2025 Benedictine post-season team awards

Jan 9, 2026|Football

The three major award winners of the Benedictine 2025 football season were presented on Tuesday, January 6, at the team’s annual banquet. All are seniors who helped the Bengals to their third straight playoff season and back-to-back 8-2 regular season records.

The most prestigious– the Fr. Florian Award, which began in 1969 - is always to be a senior football player who demonstrably achieves the fullness of his potential. It must be a person who has exhibited leadership on and off the field. He always put the good of the team ahead of his own glory. The recipient’s achievements largely went unrecognized. Nonetheless, he is the type of person Fr. Florian loved to work with … a hard worker and a winner.

The winner of the 2025 Fr. Florian Award is 6-1, 235 senior DE/TE and two-year starter, Sean O’Connell, a co-captain.

In 2025, O’Connell was third on the team with 18 solos, 34 assists totaling 52 tackles. He led the team with 13 TFL’s for losses totaling 45 yards and nabbed one interception for six yards. Offensively, O’Connell had five catches for 46 yards and one touchdown.

As a junior in 2024, O’Connell was third on the team with 15 solos, 36 assists and 51 total tackles.

The Joe Rufus Award honors the former coach and Athletic Director who served at Benedictine from 1945-1987. The award - instituted in 1987, the year of his retirement - is given to the football player who helps his teammates to the best of his ability on the field and leads by example off the field.

The 2025 Joe Rufus Award winner is 5-10, 180 senior WR/DB Luke Carlton.

Carlton, a two-year starter, was injured midway through the 2025 season, missing the last six games of the season. He finished with eight catches for 112 yards and three touchdowns. In 2024, Carlton had 10 catches for 104 yards and two touchdowns.

The Chuck Noll ’49 Academic Award is presented to the senior football player who has earned the highest Grade Point Average on the team. It was first given in 2014 following the death of Noll, who was known in his playing days as the “Pope.” He earned that title because of his extensive knowledge of football, answering tests flawlessly and never seemed to do anything wrong.

Noll, a four-time Super Bowl-winning coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers, was a lineman on Benedictine’s first undefeated, untied (10-0) Cleveland City Championship team in 1948.

The Chuck Noll Award winner in 2025 is team co-captain 5-11, 265 OL/DL Braylon Rose, a two-year starter. Like most offensive linemen, he played an important but relatively anonymous role in the Bengals offense. But the results were outstanding.

In 2025, the Bengals averaged 22.72 points per game, with a 53-point outburst vs. Cathedral Prep.

In 2024, with the strong blocking that Rose provided, the Bengals scored a sixth-best all-time average points per game of 32.69.

The 2025 season featured key victories over Padua Franciscan 7-0, a team that defeated Benedictine in 2024, a key conquest over previously undefeated NDCL 28-14, a thrilling victory over long-time rival St. Ignatius, 16-14, and a satisfying win over always-tough Erie (Pa.) Cathedral Prep 53-23.

Benedictine has qualified for the state playoffs 27 times and is the only team in Ohio history to win a state playoff title in each of the five decades since that format was implemented in 1972. Benedictine owns state playoff titles in 1973, 1980, 1981, 1996, 2003, 2004, and 2014.

The sign on the front of the school properly identifies Benedictine as the “Home of Champions.”

By Wally Mieskoski