The Fred Mitchell Award has identified 38 placekickers for their excellence on the football field throughout the first half of the 2025 season. The Award recognizes kickers that were nominated by their schools or are at the top of their division for terrific performances through October 11, 2025. Among those on the midseason list is Missouri S&T's Layne Ryals and William Jewell's Bleu Renfrow. The recipient of the Fred Mitchell Award will be announced in December based on performance on the football field and in the community.
Ryals, a junior from Louisburg, Kansas, and Renfrow, a true freshman from Liberty, are two of the six Division II kickers on the list, joining Connor Fournier (Minnesota State, Mankato), Brandon McCary (Minot State), Jimmy Tran (Savannah State), and David Weber (Central Washington).
Ryals is 11-14 this season and connected on his first 11 field goals in a row, including going 3-for-3 against Southwest Baptist. He is second in the Great Lakes Valley Conference for field goal accuracy and 20th in all of Division II.
Renfrow, this season is 9-of-12 on field goal attempts, with five of at least 40 yard with a season best 52-yard kick against Fort Lewis College. Additionally, he is 21-of-23 on extra point attempts and leading the Cardinals with 48 total points.
The namesake for the award, Fred Mitchell, was a longtime (1974-2015) award-winning sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune and the author of 12 sports books. Mitchell set the NCAA record for career kick-scoring at Wittenberg University in 1968 among "College Division" schools that are now classified as FCS, Division II and Division III.
"Our mid-season Watch List includes several kickers who are having exceptional years in terms of both field goal accuracy and distance. Not to mention late-game clutch performances," said Fred Mitchell. "We also value community service as an essential part of the criteria for choosing a winner, and that might very well be the determining factor at the end of this 2025 season."