After lifting the Valparaiso University football team to a 20-17 victory over Indiana Wesleyan with a go-ahead, 50-yard field goal with 1:36 remaining on Saturday night at Brown Field, redshirt senior kicker Brian Bartholomew (Sugar Grove, Ill. / Kaneland) has been named the Pioneer Football League Special Teams Player of the Week.

The 50-yard field goal represented the longest of his collegiate career. That edged his previous personal best of 49 yards, which represented Valpo’s first points of an eventual 10-7 win at Drake during the Spring 2021 season. He became just the second Valpo player to hit a field goal from 50 yards out since 2003, joining Dimitrios Latsonas, who was good from 50 on Nov. 17, 2018.

Bartholomew was one of two players in the FCS nation with a 50-yard field goal in Week 1, joining Charleston Southern’s Sam Babbush in a tie for the longest field goal in the FCS nation to this point in the season. In the victory over Indiana Wesleyan, Bartholomew went 2-for-2 on field-goal tries, 2-for-2 on extra points and averaged 65.0 yards per kickoff including three touchbacks. He is up to 21 career made field goals and has a career field-goal percentage of 80.8 that ranks eighth among all active players in Division-I FCS.

This marks the second time in his collegiate career that Bartholomew was named PFL Special Teams Player of the Week, an honor that he previously received after breaking a single-game program record with eight made PATs in the Nov. 6, 2021 victory over Presbyterian. This represents the eighth time since the start of the Spring 2021 season that the Beacons have boasted the PFL Special Teams Player of the Week.