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Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
From Beginning To Tight End
October 11, 2007 | Football
No member of the Princeton football team has traveled further to wear the Orange and Black than Jake Staser.
And having traversed five time zones with more than 4,000 miles between Anchorage, Alaska, and Princeton, nothing was going to keep Staser off the field.
Staser played fullback in high school and continued at the position as a Princeton freshman. He did well enough as the No. 2 fullback behind Joel Mancl to earn the Donold B. Lourie Award as the top freshman on offense in 2004.
But seven games into the season, Princeton's 21-20 loss to Cornell on a fourth-quarter blocked extra point wasn't the only pain for Staser that day.
“I didn't think I was going to have to have surgery,” Staser said of the separated shoulder and torn labrum he suffered against the Big Red. “But it didn't end up that way.”
The surgery forced Staser out for the 2005 season. When he recovered for last year, the role he might have had lining up behind the quarterback wasn't his.
“We had a lot of talent at running back,” Staser said. “The guy my year who was a tight end, Brendon Swisher, was an excellent blocker, so he was moved to tackle.”
That opened up a potential spot for Staser, if he was willing to adjust his role.
“I wanted to get on the field any way possible,” he says.
He'd traveled too far not to play, and as satisfying as his 2004 recognition was as the top offensive freshman, 2006 was going to be a great year for Jake Staser the football player.
Having served as an understudy to Jon Dekker, who is currently under the employ of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Staser was ready for his new role as a tight end. Ten catches, 131 yards and two touchdowns later, it's safe to say it worked out pretty well for the Alaska native.
Staser showed a strong sense of timeliness in his contributions with his two scores coming against two of Princeton's biggest rivals, Harvard and Penn. His touchdown against the Crimson gave the Tigers a 17-7 lead at the end of the first quarter, and the second-quarter score against Penn put Princeton up 14-7.
His position coach, Adam Hollis, says Staser is ready for more in his final act as a collegian.
“Jake is a complete tight end,” Hollis says. “He has terrific hands and he possesses wide-receiver type acceleration off the line, which puts a lot of pressure on secondary players trying to cover him. He is a vital part of our passing attack.”
The switch to tight end was an adjustment but not unfamiliar for Staser, who has the size to handle the blocking aspect and the experience to catch passes.
“My best friend in high school was our quarterback, so we'd throw the ball around,” he says.
Speaking of his high school, at Service High in Anchorage, football is a commonly spoken language. The school produced Mark Schlereth, a Super Bowl winning lineman for the Washington Redskins and Denver Broncos, and Staser's teams were good enough to travel to Oregon and New Mexico for regular-season games.
The Cougars won both of those contests, Staser adds.
Staser has continued his education as a politics major at Princeton. Like many of his classmates, he hasn't figured out for sure what life after June 2008 will bring, but he has his options.
“I'll look for some jobs,” Staser says. “I took the LSAT, and I'm thinking about applying to law schools to keep that door open.”
While Staser is thinking about employment now, four years ago he was choosing among his college options. He visited Brown, Oregon and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in addition to Princeton, and family traditions could have had him a couple hours north of Old Nassau as an Army Black Knight.
“My father, my grandfather and my uncle all went to West Point,” Staser says. “It's a long gray line.”
The line nearly extended another generation, but Staser chose to end it instead.
“Princeton was just a better fit,” he says. “It's hard to argue with the No. 1 school in the nation.”
While fitting in with his team, Staser has also had to adjust to life in New Jersey.
“Here it's harder to get away,” he says. “In Alaska, you can drive an hour (from Anchorage), and there's no one around.”
While the calendar is still on September and daylight is getting shorter but still brightening our evenings, Staser has the interesting perspective of dealing with those long Alaska summer days and seemingly endless winter nights.
“I played basketball to keep myself busy in the winter. If you don't (have something to do), it gets pretty depressing,” he says. “In the summer, I can get home from school at 8 (p.m.) and go lay out on the deck.”
When Staser does get away, he likes what one might think an Alaskan would enjoy. His list of outdoor avocations is impressive, including fly fishing, snowboarding and hunting. Staser's proudest catch ? at least in the hunting sense ? is a ram he says is among the heaviest recorded by the hunting organization Boone and Crockett.
“Football takes up a lot of hunting season,” Staser says.
With eight games left this year, there are plenty of catches for Staser to have, if only on the football field. And with no Rams in the Ivy League, Lions and Bears will be among them at the top of one hunter's list this fall.