Two New York natives are stepping into the spotlight for Syracuse Football.<\/p>\n
Senior defensive lineman Kevin Jobity Jr. and senior wide receiver Justus Ross-Simmons\u00a0grew up just 75 miles apart, and now they\u2019re making their mark in the Dome.<\/p>\n
Jobity Jr. had the lone sack against UConn while also having two tackles for loss. The Buffalo native played soccer until 2021 and says the COVID-19 pandemic was the reason he got into football.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey pushed football into the spring because it\u2019s a close contact sport and COVID regulations didn\u2019t allow that. So my high school coach comes to me after that fall season of soccer and he\u2019s pushing me to come out and play ball, so I did,\u201d Jobity Jr. said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says his family has been able to come to every home game over his four years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI take a lot of pride in that. I\u2019m super happy to see them out there, whatever game it is,” Jobity Jr. said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says the distance from his family was a reason he chose the Orange and chose to stay through the head coaching change from Dino Babers to Fran Brown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the perfect distance away from home where they’re always in my room hanging out all the time but I can go see them whenever I need to, so it\u2019s awesome,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ross-Simmons is from Rochester but moved to California for his final year of high school. After two seasons at Colorado State, he returned to play just 90 minutes east of his hometown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very exciting. Got a lot of people from the hometown come to the game and watch me play to be able to perform for them,” Ross-Simmons said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He had an important reason to come back to the Empire State.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad had a heart attack and two strokes so it\u2019s easier for me to go back and forth from Rochester to Syracuse,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says the distance from home makes him feel better knowing it\u2019s only 85 miles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith me being able to go back and forth I\u2019m able to ease my mind,” Ross-Simmons said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jobity Jr. hopes their success inspires more New York athletes to get a shot at the college level.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more talent that coaches pick up in Buffalo, around Rochester, things like that, it\u2019ll be a lot of pride taken in the school,\u201d Jobity Jr. said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two New York natives are stepping into the spotlight for Syracuse Football. Senior defensive lineman Kevin Jobity Jr.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":219511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,30319,17549,405,403,50,5226,5225,119657,5228,5227,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":{"0":"post-219510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-central-ny","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-noah-love","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa","26":"tag-vod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}