Royals OT, Van Dellen, commits to play football at Cornell

Before the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year, HHS football’s own Bennet Van Dellen, senior, captain, took to Twitter to announce some big news. He had committed to play Division One Football for the Big Red at the Ivy League school, Cornell University.

Following the 2015 football season, Cornell’s recruiters reached out to Van Dellen, one of the Royals starting offensive tackles.

“I first came in contact with Cornell when one of the coaches came to visit me at school, but I didn’t think much of it then because all the Ivy [League Schools] came to visit me and it just meant they wanted to see me at their summer camp,” Van Dellen said.

Because of his 3.8 GPA and high ACT score, Van Dellen was being looked into by a good amount of Ivy League programs, so he didn’t take Cornell very seriously at first. But the more Van Dellen contemplated his future, even with other offers coming in, the Big Red were still on his mind.

“I considered a few others before my offer but [Cornell] was by far my favorite,” Van Dellen said.

After much thought about his future school and team, the decision was made. Van Dellen announced his excitement and commitment to become a Big Red on August 12, via Twitter.

“I committed because I really enjoyed the coaches and the school,”  Van Dellen said. “The final thing that made me choose [Cornell] was their amazing engineering program which I ended up getting into.”

It may still be senior year for Van Dellen, and a whole year is ahead until he finally puts on the Big Red uniform, but he’s already thinking about taking the field with his new family, the Cornell University Football team. But Van Dellen have one opponent on his mind.

“Harvard, because they are always a very good football team,” Van Dellen said.

Even though Van Dellen has committed to play for Cornell, the hard work he has already put into getting this opportunity to further his career into college, the work is not over yet. Training is not over yet and he still has to impress his coaches and future teammates at the Cornell pre-season camp.

“[For] getting ready for next fall I will be lifting a lot because college is a whole new of football. I will be reporting for camp at Cornell on August 15 to finish off my training  before fall,” Van Dellen said.

Unfortunately, during the second game of the season on Sept. 9 Van Dellen went down with an injury to his knee. It wasn’t until Friday, Sept. 16 that Van Dellen found out that he has a torn meniscus.

“There was no serious pain when I went down, but when I stood up it felt like it was shifting around and hurt bad,” Van Dellen said.

Van Dellen will be out for 2-6 weeks and will be doing lots of therapy throughout the process.

“My doctor has assured me that this will not affect my future ability to play football so my commitment will be fine,” Van Dellen said.