening night at William Penn, whose football history counts a handful of alumni who actually played in the NFL, was the culmination of months of planning at The Woods after the official announcement of adding the sport on May 22, 2023. Considering all the work that needed to be done in a short time to prepare for this moment, including hiring a coaching staff, recruiting players, building a football-ready facility to include locker rooms and equipment, it was a remarkable achievement for William Woods to even make it to the point of taking the field against an institution that had been playing the game for decades. And despite the result, every Owls player will always remember representing William Woods the first time the school ever competed on the gridiron.
“Obviously, the result on the scoreboard was not what we wanted, and we know we have a lot of things to work on going forward,” said junior quarterback Gabe Serri, an O’Fallon (Mo.) native who transferred from Benedictine College to play football at The Woods. “I still think we competed hard and did a lot of good things for a team that is competing in college football for the first time, especially against such an established program. We’ll continue to grow and learn as a team, and I still have high hopes for this season and the future.”
The evening will always be remembered for the many “firsts” in William Woods athletic history, from the first-ever pregame coin flip involving President Moreland and his counterpart, President John Otteson of William Penn, to the first-ever William Woods fans making a football “road trip,” to the first-ever performance by the Owls cheer and dance team squads at a football game, to the inaugural “Billy Bowl” matchup with William Penn, when the two schools with the same surname will battle annually for the prestigious “Billy Belt.”
In the end, the Owls may have been overmatched in their historic first game, but even suiting up a team and creating a program just 15 months after it was established was a victory of sorts in itself.
“That’s what I told our team afterwards, that I was just so proud of them just to be here, at this point, and competing against a long-time program,” Mendez said. “At the end of the day, it took an incredible amount of work just to get here. Now, we have to see what our measuring stick is, how do we get better and how to reach our fullest potential.”
And with that, the Owls were en route back to Fulton and the WWU campus, where a mountain or work remained to improve as a football team, with a daunting Heart of America Conference schedule looming. Not to mention the next milestone in the history of William Woods University Athletics, when the Owls will host their first-ever home football game at The Woods, when the St. Ambrose University Fighting Bees come to town on Saturday, September 14.
