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University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Announce 2009 Team Captains
5/1/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Minnesota head football coach Tim Brewster announced the names of six Golden Gophers who will serve as team captains for the 2009 season Friday.
Senior wide receiver Eric Decker and junior quarterback Adam Weber were elected to represent the offense, while senior defensive tackle Garrett Brown, senior linebacker Lee Campbell, senior linebacker Simoni Lawrence and senior defensive tackle Eric Small were chosen to represent the defense.
The selections were made by a vote of the team.
“I could not be more pleased with the selections the team made with these six young men,” Brewster said. “These guys exemplify what it means to be a captain and have displayed true leadership with both their actions and their words.”
The selection of six team captains is a bit of a departure for the Gophers under Brewster, whose teams traditionally elected four captains two from the offense and two from the defense. According to Brewster, the vote was so close on the defensive side of the ball that the team elected to go with four from that unit.
Decker and Weber each were captains during the 2008 season and will be serving their second stints in the team leadership role. Brown, Campbell, Lawrence and Small are all first-time team captain selections.
Decker, a preseason All-America and Biletnikoff Award candidate, is two-year starter who has reset Minnesota’s single-season receptions record in each of the past two seasons. On pace to become the Gophers all-time leader in both receiving yards and receptions this fall, he had 84 catches for 1,074 yards and seven touchdown in 2008, earning first team All-Big Ten and honorable mention All-America honors.
A starter at quarterback in each of the past two season, Weber is on pace to break the Gophers’ career marks for passing yards, completions, attempts, completion percentage and touchdown passes this fall. He set the school single-season passing record with 2,895 yards as a freshman in 2007 and came back with the third-most passing yards last year with 2,761. Weber, who was a second team All-Big Ten selection by the league’s coaches last year, also owns the two most prolific seasons in school history in terms of completions 258 in 2007 and 255 in 2008 and has tossed 39 touchdown passes since taking over as the starter as a freshman.
Brown has started 19 games during his Gopher career, including 16 in a row heading into the 2009 season. He ranked fourth on the team in tackles for losses last season with 7.0 and collected 34 total stops.
Campbell will open his second season at middle linebacker this fall after moving over from defensive end during preseason camp a year ago. A 23-game starter for the Gophers over the past two seasons, Campbell closed out the 2008 campaign with a team-leading 80 total tackles.
A high-impact performer who had a huge influence on the Gophers’ defense in his first season with the team, Lawrence is considered to be one of Minnesota’s most versatile and productive defenders. He collected 66 tackles as a junior and was second on the team in tackles for losses with 10.5, despite coming off the bench in eight of 13 games. He also scored two touchdowns last fall.
Small is in his third season at Minnesota and has been a mainstay in the middle of the Gophers’ defense during his time in Maroon and Gold. A 19-game starter since arriving on campus, Small has 43 tackles, including seven for losses, for his career.
