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Show Moab College Gridder Beina Eyed by Pros Moab's Leonard Walter-schied, Walter-schied, a senior football star at Southern Utah State College, Cedar City, has played so well during his college career he thinks he may get a chance in the pros. Walterschied's outstanding record and aspirations for the future were the subject of a feature article in the Salt Lake Tribune this week, which lauded him as "the Thunder-birds' Thunder-birds' best and most versatile player." He led the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference in punt and kickoff returns last season, sea-son, and is among the league leaders through 8 games this season, averaging 8.4 yards on 19 punt returns and 28 yards on 15 kickoff returns. According to the article, written by sports writer Lex Hemphill, Leonard keeps his pro hopes going by considering consider-ing the case of Jack Delo-plaine, Delo-plaine, a rookie with the Pittsburgh Steelers who scor- ed 2 touchdowns last week for the champions. Walterschied recalled, "1 was watching him play on TV in an exhibition game this year, and I went back to look at the NA1A statistics for last year. He played for' Salem, West Virginia. I was third in returns, and he was right behind me in fourth." In his fifth year at SUSC, Walterschied lost part of two fingers on his left hand in an oil rig accident two years ago, and laid off football for a year as a result. "He could have graduated last year, but he wanted to come back for one more year of football," said SUSC coach Tom Kingsford. And although Walterschied was among the RMAC's leading pass receivers receiv-ers last year, the coach thinks he is a better defensive player, and switched him back to defense where he and the SUSC team clicked in their win over Mesa last week. Sports writer Lemphill concludes, con-cludes, "if the pros are looking beyond versatility to some intangible ingredient like determination de-termination or love of the game, they'll find that too in this Moab lad." |
