NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 2005 – Winners of the four 2005 Rimington Awards for the outstanding center in NCAA Division 1-AA, II and III and the NAIA were announced today by the sponsoring Boomer Esiason Foundation.

Montana has two honorees, Jeff Bolton, the Division 1-AA recipient from Montana State’s Bozeman campus, and Kyle Baker of the NAIA’s Carroll College in Helena.

Bolton

FCS: Jeff Bolton
Montana State Univeristy

Bolton was a three-year starter whose senior season ended with first-team All-American recognition by the Associated Press, National Football Gazette and Walter Camp Foundation.

Because of his sure-handed snapping, knockdown blocking, height and weight numbers (6-4, 302), Bolton is expected to be selected in the early rounds of the upcoming NFL draft.

NAIA: Kyle Baker
Carroll College

Baker

Baker (6-1, 265) was an athletic and academic All-American in 2004 and ’05. In the four years he lettered, Carroll won national championships with an overall 53-4 record. Baker started in all but one of those 57 games.

Baker started all four seasons of his career with the Saints and won numerous All-American honors from the NAIA, Victory Sports Network and Don Hansen’s Football Gazette.

In the order listed, the Division II and III winners are Lance Ancar of North Alabama in Florence, and Damien Ciecwisz of Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pa. A National Football Gazette All-American, Ancar (6-1, 280) is a three-time All Gulf South Conference center and member of two Daktronics All-South Region squads.

Ancar

Ciecwisz (6-0, 260) captained a team that earned the Middle Atlantic Conference title with its 10-0 record. A starter in 47 games over a four-year period, he is a National Football Gazette and D3 football.com All-American.

Named after Nebraska’s College Football Hall of Fame center, winners of the Rimington awards are selected by Don Hansen, founder and publisher of the National Weekly Football Gazette. Rimington began presenting them in 2003, three years after Esiason’s foundation created the Rimington Trophy for Division 1-A’s premier center.

Ciecwisz

The 1-A recipient is the consensus All-America center on teams that are compiled by the Walter Camp Foundation, American Football Coaches Association, the Sporting News, and Football Writers Association of America. Its 2005 awardee was Minnesota’s Greg Eslinger, who received the trophy at a testimonial banquet in Lincoln, Neb., on Jan. 7.

In 1993, when his two-year-old son, Gunnar, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, Esiason, a dynamic NFL quarterback from 1984 thru ’97, launched the BEF to raise funds for the treatment and research of that genetic disease.