COW’s Barrett named finalist for Fred Mitchell Award

College of Wooster football player Lake Barrett is one of the 10 finalists for this year’s Fred Mitchell Award. The award’s selection committee, which solicits nominations from over 700 non-NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision college teams, unveiled the select group on Dec. 4.

The recipient of this year’s award, announced on Dec. 8, was Landon Reeves of Ottawa University of Arizona, an NAIA school. Place-kickers have to play at an NCAA Div. I Football Championship Subdivision, NCAA Div. II, NCAA Div. III, NAIA or National Junior College Athletic Association school, be an elite place-kicker, achieve a high level of success academically and make an impact in the community to be eligible for selection.

Barrett, the D3football.com All-America and all-region candidate, captured the North Coast Athletic Conference Special Teams Player of the Year award this fall, becoming the first player in program history to claim the honor. The first-team All-NCAC place-kicker is the eighth Fighting Scot to earn All-NCAC laurels in four different seasons and earned D3football.com Preseason All-America honors in 2022, D3football.com All-Region laurels in 2021 and was a two-time semifinalist for the National Football Foundation’s William V. Campbell Trophy.

Barrett is set to graduate as Wooster’s all-time leader with 29 field goals and is second all-time with a 76% success rate. He went 8 for 10 on field goals this fall, and the five-year standout is Wooster’s all-time leader with a 99.4 success rate on extra points and was a remarkable 155 for 156 over his career. Barrett’s 155 extra points are the second-most in program history, and he is the lone place-kicker in program history to go three consecutive seasons with at least 35 makes and no misses. Barrett ran his streak of makes to 134 and finished with 242 career points, a total second among place-kickers in program history.

Academically, the two-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-American is back up for consideration for one of college athletics’ highest academic accolades. The Athletes for a Better World Coach John Wooden Citizenship Cup and Allstate American Football Coaches Association Good Works Team nominee is a biology and education major.

Barrett spent this past summer interning with the Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon in Peru. Personal research interests centered around studying the differences in frog species within the forest on the property and a forest the advocacy organization is working to reforest. With the organization, Barrett assisted with reforestation projects, helped with educational outreach initiatives in local communities and contributed to materials the Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon is utilizing in its lobbying of the Peruvian government for reforestation support.

Elsewhere, Barrett’s groundbreaking research for his independent study at Wooster led to the discovery of a mutation in black squirrels in Colorado that is different from black squirrels found in Ohio. Barrett studied abroad in Panama and was a researcher in the field of tropical ecology. The senior has been a lead zoology lab assistant on campus, a field researcher in the areas of squirrel, salamander, and frog research and contributed to the organization and cataloging of the College’s natural history specimen collection.

On Dec. 6, Barrett became a two-time D3football.com All-Region honoree after scoring first-team honors from the website dedicated to covering all things NCAA Div. III football.

Kevin Smith is the Director of Athletic Communication at The College of Wooster.