Being graduating seniors, have either of you had any involvement with the football program since the season ended?

ML: I help them in the mornings with the running.
QS: Occasionally I do a little seven on seven.

What do you plan to do after graduation? Providing you graduate, which for some of us (me for instance) isn’t necessarily a sure thing yet.

ML: I’m going to coach here, helping out with the defensive backs.
QS: Me, either grad school or enlist full-time.

Army?

QS: Yeah, as an officer.

If you go into the Army full-time, what do you hope to do?

QS: Hopefully, assume my dreams to become a Ranger. Go to Ranger school and finish that up.

That’s intense. What made you want to become a Ranger?

QS: The excitement, the thrill of all the stuff you get to do. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do. The excitement of just jumping out of a plane and stuff, going on top secret missions.

I’ve always had a little bit of concern for people who are more than willing to jump out of a perfectly good plane with a pack of cloth on their back. Mark, since you’ll be staying here to coach the football team, where do you see the program going now that it’s entering its fifth year of rebuilding?

ML: I think it has a bright future ahead. Recruiting’s going well, we’ve got a good class of returning players and I’m excited for next year.

Does the graduation of the first full recruiting class concern you at all?

ML: It doesn’t concern me at all. What we’ve done is shown the younger guys how to lead the team, how to play, how to listen to the coaching staff.
QS: I think we’ve taught them how to compete, too.

I’d definitely agree on the competing part. OC football has a lot of heart. Speaking of which, the Yeomen upset Wooster this past season. Any surprises in store for this fall? What goals does the team have now that the bar has been raised?

QS: You can never tell the future, ya know. Can’t really answer that one, it’s really up in the air, it’s all dependent on how well they perform.

So that takes care of the serious future, what do you plan to do during Commencement week? I plan to get hammered myself…on Shirley Temples...lots of them.

ML: That’s a good one. Being the guys that we are, we don’t really participate in too much getting hammered.
QS: Yeah, we don’t get plastered like most people do.
ML: I’m definitely more the quiet type.
QS: Yeah, Mark’s more the quiet type. I probably do more socializing.

You’re both good students here at the College as well as varsity athletes. Did either of you find that athletics helped your time here at the College in growing as a person over the past four years?

QS: It’s really taught me how to manage your time and it’s also showed me how a person can grow to deal with obstacles that come your way, be it on the football field or off the football field.
ML: It taught me to be a more disciplined person. It definitely taught me to manage my time better. And actually, I always did better during the season with my grades than in the off-season because I was more focused and structured.

Didn’t y’all used to run track?

ML: Yup.
QS: We were nasty back in the day!
ML: Blazers! We’re record holders.
QS: We’re still the record holders in the 4x200 indoor.
ML: We were all-conference, too. Now we’re just old men. Old men with banged-up knees and banged-up backs. We’ve endured a lot of injuries, actually. We really became friends when we both broke our arm freshman year of football.
QS: I broke mine in the first game. He broke his in the fourth game. We broke our radius in the exact same spot.
ML: As the picture shows with our casts on.
QS: And to show you how much of a trooper we are, we played the rest of the season with it.
ML: And a little wide receiver.

Oh bloody hell, I remember that. You know it’s a bad day when you have two defensive backs playing wide receiver and they’re making more catches with casts on their arms than the usual starting wide outs.

QS: It’s a different ball game now, there’s no need for us on that side of the ball because our receivers are so talented.

What records did you set this year?

QS: For Oberlin, most interceptions in a season, most interceptions in a game and in a season and in the conference, most interceptions in a season and second all-time career interceptions.

Wow. Here’s hoping no one throws a grenade at you, you’re liable to catch it and run it back to them.

QS: For the team we had a lot of all-conference people. As a football team we definitely represented in the conference.

You guys got any jokes?

ML: Yeah, we’re undercover pranksters now.

Mark, you’re not so undercover if you state it in a newspaper, ya know?

QS: As far as, like, being a prankster, people always want to get us back and so we gotta watch each other’s backs all the time. Ok, I got one for ya. Why did it take [junior] Joe Spohn so long to pour the orange juice? By the way, that’s because of the Wooster game Joe. Three offsides in a row!

I don’t know.

QS: Because it says concentrate!

That’s horrible.

ML: That definitely needs to say QS in front of him.

On that note, we oughta wrap this up before Quammie tells any more bad jokes. Any final words or shout outs?

ML: Yeah, I want to say a thanks to Coach Ramsey and his staff, Tim the trainer, Larry the equipment manager…

Larry, that clever…I’m still mad about the ice bucketing. Anyways, continue.

ML: All my teammates, I gotta say hello to my family.

What do you think this is, TV? You think you just won an Oscar?

ML: Diana, and of course, big Ant. Thanks, Ryan.

Q? (Quammie’s clever nickname)

QS: Yeah, put the same people Mark said except Diana, but you gotta include the “of course, big Ant” and you gotta put Ms. Gates, Ms. Knight, the Bosh Man, President Dye — holdin’ it down — and to my niece, Stephanie, I love her to death. That’s my baby girl.

Are you guys sure there’s no one else you want to thank, a lunch lady perhaps? Maybe someone on the ground crew who you forgot?

QS: All of the lunch ladies who had said hello to us.

That was rhetorical. All right, and on that note, before they remember more people from their lives — thanks, fellas.

QS: Oh, yeah, we forgot our advisors! Kornblith and Clovis White!

We’re done, that’s it. We’re done!

ML: Hey, you didn’t put Gary in front of mine, come on, give him some credit…

OK, for the love of God – Gary Kornblith. And on that note, good night!