Dec. 7, 2007
NORMAL, Ill. -
For the fourth-straight season, Illinois State has had a representative on the prestigious Walter Camp Football Foundation Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) All-America Team, as senior linebacker Kye Stewart (Nashville, Tenn./Pearl-Cohn HS) was named to the 2007 team Friday.
Stewart became the sixth player in Redbird history to be honored by the Walter Camp Football Foundation, as he joins Cameron Siskowic (2006), Laurent Robinson (2005), Brent Hawkins (2005), Boomer Grigsby (2004) and Mike McCabe (1988). Stewart was also one of two Gateway Football Conference members on the team, as he was joined by Northern Iowa offensive lineman Chad Rinehart.
The 2007 Buck Buchanan Award finalist, an honor presented to the nation's top defensive player, led the Gateway in tackles, after finishing runner-up in 2006. Stewart earned first-team all-league honors for the second-straight year in 2007 and finished with 131 tackles on the season. He posted double-digit tackle totals in every game but two, and matched his career-high with 17 takedowns against Western Illinois.
The team was selected by the head coaches and sports information directors from FCS schools and certified by UHY Advisors, a New Haven, Conn.,-based accounting firm
Walter Camp, "The Father of American Football," first selected an all-America team in 1889. Camp - a former Yale athlete and football coach - is also credited with developing play from scrimmage, set plays, the numerical assessment of goals and tries and the restriction of play to eleven men per side. The Walter Camp Football Foundation - a New Haven, Conn.,-based all-volunteer group - was founded in 1967 to perpetuate the ideals of Camp and to continue the tradition of selecting All-America teams for the Football Bowl and Championship subdivisions.
