Tim VanderBrink has 50 tackles, has forced two fumbles, and is a leader from his safety spot for St. John Fisher.  St. John Fisher athletics photo by Adrian Kraus

By Glen Crevier
D3sports.com

Something fun is happening around the St. John Fisher football program, creating a buzz that hasn’t been felt on the Rochester, New York, campus in nearly a decade.

Last Saturday, the fun became tangible. The Cardinals outlasted Empire 8 Athletic Conference rival SUNY Brockport, 31-24 in overtime to win the 20th annual Courage Bowl in front of a hometown crowd estimated at 3,000 fans in Growney Stadium.

The Courage Bowl is a marquee game on both schools’ schedules. It benefits Camp Good Days and Special Times, a local organization that provides experiences for children diagnosed with cancer and other diseases. The children participate in the game as honorary coaches and cheerleaders.

Winning the game is a big deal, a local bragging-rights contest that feels like their own Red River Shootout.

More importantly, the victory snapped a seven-game losing streak to Brockport in the rivalry game, perhaps providing proof that the Cardinals’ program, once synonymous with Empire 8 titles and NCAA appearances, has begun its comeback. They are 4-1, the program’s best start since 2016, as they head into Saturday’s game at Hartwick.

Ed Raby Jr. saw St. John Fisher from across the field as an Empire 8 head coach before taking over the program this past offseason.  St. John Fisher athletics photo by Adrian Kraus

The architect of this new era is coach Ed Raby Jr., who was hired in February from Morrisville State after longtime coach Paul Vosburgh retired last November following a 3-7 season. 

Vosburgh started when the Fisher program was a club team and helped bring it into NCAA status, coaching for 34 seasons. He led his teams to five trips to the NCAA playoffs, and won numerous accolades along the way, including national coach of the year in 2006, his best season. The Cardinals went 12-2 and reached the NCAA semifinals before falling to mighty Mount Union.

But after six non-winning seasons – excluding 2020 when COVID shut down the program – the time for change seemed right.

So it’s a new day for Fisher. 

Raby came to the school after eight seasons at Morrisville – four as head coach – to revitalize the program and compete on a national level. He brought with him a disciplined approach that snapped the players to attention, 6 a.m. practices three days a week and a stronger mental approach to situational football.

“This administration wants to win as much as I do,” Raby said. “There’s a real commitment here to football. I’m a very competitive person. I’ve been in the Empire 8 for a long time so I knew about the history here and what’s possible.”

When Raby arrived, he said the program had seven to nine commitments for the 2025 season. 

So he got to work recruiting, and ultimately brought in 55 new players.

“It’s so hard to recruit to a private Division III school, where you are competing with state schools,” said Jennifer Granger, director of athletics and recreation. “So finding the right person to sell the school and the program was very important.”

She believes she found that person in Raby.

“This staff has brought energy and enthusiasm. It’s a fresh start and it’s contagious,” she said. “The start of this season has far exceeded my expectations.” 

Things do seem to be going Fisher’s way. They rolled up victories over FDU-Florham, St. Lawrence, Alfred and Brockport. The lone loss was to the University of Rochester by a touchdown.

To say the players have bought into the new coach and staff and the new approach would be an understatement.

“We have a saying now,” said Tim VanderBrink, a safety and one of the team’s defensive leaders. ‘Don’t let your brothers down.’ This team really is playing for one another. It’s a blue-collar attitude. Our mindset is to emphasize the next play, the next drive, the next game. We turn the page every week. I think the sky is the limit here.”

Raby isn’t ready to go quite that far – yet. 

“Our margin for error is still very small,” he said. “If we can keep doing some things the way we’ve been doing them … We are winning the turnover margin this season at plus-7. We really stress protecting the football. And we teach the kids not to give up explosive plays on defense. We’ve been really good in the red zone. Teams drive the field on us, and we give up some yards but not points. I’ll take that.”

Fortune has smiled on the Cardinals at the quarterback position. Junior Ryan Whitney won the starting job but sustained a lower body injury in the second game. His replacement, Mason Lister, also a junior, has played so well that he’s won the starting job and the offense keeps rolling. He has completed 59 percent of his passes for 641 yards and four TDs. He’s also rushed for a touchdown.

Lister is perhaps the best example of the next-man-up attitude on the team.

“This is my third year and I’ve never won the starting job,” Lister said. “Yet I’ve always believed I was ready to play. A lot of people really needed me to step up, and the coaching staff really believed in me and gave me that confidence. You kind of feel like you can’t let anyone down.” Said Raby: “It’s a unique situation. We certainly didn’t plan it this way. Our backup QB is one of our team captains. But it was a situation forced on us. Mason has played out of his mind and he’s earned the right to start at this point. Ryan did nothing wrong. Mason just elevated his game.”

The schedule does toughen for Fisher, with Cortland and Utica on the calendar right after the Hartwick game. The Cardinals have dropped six consecutive games to each of those schools.

“We’ve started changing the culture of the program here,” Raby said. “We’ve seen what Cortland can do at the Division III level. It’s certainly possible for us to be competitive at the national level. And that’s our vision. We expect to be a perennial top 15 program. But we aren’t talking hype here. We’ll line it up and execute and see what happens.”