Former Slippery Rock quarterback Brayden Long was recognized Wednesday with the NCAA’s highest student-athlete honor.
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Brayden Long has turned the page following a decorated career with the Slippery Rock football program. But the awards haven’t stopped rolling in for the Hanover native and New Oxford High School graduate.
Long was named as an NCAA Impact Award winner on Wednesday when the 2025 NCAA Honors recipients were announced. The Impact Award is given to one male and one female senior student-athlete from each NCAA division who exemplifies “the highest standards of athletic excellence, academic achievement and service to their campuses and communities.” The award “represents the pinnacle of student-athlete recognition,” per its official description.
No Slippery Rock student-athlete had ever received the Impact Award prior to Long, who graduated from SRU in 2024 with a degree in sport management and a 4.0 GPA. He and other NCAA Honors recipients will be celebrated at the NCAA Convention in January near Washington, D.C.
In addition to his spotless record in the classroom, Long enjoyed a historic two-year run as Slippery Rock’s starting quarterback during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. He threw for 7,527 yards and 64 touchdowns in his career while setting SRU records with 631 completions and a 67% completion rate. The Rock went 24-5 overall and 5-2 in NCAA postseason games, reaching the 2023 national quarterfinals and 2024 semifinals. Long finished in the top six in voting for the Harlon Hill Trophy — Division II’s Heisman equivalent — in both years.
The two-year SRU team captain was also involved in several extracurricular projects. Long was an officer with the SRU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee; a founding member of TEAM Rock, an athlete-led campus ministry; and an admissions tour guide on campus. His volunteer service included work with the Pennsylvania Special Olympics and Hanover Youth Sports, among other organizations.
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January’s ceremony won’t be the first for Long, who was recognized in December in Las Vegas as a national finalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy — the “Academic Heisman,” given to one player across all NCAA divisions — and in April in Atlanta as the Division II Academic All-America Team Member of the Year.
In recent months, Long has also been named the 2024-25 NCAA Division II Overall Academic All-American of the Year by the College Sports Communicators and the Division II Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year by the Division II Conference Commissioners Association. He repeated as SRU Male Athlete of the Year and Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and Atlantic Region Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Long quickly entered the coaching ranks after concluding his playing career. He joined Towson University’s staff as an offensive quality control coach and assistant quarterbacks coach in December 2024, then was hired by Shippensburg University in July as a full-time assistant coach in charge of quarterbacks and wide receivers.
The 2020 New Oxford graduate remains the Adams County career leader in passing yards and touchdowns. Long starred in the Colonials’ 2019 district playoff win over Northeastern, which remains the program’s most recent postseason victory entering Friday’s District 3 Class 5A quarterfinal showdown against Spring Grove.
Other NCAA Impact Award winners for 2025 include Mia Levy (Yale rowing) and Micaylon Moore (Nebraska men’s track & field) in Division I; Aino Martikainen (Franklin Pierce women’s soccer) in D-II; and Ella Brissett (Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women’s tennis) and Matthew Wrather (John Carroll football) in D-III.
The NCAA Honors class also features winners of the Theodore Roosevelt Award (Dikembe Mutombo, Georgetown); the NCAA Woman of the Year Award (Samantha Schott, University of Texas at Tyler); the Gerald R. Ford Award (Charlene Curtis, Radford); the Pat Summitt Award (Nikki Franke, Temple); the Inspiration Award (Frankie Loiseau, Marymount); the Award of Valor (Alex Guerra, Radford); and the Silver Anniversary Awards (Drew Brees, Purdue; Tamika Catchings, Tennessee; Dr. Lauren Witmer, Millersville; Nick Ackerman, Simpson).
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