Deer Lakes grad Maxx Hammond leads Allegheny football into Presidents' Athletic Conference

For the first time since 1984, Allegheny’s sports teams will be playing in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference. The move back from the North Coast Athletic Conference will enable the Gators to forge rivalries with schools closer to home.

And like their new PAC counterparts, the Gators have a number of athletes from Western Pennsylvania, so there will be yet another level of familiarity with their new foes.

One young man opposing football players might not want to get too familiar with is Allegheny defensive lineman Maxx Hammond. The Deer Lakes graduate led the Gators and finished tied for fifth in the NCAC with seven sacks among his 10.5 tackles for loss in 2021. He accumulated 54 total tackles.

All that in what, essentially, was his first season of college football. Hammond appeared in only four games in 2019, then saw the 2020 season wiped out by the pandemic. So getting back on the field last season was a big boost.

“It was awesome,” he said. “After covid passed and restrictions relaxed, just to get back on the field and play football, there’s nothing like it.”

Coach Rich Nagy was duly impressed by Hammond’s effort.

“He did a great job,” said Nagy, in the fourth season of his second stint with the Gators. “He’s a guy who is religious, so to speak, about his habits of work, lifting, those types of things. He was one of those guys who really worked at it.”

As impressive as Hammond was in his first full season of college football, he said he believes he just scratched the surface. Besides improving his strength over the offseason, he said his footwork became more fluid and he started to understand the game better during the 2021 campaign.

This season, he has the benefit of a new defensive line coach. Matt Hanhold joined the Gators’ staff after previously serving as defensive coordinator at Division II Clarion.

Nagy said Hammond has taken to Hanhold’s instruction, and a big point of emphasis has been on Hammond reacting more quickly rather than trying to overanalyze a situation before making a play.

“Sometimes, when you are a very cerebral player like (Hammond) is, you’re almost too cerebral,” Nagy said. “So it’s just getting him to trust and go. Sometimes he does it, and sometimes he tries to overthink it, so to speak.

“He’s got past the point where he knows just to take inventory of what’s going to happen and trust what’s going to happen next.”

Said Hammond: “With how I played, it was a good season, but I’m definitely looking forward to having a better one this season.”

He also is hoping the Gators can have a better season. Allegheny went 2-7 in its final go-round in the NCAC (3-7 overall) with what Hammond described as a young team.

A more experienced group, he said, should equal better results in 2022. That said, there will be a bit of a learning curve for the Gators as they wade into the PAC. As familiar as they might be with those schools in name recognition, there is no recent history with the football teams.

Hammond said the team plans to keep its focus internal and worry about its own preparation rather than fretting over unfamiliar opponents.

“We will treat them as any other team we play,” he said.

Though Hammond said he isn’t focused on personal accomplishments, he is confident he can put up better numbers. The ultimate end is helping the Gators take the PAC by storm and push perennial favorites such as Westminster and W&J for the title.

“We have a lot of returning starters and a lot of guys who have played with each other,” he said, “so we’ve been building off that. We’ve got a good senior group. Player-led accountability is a big thing … and it’s really shaping up and the mentality the team has is very positive. Everybody wants the same thing.”