Chris Ashcraft’s last football game at Lakeland was the Cavaliers’ first Southeastern District win in two years, a defeat of King’s Fork.

This fall, he’ll join a college team that just finished its second winning season in four years of competition.

Ashcraft, last season’s Suffolk News-Herald kicker of the year, committed to join Averett University, which placed 13 players on the All-USA South Conference team last season and ended the year at 6-3.

&uot;I went up there and saw the campus and I really liked it,&uot; Ashcraft said of the Danville school. &uot;I talked to some of the players and they told me that it’s a really small school where everybody knows everybody. I don’t think I’ll get lost in the crowd. It’s a new program, and I’m going to go up there and try to set some records.&uot;

He’ll be battling junior James Thurnes, himself a native of Newport News, for the placekicking duties. Thurnes went 6-16 (37.5 percent) from the field last year and made 28 of 34 extra points.

Ashcraft said that he’d like to major in sports medicine and hopefully become an athletic trainer or physical therapist.

jason.norman@suffolknewsherald.com