SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) — Susquehanna University junior center Dave Wonderlick (at left) (Shenandoah/Shenandoah Valley H.S.) is a 1999 GTE Academic All-America College Division Football First Team selection. The 24-player team includes 23 seniors and Wonderlick.
The College Division includes players from all NAIA and NCAA Division II and III institutions. Wonderlick is the lone first-team selection from Middle Atlantic Conference schools, and becomes Susquehanna’s first football Academic All-American since strong safety Jeff Rainess earned honors in 1991.
“This is a great honor for Dave, who is so deserving as both a student and an athlete,” said 10th-year Susquehanna head coach Steve Briggs. “Dave’s been a conference All-Star and our team’s offensive lineman of the year, and he’s the top student in the junior class with a perfect grade-point average. Academic All-Americans are supposed to be student-athletes who excel both on the field and in the classroom and I don’t think Dave can do much better than he has.”
The 5-10, 245-pound Wonderlick earned MAC Commonwealth League Second Team All-Star honors, and was also the team’s Bob Pittello Offensive Lineman of the Year Award recipient this season. He made both the MAC Commonwealth League Academic Honor Roll, as well as the GTE Academic All-America District II College Division Football Team.
In his first season as a full-time starter, he became one of the top performers on a line which helped Susquehanna finish second in MAC rushing offense (163.5 yards per game), and fifth overall (345.7 yards per game). Wonderlick did not allow a sack in 289 pass plays, giving up just three-and-a-half hurries.
He was a key member as the offensive line that was the team’s Gus Weber Crusader Players of the Week, sponsored by the Golden Corral Family Restaurant in Shamokin Dam, in a 27-7 win at Juniata on October 9. The line led a punishing attack which rolled up 285 yards rushing, 28 first downs and didn’t allow a sack, while keeping the ball for 37:28 against a Juniata defense which was ranked 11th in NCAA Division III against the rush (61.8 yards per game) at the time.
Wonderlick is the top student in the junior class with a perfect 4.0 cumulative grade point average as a communications/theatre arts major. In addition to his perfect academic record, he’s also a University Scholar, was inducted into Alpha Lambda Delta (freshman honor society), is active in the campus chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America, and has been a corresponding sports writer for both The Pottsville Republican and the Reading Eagle-Times, near his hometown. He was also one of five students chosen for a Susquehanna All-Star team for College Bowl — “the varsity sports of the mind.”
Wonderlick helped Susquehanna win the MAC Commonwealth League title for a second-straight season while finishing 7-3 overall, 4-1 in the league. It was the 14th-straight non-losing and third-straight winning season for the Crusader program.
Named one of the team’s tri-captains for the 2000 season, he is the son of Len and Louise Wonderlick.
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