Jaden AlfanoStJohn Helps SUNY Cortland Win Division III National Championship

Following his Hansen Award-clinching senior season at Westhampton Beach in 2019, Jaden AlfanoStJohn attended NCAA Division I Long Island University to play football. But after receiving no playing time his freshman season, the Westhampton resident opted to transfer to Division III SUNY Cortland.

Unequivocally, AlfanoStJohn said “it definitely was the best move I made for my future.”

“I think that waiting in a pecking order was not in my best interest and allowing myself to be seen for my talent, and to be coached at an elite level while I’m still young, was definitely one of the best moves I made going to Cortland.”

It would be hard to argue with him.

Following two very successful seasons personally, AlfanoStJohn helped the Red Dragons accomplish history this season when they won their first-ever NCAA Division III Championship after defeating defending champion and previously unbeaten North Central College of Illinois, 38-37, in the 50th Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl on Friday night. In a back-and-forth game, Cortland stopped a North Central two-point conversion attempt with 1:20 remaining to hold on to the victory. The loss snapped a 29-game win streak for North Central.

On Sunday afternoon, the championship-clinching victory was still surreal for the All-American running back.

“It hasn’t honestly fully sunk in yet, but it feels amazing,” he said. “The more we progressed, the more we unlocked a new challenge each week. As a competitor, a championship is the only goal in the realm of winning the conference and going on a long playoff run, but there are a bunch of question marks that follow and determine your success in the playoffs. Our first playoff game that we won this season was the second playoff game that we had won in two years, and that was exciting, but we kept our emotions in check. We were such a level-headed team, we expected everything and we weren’t afraid to lose throughout the playoffs.”

Cortland closed the season with a 14-1 record, extending its school single-season victory record. The Red Dragons finished the year with a school-record 12-game win streak. Cortland’s previous best national finishes were quarterfinal showings in 1988 and 2008. Cortland is the first school from the state of New York to win a Division III football title since Ithaca in 1991.

Statistically speaking, the championship game wasn’t AlfanoStJohn’s best. He ran the ball 13 times for a total of 18 yards, and also caught a pair of passes for 19 yards, while also helping out the blocking game. North Central came into the game intent on stopping AlfanoStJohn and Cortland’s run game, so the Red Dragons leaned on their All-American quarterback Zac Boyes, who completed 26 of his 34 passes for 349 yards and five touchdowns and ran 16 times for 123 yards, leading to his Stagg Bowl Most Outstanding Player nod. Boyes is only the second Cortland player in school history to pass for 300 yards and run for 100 yards in the same game; J.J. Tutwiler accomplished the feat versus TCNJ in 2002.

Just prior to Friday night’s championship, D3football.com announced its All-American selections and AlfanoStJohn was a Fourth Team Running Back selection. Overall on the season, AlfanoStJohn rushed 247 times for 1,378 yards (5.6 per carry) and 17 touchdowns and caught 15 passes for 140 yards and a touchdown. He eclipsed the century mark in rushing yards on six different occasions this season, including three of Cortland’s four NCAA playoff games leading up to the championship game. He ran for 193 yards and two touchdowns in the NCAA quarterfinals at Alma, 157 yards and a score in the first round at Endicott, and 108 yards on 16 carries, with two touchdowns, in the semifinals at Randolph-Macon.

AlfanoStJohn couldn’t pinpoint exactly when there was a moment during the season that he was playing on a national championship team. He did say that he really liked the schedule that head coach Curt Fitzgerald put forth for the team, starting with a season opener against the 10th-ranked team in Division III, Delaware Valley, which AlfanoStJohn helped the Red Dragons win handily, 42-13, by rushing for 169 yards and a touchdown.

But, in week three, Cortland lost, 38-35, at home to 16th-ranked Susquehanna, which AlfanoStJohn said humbled the team in a positive way. From that point in mid-September forward, the team didn’t lose another game.

“That game proved that we can be beaten,” he said. “The progression of the season brought into our understanding of what we can do.

“When I think back to my freshman year at Cortland, it was pretty wild for us to make the playoffs. Then the following year we won a playoff game and we all seemed pretty content with that,” AlfanoStJohn explained. “But sophomore year we kind of wanted more, but we lost in the first round of the playoffs and I think that propelled us for success this year. Playing in that [championship] game was an awesome and unbelievable experience. We all worked hard for it, but the stars also aligned for us. We went into the playoffs knowing we’d need a little bit of luck. We knew we had the talent, but it was definitely an awesome experience.”

Success seems to follow AlfanoStJohn wherever he goes. He was named the 60th recipient of the Carl A. Hansen Award given to the top overall player in all of Suffolk County his senior year in 2019. He was the third consecutive Hurricane to win what is the most coveted award in the county — named after the former Westhampton Beach football head coach and athletic director — joining Dylan Laube, who won it in 2017, and Liam McIntyre, who won it the following season.

AlfanoStJohn rushed for 1,570 yards on 224 carries, had 25 touchdowns and set a school record with eight interceptions his senior season. In three years on varsity, he had a 30-3 career record that included two undefeated Division III titles, seven postseason victories and a Long Island Class III Championship in 2017. He was a big part of the program record 22-game winning streak and he accrued 2,700 rushing yards on 357 carries and 42 touchdowns, caught 18 passes for 289 yards and four touchdowns and intercepted 17 passes on defense throughout his high school career.

While his former teammate in Laube has just recently declared the upcoming NFL Draft, what lies ahead for AlfanoStJohn is still to be determined with one more year remaining at Cortland. He’d like to keep his football career going for as long as he can.

“We’re going to get back to work and try and accomplish everything we just did,” he said. “I want to see where my football career can take me, whatever league that is beyond college football, so that’s my plan personally. Next year, we want to try and repeat history and we’ll see what happens after that.”