Two Washington-Lee senior football players announced their college choices. Joe Pricone, has elected to attend Randolph Macon College in Ashland, Va., while Mahmoud Bel-Hadj will play at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y.
Pricone a 6-foot-2, 215-pound linebacker finished his senior season with 75 tackles, including 54 unassisted stops. He also had three sacks, two forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries.
He will join R-MC, who finished 8-2 under fourth-year head coach Pedro Arruza in 2007. The Yellow Jackets finished 5-1 in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, with the lone loss coming in a 31-13 loss to Hampden-Sydney. The season finale defeat — the in the 113th edition of the oldest small college rivalry in the South — prevented the Yellow Jackets from the ODAC championship, but R-MC’s eight wins was the most for the program since the 1997 season.
Pricone, who was also a starting center on the Washington-Lee basketball team, will be R-MC’s lone Northern Region representative, but the Yellow Jackets already have two graduates from Episcopal, the Alexandria-based boarding school.
As a senior, Pricone was named first-team all-National District as a linebacker and second-team all district as an offensive lineman.
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Bel-Hadj, a 5-foot-11, 270-pound defensive tackle will play for longtime head coach Dave Murray.
Alfred is a member of the Empire 8 Athletic Conference, where three schools (Hartwick, St. John Fisher and Ithaca) made the NCAA Division III playoffs last season. Alfred went 8-3 in 2007, and touts a school-best 33-11 cumulative record over the past four years.
As a senior, Bel-Hadj recorded 16 tackles and two sacks, and was named first-team all-distrct at defensive tackle.
Washington-Lee went 4-6 under first-year Josh Shapiro in 2007, and narrowly missed the Division 5 playoffs. The Generals, however, did record their first non-district win since the 2004 season.