St. Thomas’ Division I transfer students have made their presence felt in the Division III sports world, whether it be quarterback Jacques Perra throwing touchdown passes, hockey captain Kaylee Druk lifting her team with her leadership and play or the Oliver brothers working together to help bring the soccer program its most wins in a single season.

For most of them, it started with a dream – a dream to be the starting quarterback of a championship caliber team, a leader on and off the ice, a dynamic duo – and somewhere in their journey, they saw that dream come true.

Not at the University of Minnesota, not at the University of Southern Mississippi, not at the University of South Dakota, not at Syracuse or at Eastern Illinois University, but here, at the University of St. Thomas.

Jump to The Gophers
Jump to The Golden Eagle
Jump to The Coyote
Jump to The Orange
Jump to The Panthers

The Gophers

St. Thomas football players Jacques Perra, Josh Parks and Blake Weber were all Minnesota Golden Gophers before they became Tommies.

Perra and Parks first met during their official visit to the University of Minnesota campus, where they would later become freshman roommates. Perra committed to Jerry Kill’s Gopher team in January of 2014 and Parks followed a few weeks later.

“I was intrigued with going Division I, I’ll be honest,” Parks said. “And I wanted to compete at that level.”

Both went on to sport the maroon and gold their first year, while Weber spent the year at Rochester Community and Technical College, playing junior college football and focusing on academics so he could play in the Big Ten Conference.

“It wasn’t the best experience, but I got my grades up,” Weber said.

Before Weber could transfer to join Perra and Parks as Gophers, Parks up-and-left to attend Saint John’s, where he lasted as a Johnnie for just a few weeks before returning to the University of Minnesota. This time, as a student. Not a student-athlete.

During the start of their second year, Perra and Weber multitasked football and school, while Parks focused on his studies. That is until Kill resigned as head football coach at the University of Minnesota, leaving players like Perra in a dilemma. When Minnesota announced Tracy Claeys would be taking over as head coach, it became clear to Perra that he should look elsewhere.

“I wasn’t the biggest fan of him,” Perra said.

Perra’s desire to stay local found him in deep talks with Glenn Caruso, which led to him making the decision to transfer to St. Thomas following that fall semester.

Parks again followed Perra.

“When Jacques came here, he convinced me to talk to coach Caruso,” Parks said. “About a month or two after that, I committed to St. Thomas.”

While Perra and Parks took on roles that helped the Tommies to a 12-1 record and national quarterfinal appearance in 2016, Weber found himself unhappy playing at Minnesota. So, following that school year, he joined Perra and Parks as Tommies.

“I don’t regret at all making the decision I made going (to the University of Minnesota). It was a great time,” Weber said. “But I’d rather actually be on the field competing than putting in all that work and sitting on the sideline.”

The three would lead the Tommies to a quarterfinal matchup against the defending national champion Mary Hardin-Baylor this past season. They fought hard, but fell 24-10.

Perra started in all 13 games as quarterback, throwing for 2,944 yards and 24 touchdowns during that span.

Parks was a part of a three-headed monster running back tandem, rushing for 698 yards and nine touchdowns himself.

Weber took over Adam Kraft’s spot at the outside linebacker position, where he mustered up 45 total tackles and six sacks for the dominant Tommie defense.

These Gophers-turned-Tommies admit that their journeys put things in perspective.

“At the (University of Minnesota), everyone dreams about going to a Division I school and playing for a Division I program, but even when you get there it’s not all that,” Perra said. “It kind of makes you realize that there’s more to college and there’s a lot more that matters after college than those four years of playing Division I football.”

Parks went further.

“From the outside looking in, a lot of things look much better than they may be,” he said. “But when you actually are in that experience, you’re able to realistically pull out things that you enjoy and things that you dislike.”

None of them regret being Golden Gophers; nor do they regret becoming Tommies.

“It’s really all about the journey,” Parks said. “We probably would have all had regrets if we never played at the U of M knowing that we had the potential to do so.”

The Golden Eagle

Gabe Green, wide receiver for the football team, is also a D-I transfer, hailing from the University of Southern Mississippi.

As a scholarship player at Southern Mississippi, Green redshirted his first year as a Golden Eagle, which led to him transferring to St. Thomas after just one year down south.

Green would join Perra and fifth-year senior Alex Fenske in a competitive race for the starting quarterback position in 2016, a position that Caruso later felt Fenske earned.

After being the third-string quarterback that year, Green made a switch from quarterback to wide receiver for the 2017 season.

“He had a chance to be the third quarterback or a receiver, and he chose to be a receiver, and look at the year he had,” St. Thomas athletic director Steve Fritz said.

He was the Tommies’ leading receiver this season with 34 receptions, 670 receiving yards and eight touchdowns.

The Coyote

The 2015 D-III Offensive Player of the Year and first-team All-American Jordan Roberts began his college career at a D-I program as well.

He played two seasons at the University of South Dakota, where he rushed for 100 yards against Carson Wentz’s No. 1-ranked North Dakota State Bison.

During his time at St. Thomas, Roberts was one of the most successful running backs the school had ever seen, but he was limited due to injuries.

He finished his Tommie career with 2,569 rushing yards and 44 touchdowns in 25 games.

“Now that he’s done with football, he’s got his vocation and things to look forward to,” Fritz said. “And that’s the endline for all of them … that they get a degree from St. Thomas that’s going to serve them well the rest of their life.”

The Orange

Shifting from the gridiron to the ice, women’s hockey forward Kaylee Druk had the opportunity to play at the D-I level, and she took it.

“As a girl hockey player in Minnesota, especially, it’s just kind of expected, if you’re committed to playing hockey, that you go D-I,” she said.

Druk grew up in Wayzata, but attended high school at Benilde-St. Margret’s knowing that doing so would help her get college exposure.

Her family urged her to look at schools like St. Thomas or St. John’s, but she had her mind set on going D-I.

At Syracuse, Druk found out pretty early that D-I life wasn’t for her. She looked to transfer after one year in New York.

“It was hockey and school, and that’s it,” she said.

She wanted to go to a school where she could be involved on campus, have a job and have a social life all while still being able to play hockey and get a good education. The fact that a former high school coach of hers was an assistant at St. Thomas at the time made it an easy decision to pack up and move to St. Paul.

“I’m so happy at St. Thomas and I’m glad that I did transfer, but I’m glad that I also got to fulfill the dream of going D-I,” she said. “I feel like I would have always had the ‘what if’ had I not gone. So, I tried it. It wasn’t for me, but now I know.”

As captain of this year’s team, Druk has led the Tommies to a 8-2-1 record thus far, good for No. 9 in the nation.

The Panthers

Twin brothers Tyler and Justin Oliver started their collegiate soccer careers at Eastern Illinois University after only talking to D-I programs during the recruiting process.

“I didn’t really pay attention to any Division III schools, and neither did my brother,” Justin said.

Neither brother saw the field in their first game.

“That was super tough on both of us,” Justin said. “It was the first game in our entire life, in any sport, that we didn’t play a single minute and just sat there and watched.”

The coach who recruited them left Eastern Illinois following their first season as Panthers, which meant a new coach was coming their way.

“When new coaches come in they like to make the program theirs,” Justin said. “He didn’t force a bunch of kids on the team out, but he got a bunch of them to quit.”

Tyler and Justin stuck with it and had what most would call successful sophomore seasons, but they still weren’t completely satisfied.

“Despite (the success), he didn’t really like playing us,” Justin said. “We still weren’t playing much. We started a combined 7 games out of the 17 between the both of us.”

They decided to give it one more try and report in for their junior seasons. Soon after, Tyler transferred to St. Thomas.

“It didn’t go well for Tyler at the start of it and it was going pretty well for me,” Justin said. “For our first exhibition game, Tyler didn’t even get dressed for the team out of the 22 players. This was after he had led our team in goals and assists … He just felt super disrespected.”

Justin went on with the Panthers while his brother found himself on a Final Four run with the Tommies.

“One of the hardest things that happened to me was just sitting at school seeing all of the success they were having,” Justin said.

That sparked him to join his brother and Shae Bottum, who the Olivers had been playing with since age 14, at St. Thomas.

The brothers led the men’s soccer team to a 22-2 record this season, which is the most wins the program has ever seen.

“I wouldn’t trade my four years at the two schools for anything,” Justin said. “I’ve made friends for a lifetime at Eastern Illinois, and I’ve got my friends for a lifetime here.”

Gamiel Hall can be reached at hall0211@stthomas.edu.