The Ivy League’s Wideout U.

Princeton receivers are building a reputation. In the NFL, Andrei Iosivas ’23 has quickly risen to the Cincinnati Bengals’ starting lineup, and four other alumni pass-catchers have played in the league since 2020: wide receiver Jesper Horsted ’19 and tight ends Stephen Carlson ’19, Seth DeValve ’16, and John Lovett ’19, who was primarily a quarterback in college. The Tigers’ pedigree also includes a string of All-Ivy receivers who haven’t played professionally.

“The history is unreal at wide receiver here, but especially the mentorship,” said Luke Colella ’25, Princeton’s leader in receptions last season. “Guys like Jacob Birmelin [’22], Andrei Iosivas, Dylan Classi [’23], they’re still some of my best friends to this day. When I first got here, they took me under their wing, really showed me the ropes, and showed me what it takes to be a great football player and a receiver in the Ivy League.”

Colella had to wait his turn, spending one season on the sidelines and another on special teams before breaking through with 620 receiving yards and six touchdowns in 2023. Now, he and classmate A.J. Barber (582 receiving yards last year) are poised to lead a new streak of Tigers as they open the season at Lehigh Sept. 21 (Ivy League play begins at Columbia Oct. 5).

Princeton’s receivers are a big reason the Tigers have been .500 or better for 11 straight seasons, and even in Bob Surace ’90’s early years as head coach, when wins were harder to come by, wide receivers were among the team’s strengths, with Trey Peacock ’11, Andrew Kerr ’11, and Roman Wilson ’14 among the standouts.

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This year, in addition to Colella and Barber, Surace will rely on seniors Tamatoa Falatea, Connor Hulstein, and Matthew Mahoney. “It’s a very experienced group,” he said. “There’s a lot of competition, which has been great.”

The keys to being a good receiver, Colella said, go beyond the basics of speed, quickness, and good hands. “We all want the ball, all the time,” he said, and the best receivers stay locked in on every play, “even when your number might not be getting called as much as you want it to be.”

Veteran wideouts and running backs, including top rusher John Volker ’25, could be crucial as Princeton promotes a new quarterback following the graduation of two-year starter Blake Stenstrom ’24. Left-hander Blaine Hipa ’26, the frontrunner for the role, threw just one varsity pass before this season, a 3-yard touchdown to Colella in the Yale game. He also ran for a touchdown against Yale.

In the summer, Surace said, the upperclassmen were hard at work, particularly on the offensive side of the ball, practicing together after their jobs and internships, without coaches to guide them. “We’re not involved at all, so it puts leadership on them,” he said. “It’s really helped us with new quarterbacks. … They have to organize it, they have to structure what plays they want to run — it’s almost like the first day you throw your kid in the pool and they have to swim.”

The sink-or-swim offense will have the backing of what was the Ivy League’s top-ranked defense a year ago, in both yards and points allowed. Key starters return in the defensive backfield and on the defensive line, and the Tigers will look to rebuild the linebacker corps after the departures of Liam Johnson ’24 and Ozzie Nicholas ’24, two All-Ivy players who are continuing their careers as graduate transfers at California and Duke, respectively.

At the center of the defense is nose tackle Jack DelGarbino ’25, an All-Ivy honorable mention last fall after making 51 tackles in his first year as a starter. DelGarbino was recruited as a heavyweight wrestler and walked on to the football team in 2022, having last played in a high school state championship game in Ohio.

The “body presence” that high-level freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestlers rely on, DelGarbino said, has translated well to the defensive line. “In order to hit those throws [in Greco-Roman], you need to know how a guy’s coming into you or a guy’s coming away from you, what he’s trying to do,” he said. “So that helps with O-linemen, trying to figure out what they’re trying to get you to do and how to beat that.”

Surace’s squad was picked fourth in the Ivy’s preseason media poll, but the margin between fourth and first appears as narrow as it was last year, when each of Princeton’s league games was decided by eight points or fewer. The 4-3 Tigers finished a game behind Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, all at 5-2, the first two-loss Ivy champions since 1982.

Ivy football has seen a changing of the guard in recent years, with the retirements of Harvard’s Tim Murphy and Columbia’s Al Bagnoli and the death of Dartmouth’s Buddy Teevens, all within the last 14 months.

Surace, in his 14th season, is now the longest-tenured head coach in the league, and two of his former assistants are leading other Ivy programs (James Perry at Brown and Andrew Aurich ’06 at Harvard). He’s also led four teams to Ivy championships — tied with Dick Colman for the most by a Princeton coach.

“I love coming to work,” Surace said during the league’s preseason media day, “and I love the people I’m surrounded by. They energize me in so many ways.”