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Williamstown's Benzinger Signs with Indianapolis Colts

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires.com Sports
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All football players dream of making it to the Hall of Fame.
 
Mount Greylock graduate Jake Benzinger is hoping his NFL career gets its start in Canton, Ohio.
 
This week, the offensive lineman out of Wake Forest University signed a free agent contract with the Indianapolis Colts.
 
“I was home in Williamstown for the holidays and a little while afterward,” he said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “I was actually visiting my girlfriend in Dallas when I got the call that Indy was interested probably a week ago.
 
“On Monday, I flew out there. It all happened pretty fast.”
 
Benzinger, who last spring signed as an undrafted free agent with the Arizona Cardinals, worked out with the Colts on Tuesday and signed with the club after completing a physical.
 
He said his agent had talked to some other teams about a contract during the season, but nothing had gotten as far as things did with Indianapolis, which dropped its playoff opener on Saturday in Buffalo.
 
After getting released by the Cardinals in the preseason, Benzinger, 6-foot-7, 295 pounds, continued to work on his game at the NFL Alumni Academy, a player development program that was founded last year.
 
“I learned a lot of different stuff,” Benzinger, 23, said. “More details whether it’s your hands or playing lower, things like that. It was a matter of isolating things in my game that may have been holding me back from getting that call.
 
“When I got the call from Indy, I was so ready to go.”
 
That was the mission of the academy, according to its executive director, who spoke to Front Office Sports in September.
 
“Our players are developing their skill sets. They’re working their technique,” Dean Dalton said. “They’re increasing their knowledge of the game, and now they can parlay that into a competitive advantage when they get into a practice squad situation or a competitive advantage to allow them to earn a spot on the active roster and play on game day.”
 
Dalton described the academy as a “bubble like” environment where players lived in a hotel, ate meals designed by an NFL nutritionist and worked out and attended meetings at Tom Benson Stadium.
 
““After the cuts happened at the end of training camp, we let the dust settle and evaluate who was released and who was signed back to practice squads. And from that remaining free agent list, our personnel department — who are all NFL-experienced and NFL veterans — we grade out all the players and rank them ourselves, much like a pro personnel department does for each team,” Dalton said.
 
Benzinger said he will return to Atlanta and work out at the facility where he readied himself for last spring’s draft and free agent signing period. The hope is that the Colts and other NFL teams will be able to start their offseason program on schedule in April.
 
He gave a lot of credit to his agent for finding a new landing spot in the NFL, but he also said the connections he made at the NFL Alumni Academy were a help.
 
“When my agent calls a personnel guy, and I have a reference like Mike Tice, who was an NFL player and coached in the league a long time and Anthony Munoz, who is in the Hall of Fame, that definitely helped a lot in terms of getting this opportunity,” Benzinger said.
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Williams Seeking Town Approval for New Indoor Practice Facility

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week gave Williams College the first approval it needs to build a 55,000-square foot indoor athletic facility on the north side of its campus.
 
Over the strenuous objection of a Southworth Street resident, the board found that the college's plan for a "multipurpose recreation center" or MRC off Stetson Road has adequate on-site parking to accommodate its use as an indoor practice facility to replace Towne Field House, which has been out of commission since last spring and was demolished this winter.
 
The college plans a pre-engineered metal that includes a 200-meter track ringing several tennis courts, storage for teams, restrooms, showers and a training room. The athletic surface also would be used as winter practice space for the school's softball and baseball teams, who, like tennis and indoor track, used to use the field house off Latham Street.
 
Since the planned structure is in the watershed of Eph's Pond, the college will be before the Conservation Commission with the project.
 
It also will be before the Zoning Board of Appeals, on Thursday, for a Development Plan Review and relief from the town bylaw limiting buildings to 35 feet in height. The new structure is designed to have a maximum height of 53 1/2 feet and an average roof height of 47 feet.
 
The additional height is needed for two reasons: to meet the NCAA requirement for clearance above center court on a competitive tennis surface (35 feet) and to include, on one side, a climbing wall, an element also lost when Towne Field House was razed.
 
The Planning Board had a few issues to resolve at its March 12 meeting. The most heavily discussed involved the parking determination for a use not listed in the town's zoning bylaws and a decision on whether access from town roads to the building site in the middle of Williams' campus was "functionally equivalent" to the access that would be required under the town's subdivision rules and regulations.
 
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