Teams News - 2015 Season Review - Special Teams

The special teams really reflected the experience of the players in their roles. The return game had a lot of experience and excelled while the kick game had a lot of youth and was inconsistent.

Kick and Punt Returns

The Golden Rams ranked #18 in the nation and third in the PSAC in kickoff return yards with an average of 23.3 yards. The highlight of the season was Brandon Monk's 96-yard return for touchdown at Lock Haven which helped shake off a sluggish start for the Golden Ram offense. Monk ranked 4th in the PSAC in average kick return yards (25.5) while Jarel Elder was 8th (23.5).

The punt return game was improved over 2014, as the team was sixth in the PSAC and #39 in the country with an average return of 12.0 yards. Monk was third in the PSAC with a 9.8 yard average per return. The highlight in this was Tyler Karpinski's 70-yard return for touchdown at Cheyney in his only return of the season. But when Monk got hurt at Mercyhurst, in the pouring rain, Anthony Brown stepped in and had three returns for 19 yards as well.

Brandon Monk returned a kickoff 96 yards for a TD (Photo Ron Hockman)

Elder led the team in kickoff return yards (Photo Ron Hockman)

Kick Scoring

This was a peculiar area for the Golden Rams. The season started with Ben Solis as the place kicker and he was perfect on his nine PAT's, but missed his two field goal attempts - a 23-yarder to get West Chester on the board against Lenoir-Rhyne and a game ending 35-yarder at Mercyhurst. After two games, with Solis no longer in uniform, Brendan Paulison assumed the duties. Through the next eight games, Paulison was 11 of 12 on field goals, missing only a 44-yard attempt at Millersville, and was 34 of 37 on PAT's. The Slippery Rock game was tough for Paulison as he missed both PAT's and a 23-yard field goal. However, he finished fourth in the PSAC in kick scoring with 6.1 points per game and was named second team All-PSAC East.

Paulison led West Chester with 67 points this season (Photo Bert Garbutt)

Solis was 9 of 9 on PAT's in two games

This was the final season for long snapper Charles Kuklinski, while Karpinski performed the holding duties this season.

Kuklinski served as long snapper (Photo Bert Garbutt)

Karpinski's good hands served well as holder (Photo Ron Hockman)

Punts and Coverage

Paulison handled the punting duties the entire season and was somewhat inconsistent in this area. He averaged 35.7 yards on his 49 punts, and pinned opponents inside the 20 on ten occasions. He boomed 65-yard punts at Millersville and against Slippery Rock, but also had a nine-yard punt at Mercyhurst in the critical waning minutes of that game. West Chester was in the middle of the pack within the PSAC this year, but the redshirt freshman should become more confident with experience.

Paulison also handled the punting chore (Photo Bert Garbutt)

Kickoffs and Coverage

Paulison started the season as the kickoff specialist, but after he assumed the kick scoring role, yielded kickoffs to classmate Connor Foley. Foley nailed five touchbacks this year, but as a team, West Chester was second to last in kickoff depth. However, placement and coverage moved the Golden Rams up to 11th in the PSAC in net kickoff coverage since West Chester allowed just 16.7 yards per return which was good for 13th in the country.

Foley had five touchbacks this year (Photo Bert Garbutt)