April 17, 2008

PITTSBURGH - The Duquesne football team concludes spring practice with the annual Red-Blue game on Sunday, April 20 at Pine-Richland High School. The game, which will be broadcast live over the internet by Red Zone Media (www.RedZoneMedia.com), will kickoff a little after 2:00 p.m.

The voice of Duquesne football, Alex Panormios, along with color man Tad Maurey will call the action.

Duquesne, which opens its first season in the Northeast Conference this fall, started spring practice on Tuesday, March 25. Sunday's game, which will consist of two 30 minutes halves with a running clock for all but the final two minutes, is the last of 15 workouts.

The format will consist of the first team offense against the first team defense and the No. 2 offense versus the second-team defense on alternating series. The game will use conventional scoring.

Due to renovation work at Rooney Field, the team has held workouts at five different area high schools as well as at Duquesne's on-campus 60-yard McCloskey Field over the past month.

"The staff and players have done an excellent job of turning the off-campus travel into a positive by ignoring distractions and developing a mental toughness needed to focus on the football field," said fourth-year head coach Jerry Schmitt. "The team has responded well to this situation."

Rooney Field is currently in the fifth month of a renovation that includes the construction of permanent grandstand seating and concession stands in addition to the installation of a new playing surface. The renovation work will be completed in time for the home opener against Saint Francis, Pa. on Sept. 20. DU opens the season at Bucknell on Sept. 6.

The Dukes return 14 starters - including five first-team all-Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Football League picks from last year's 6-4 MAAC co-championship squad.

Junior quarterback Kevin Rombach (Harrisburg, Pa./Central Dauphin) and tackle J.T. Stefanik (Uniontown, Pa./Laurel Highlands), both first team all-conference picks last year, return to lead the offense. Rombach, who started the last eight games of the 2008 season, completed a school record 61.1 percent of his passes for 2,410 yards and 20 touchdowns, while Stefanik led a young offensive line that returns three starters.

Senior Greg Hough (Gibsonia, Pa./Pine-Richland), who led the Dukes with 801 yards rushing (4.2 ypc.) and five touchdowns last season, is also back.

Senior Alex Roberson (Waynesboro, Ga./Curtis Baptist Upper School), a second team All-MAAC pick, will help ease the loss of All-American receiver Bruce Hocker who finished his career with a school record 162 catches for 2,595 yards and 33 touchdowns. Roberson returned from a serious knee injury to catch 34 passes for a team-high 686 yards (20.2 ypc.) last season.

Defensively, junior first team All-MAAC lineman Mykol Gardiner (Cleveland, Ohio/Benedictine) and fellow first team all-league pick Aaron Strader (Pittsburgh, Pa./Westinghouse) lead a group that returns seven starters. Gardiner had a team-high 7.5 sacks last season, while Strader led the Dukes with four interceptions and seven passes broken up. Nathan Totino (Pittsburgh, Pa./Seton-La Salle), the 2008 MAAC co-Defensive Rookie of the Year, is DU's top returning tackler with 93 last season.

The placekicking game is in good hands with Mark Troyan (Ford City, Pa./Ford City). Troyan - a first-team All-MAAC pick - enters his senior season with a Duquesne career record 32 field goals. Schmitt will have to find a replacement for four-year starting punter David Kovalcik (Chantilly, Va./Chantilly), who finished his career second on DU's all-time list with a 37.4 yards per punt average.

"I am very pleased with the progress the team has made this spring," said Schmitt, who was named MAAC Coach of the Year twice in three seasons in the league. "We've had quite a few younger players competing for higher positions on the depth chart. The development of our younger players, combined with the hard work of the veterans, has made the past few weeks a successful spring as we prepare for our first season in the highly competitive Northeast Conference."

Duquesne, which currently ranks third among Football Championship Subdivision teams with 14 consecutive winning seasons, won or shared titles in 11 of its 14 seasons in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Football League from 1994 through 2007. The Dukes are 14-7 all-time - including a 3-1 record last season - against current members of the NEC.