Quincy University football has added international talent to the roster. From initially staying in the Midwest for recruiting, coaches are now looking around the world to bolster the team’s roster. With a new look in recruiting from the Hawks coaching staff, many international athletes want to suit up for the brown and gold.

While mostly players from the Midwest play on the gridiron at the corner of 20th and Sycamore Sreet, the international players have all taken different journeys to get to the 217.

One of these new additions is freshman kicker Conor McAneney, who grew up in Plumridge, Ireland, and originally played Gaelic football and soccer. He wanted to get a better education in the United States of America. With that dream in mind, he started to train with Leader Kicking, an Irish kicking company with a mission, ” in securing scholarships and contracts for athletes as kickers and punters, facilitating their placement into college football and professional football leagues worldwide”. Leader Kicking was able to help McAneney get in contact with the Hawks, and he chose QU to further his education.

“Tadhg Leader is from Ireland, and he is our coach, and for us boys, none of this would be possible without Tadhg and all the great work he does. We always see him as a stepbrother or a stepdad, that’s what we see him like,” McAneney said.

The same can be said for graduate kicker Javier “Kiko” Moreno Ortega, who is from the mountains of Antequera, Spain, where he grew up playing soccer around the country of Spain before joining a foreign exchange student program to go to high school in Kansas. After his time at high school, he initially accepted a scholarship to play soccer for the University of South Carolina. He later decided to transfer to Lincoln University of Missouri to pursue a career in kicking field goals. After his time at LU had ended, he then went to Melbourne, Australia, where he trained with Pro Kick Australia to transfer back to the US, then to play for the Hawks.

“So I really like the country, I really like the experience, and I was lucky enough to have a few offers to play soccer. I also played football in high school, and I developed a fondness for the game. So that’s the main reason why I stayed here,” Moreno Ortega said.

Wide receiver Filippo “Flip” Petrillo is another athlete with international ties, having grown up outside the Italian city of Milan. He had dreams of playing football in the US as well, so he enrolled in the NFL academy in Loughborough, England, before going to college at the now-closed Limestone University in Gaffney, South Carolina. After he transferred to QU, he believes he is getting a better education in the US than in Italy.

“So the experience at the NFL Academy was super good, we had a lot of great coaching staff, a lot of great football teams that we played, so he helped me develop my skills level, and then he helped me with the recruiting process, so I ended up in the United States because of that,” Petrillo said.

The Hawks keep making history on the field as they look to capitalize on last year’s 6-4 record. The team aims to leverage its international reach to attract top-tier recruits to the roster. Fans will be able to see the Hawks take the field once again as they play McKendree University in the Battle for the Land of Lincoln on Homecoming Saturday, October 4, at 3:00 p.m.