GOLDEN — Marc Schiechl weighed 185 pounds when he played for Bear Creek High School and was considered a possible walk-on candidate for Division I programs. Instead, he heeded the recruiting pitch to join the Division II program at Colorado School of Mines.
With the Orediggers facing a first-round playoff matchup Saturday against Grand Valley State at Allendale, Mich., Schiechl is an example of how a player can thrive and improve in a lower-tier environment.
This season, the defensive end became the all-time sack leader for Division II, is a candidate for the Gene Upshaw Award for the division’s top lineman and probably will get a look in an NFL camp.
Stranger things have happened than a Coloradan making the NFL out of D-II. Former Northern Colorado defensive end Aaron Smith — who played for Colorado Springs’ Sierra High and then for the Bears when they were a D-II national power — is in his 12th season with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“That’s what I really want to do,” Schiechl said this week. “But if that doesn’t work out, I’ll fall back on my engineering degree.”
But before that becomes an issue, there is the business of the playoffs, and the Orediggers — the co-champions of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference — will be meeting a traditional Division II national power on the road.
Mines (9-2) is considered a significant underdog in the first round, in part because the RMAC has even more stringent scholarship limitations than D-II does as a whole, but also because Grand Valley State’s football tradition includes four national championships in a five-year span (2002-06).
“This is exciting,” Schiechl said. “Everyone talked about how the RMAC doesn’t have very good competition. They think we’re one of the bottom-tier conferences. So it’s good to go out there to show what the RMAC can do against teams like that.”
Mines, which earned the league’s co-championship with a 55-53 triple-overtime win over Nebraska-Kearney last week, is averaging 39 points a game, largely behind junior quarterback Clay Garcia. The former Denver Post Gold Helmet Award winner has thrown for 3,813 yards and 38 touchdowns. For the most part, the Mines’ defense has been dominant, with the exception of that wild game against Kearney.
Schiechl, now listed at 6-feet-3 and 260 pounds, is the leader of a defensive unit that operates out of the 3-4, with three seniors up front — Schiechl, nose tackle Blaine Sumner and end Kaleb Anderson, who’s also from Bear Creek. Schiechl’s 10 1/2 sacks this season give him 44 1/2 for his career, and this week he was named the RMAC’s defensive player of the year for the second consecutive season.
“They were good last year, and they got so much better this year,” Mines coach Bob Stitt said.
About Schiechl, he said: “Marc’s statistics in his first couple of years were really big because of the scheme, but we weren’t as strong defensively as a team.
“We’ve got a great, sound defensive scheme in now, and in it, he’s not going to have those kinds of numbers. His numbers haven’t been as big, but we’ve become a much better team because of the way Marc has played.”
Sumner, from Conifer, is 6-2 and 330 and is the type of fireplug to require the double-team block up front to clear space in the running game. Also named to the RMAC’s all-league team this week, he already has graduated and is working toward his master’s degree in engineering and technology management.
“The three of us lived together as freshmen,” Sumner said of the defensive linemen. “We hang out with each other all the time, and the camaraderie we have as pretty much four-year starters has been great.”
Anderson, the Orediggers’ other defensive end, noted that he and Schiechl “have been playing on the same team since the third grade. We know each other extremely well, and you want to do everything you can for your brothers and your teammates.”
Mines defensive coordinator Bob Benson said of Schiechl: “Our schemes surround him, let him do the work and put him in the best situations that will allow him to have success. When you have a guy like him who’s so dominant, it enabled us to do a lot of different things, getting eight and nine guys in the box in different ways.”
One of the cases made against a top-division playoff is the relentless distraction of additional weeks of games. Schiechl laughed when that was brought up in the context of the D-II playoffs, in which a team could play five additional games before holding up the championship trophy in Florence, Ala.
“I don’t think it’s too hard because school’s always been hard,” Schiechl said. “This is no different now. It feels the same.”
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
