Grand Valley kicks off its 2025 football season against Lincoln (Pennsylvania) University at 1 p.m. on August 30 at Lubbers Stadium. The Lakers are pursuing their third GLIAC title in four seasons.
Grand Valley will see plenty of new faces in its lineup after graduating 25 players and seeing more than a dozen join other teams via the transfer portal.
“There’s a lot of fluidity in college football right now,” head coach Scott Wooster said. “Our roster is quite a bit different. When you build a program, you’re building it team by team, and those teams have their own identity.
“With the nature of college football, particularly with the transfer portal and how rosters move so much now, those identities and personalities can change quite quickly.”
At this year’s GLIAC Media Day, Grand Valley was picked to finish second behind rival Ferris State, the defending Division II national champion. Nationally, the Lakers rank as high as No. 3 in preseason rankings.
The Lakers will have a lot of young position players this season, most notably at quarterback. Wooster picked redshirt freshman Andrew Schuster as this year’s starter, though his game experience is limited, with just a quarter of playing time in last season’s Wayne State game.
Wooster and his staff have accentuated the importance of each offseason practice and workout to the young core of players.
“You come into camp, and it's got to be intentional,” Wooster said. “It's got to be deliberate because every rep matters.
“It's not just every practice, but every single play matters because you’re trying to get guys in situations that maybe they've had a few in a game.”
The Lakers are not without veterans with senior linebacker Anthony Cardamone, senior offensive lineman Brett Weaver and 43 letterwinners returning, along with 11 transfers joining the team for the 2025 season. Cardamone and Weaver were named to D2Football.com ’s Preseason All-America Team.
One of the deepest spots on the Lakers’ depth chart is at running back, where Syone Usma-Harper, Kenneth Jones, Derrick Woods and David Holloman return.
“Guys have really stepped forward and said this is going to be the identity of the 2025 Lakers,” Wooster said. “We just continued to grow through the summer and into fall camp. We're really excited about who we're becoming.”
Tickets and parking passes for the season opener are available at the GVSU Ticket Office webpage .
Fans can watch the game online at FloFootball . The radio broadcast is available on WLAV-FM 96.9 ( wlav.com ), WJRW-FM 106.1/WJRW-AM 1340 and WLCS-FM 98.3.
For full coverage of GVSU Football, including broadcast info, news, features, highlights, press conferences and more, follow @GVSUFootball on social media and on the GVSU Athletics website .
