Catching Up With Gilbert Deglau '20

1/6/2024

Gilbert Deglau spent the past four falls laboring in football anonymity, which is often the lot in life for those who hold forth in the offensive line.

The 2020 Collegiate School graduate didn’t mind. In fact, the 6-4, 285-pound Davidson College senior thrived on the challenge of becoming the best practitioner of his position he could be and took great pride in bolstering the Wildcats’ triple option attack, which for several years has ranked among the most prolific not just in the Pioneer Football League but in the entire Football Championship Subdivision.

“You really have to love football, first and foremost,” said Deglau of the impetus behind his quest for excellence as both a center and guard. “You have to love hitting people because that’s what we do all the time. Even if we don’t always get the credit, it’s nice when you look at the stats. Davidson is a fun place to be an O-lineman.”

During Deglau’s college career, the Wildcats won the PFL twice and thrice advanced to the FCS playoffs. As a junior and senior, he earned second team all-league honors.

Deglau, who sports a 3.66 grade point average, will graduate in May with a B.S. in math with a minor in computer science but has one season of eligibility remaining. Just after the ’23 season ended, he entered the transfer portal and is now doing his due diligence to determine which school will provide the best academic and athletic environment. He hopes to make his decision early this spring.

One afternoon recently, he sat in Collegiate’s weight room, a venue where he spent many afternoons during his high school years, and reflected upon the path he’s traveled and the lessons he’s learned since he left North Mooreland Road.

Was it the academics or football that attracted you to Davidson?

It was a little bit of both. Coming out of high school, I probably needed another year to develop to fully reach my potential. I was looking at low level DI to high level DIII with good academics and the opportunity to play a lot of good football. The biggest deciding factor was that I wanted to go the DI route and really challenge myself athletically.

(Collegiate) Coach (Collin) McConaghy played under (Davidson) Coach (Scott) Abell in high school. That was my connection. I didn’t know much about Davidson football until Coach McConaghy shot me and a couple of other guys an email about going down to Junior Day and meeting the coaches. All the pieces fell in the right places. I liked the guys I met on the visit there. I liked the coaching staff. They do a really good job of bringing the team together.

In what way?

We have this thing called WE, which stands for Win Everything. Win Everywhere. With Everyone. That’s the motto we go by. We have a WE painted above our locker room. Every time you go out, you touch the letters. And we take a WE flag to away games. We know it’s not possible to win everything, but it’s a reminder that you should do your best and be at your best at all times. The other thing they do well is make it carry over in all facets of life. They really care about how we’re doing academically. If we’re not doing well, they find the help that you need. It shows how much they care both on the field and off the field.

Speak about the trajectory of your career.

Freshman year, I was the fifth string center. I was kind of a practice dummy. Sophomore year, I didn’t want to repeat riding the bench. My main goal was getting on the field. I ended up winning the starting job (at center) for the VMI game. We did a rotation. We did a lot of rotating in the O-line, really. Then, we had some injuries at guard. Three guys went down. I made the switch to guard the middle of my sophomore season.

Coming into junior year, I was basically told I was going to play guard, start the whole season, and probably wasn’t going to come off the field much. I was really excited. I ended up pretty much doing that exactly. Played all 12 games at guard. It was a fun season. I switched back to center for my senior year and played the whole game for the first eight weeks. Ended up with an injury and missed my last three games. I’m fully healed now.

What’s the fit you’re looking for as a graduate transfer?

I’d like to compete at a level above the PFL without sacrificing the academics at whatever institution I decide. That’s the main thing. Football’s kind of a means to an end for me. I know football’s going to end. I’m not going to go to the NFL, so, ideally, I’m going to get a scholarship to get a really good master’s degree that’s going to help me in the professional world. I’m looking at MBA programs, statistics, data science, or quantitative finance. Those four are the ones I’m bouncing between.

What makes the grind worthwhile?

You have to love what you do and the guys around you. If you look at it like it’s a grind, it’s going to be much harder than your brain thinks it’s going to be because you don’t have a positive outlook. It’s always worth it on Saturday. Everybody knows that. You have to do the best you can through the week so you can make it ‘til Saturday. No one loves the day-to-day, but you know that’s important to make you the best you can on Saturday.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned along the way?

The biggest thing was academically. The way you go about doing work at Collegiate is very similar to the way you do work in college. You have very open-ended assignments. You have to use creativity. It’s time management. I actually take only four classes a semester, but there’s a lot of work outside class. Balancing it out with athletics, it’s about setting a schedule and managing your time wisely. That’s similar to Collegiate.

When you graduated from Collegiate in 2020, could you have envisioned the success you’ve had playing college football?

I really didn’t know where my college football career would go. It was very different than being in high school. Everyone on my college team was one of the best players on their high school team. That’s what I was used to. That’s what everyone else coming in was used to. Then you get in there. It’s very rare for freshmen to play. You have to be a dude to do it. Some guys never play their whole career. They never go back to being “that guy.” You have to manage your expectations coming into college football, because it’s a different world compared to playing in high school.

~Weldon Bradshaw

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