BEREA — John McGraw had a marvelous 2009 season for the Baldwin-Wallace football team. Too bad it wasn’t a satisfying season.

McGraw, a senior flanker/slot back from North Ridgeville, rushed for 486 yards on 108 carries (4.5 per carry) and led the Yellow Jackets with nine touchdowns. He also had 14 receptions for 85 yards.

This came despite B-W using a three-headed running back system — a system in which McGraw (5-foot-8, 210 pounds) shared ball-carrying duties with Kyrell Crook and Tim Miker. He also reached those numbers after missing almost all of his sophomore season because of two knee injuries.

But McGraw was displeased with the 3-7 record BW posted. He said the rest of the returning players feel the same way and are determined to do something about it.

“We’re not going to accept 3-7,” McGraw said.

“B-W is not a 3-7 team. That’s not Baldwin-Wallace football.”

It certainly hasn’t been. You have to go back to 1966 to find a B-W team that won only three games.

The last Yellow Jackets team that had a lower winning percentage than the 2009 club was in 1957, the year before legendary coach Lee Tressel took over the program.

“No, that wasn’t a typical year for us,” Yellow Jackets coach John Snell said. “I think everyone is very determined to prove we’re better than 3-7. We will soon find out if this is the case.”

The Yellow Jackets begin play tonight against Wooster (5-5 in 2009) at Finnie Stadium. Kickoff is 7 o’clock.

“We’ve been working hard,” McGraw said. “We’ve talked a lot about last season. We’ve spent a lot of time in the weightroom. We know we’ve been picked to finish seventh (in the 10-team Ohio Athletic Conference), but with the desire to win that we all have we expect more.

“We have a great bunch of players returning, and we have had some key transfers.”

Probably the biggest of those transfers is quarterback Ryan O’Rourke, an Avon native who came to B-W after one season at Slippery Rock State (Pa.). O’Rourke will start tonight, replacing the graduated Anthony Gardner (1,773 yards passing, 477 yards rushing).

“We’ll miss Anthony,” McGraw said. “He could get points with his arm and his legs. Ryan’s a great athlete. I knew that because I played against him in high school.”

“We’ll go with O’Rourke,” Snell said. “We have packages designed for other quarterbacks, but Ryan will be our starter.”

O’Rourke is backed up by John Masters, a sophomore from Akron (Archbishop Hoban). They have the team’s best receiver back (Devon Jennings, 43 receptions), as well as starters Aaron Hurd and John Meyers.

“We’re very inexperienced at quarterback,” Snell said. “Ryan played a few games at Slippery Rock, but he’s still a sophomore with limited playing time. We have other sophomore quarterbacks who’ve not played.”

The offensive line is also youthful.

“We have a sophomore who has never played starting for us,” Snell said. “We have a freshman, who obviously has never played, starting. We also have a starter who was a defensive lineman. So there’re a lot of young linemen.”

The defense is almost all back, and will look to reduce the 31.1 points per game it allowed in 2009. Leading that pack is All-OAC cornerback Ryan Dugan, who had eight interceptions last year despite missing two games because of injury.

One local player starting on the defense is second-team All-OAC inside linebacker Ryan Kish from Amherst, who led B-W with 90 tackles and four tackles for loss last season. This will be his fourth year starting for the Yellow Jackets.

Other local players on defense include senior defensive end Mitch Tulk (Elyria), junior defensive tackle Rudy Ackerman (Brookside) and sophomore cornerback Brandon Russo (Olmsted Falls). Kareem Ibrahim of North Olmsted will do the punting.

But the pride of B-W this season is its trio of running backs. McGraw, Crook and Miker combined for 1,588 yards (4.64 yards per carry), 2,098 total yards and 19 touchdowns. All three received the Bob Packard Award, given annually to the team’s outstanding running back.

McGraw said he’d like to be the featured back, but added that things have worked well as they are.

“We’re great friends off the field and on the field,” McGraw said. “If you see one of us have a big play or score a touchdown, you’ll see the other two lead the cheers. I pick up Kyrell and Tim and they pick up me. We live for the competition. We push each other.

“Tim and I are the power runners,” McGraw said. “We can get the tough yards inside. Plus, they’re using me in the slot as a receiver to fool the defense. Kyrell is more of an outside runner because of his speed, but he has power, too. And it helps the team to always have fresh legs on the field.”

Fresh legs are something McGraw hopes he has this fall. He had knee surgery just before practices in 2008, then suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in practice following the first game and needed another surgery.

“I had knee surgery in high school,” McGraw said. “It was the same injury. This time, I knew what I had to do to come back. I had plenty of great support from the other guys.”

Contact Steve Byrne at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.

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