Sports · Holland
Holland’s Hope College football cracks the D3football.com Top 10 for the first time, heads to Alma Oct. 24 after a comeback over Adrian
HOLLAND, Mich. — Hope College’s football team is ranked in the D3football.com Top 10 for the first time, the college announced, moving up to No. 9 with 364 poll points after a comeback win that kept the Flying Dutchmen unbeaten.
Hope (6-0, 3-0 MIAA) beat Adrian 24-22 on Saturday, Oct. 17, in front of 5,004 fans at Ray and Sue Smith Stadium during the college’s One Big Weekend, according to Hope athletics. The Flying Dutchmen remain tied atop the MIAA with Calvin and Trine.
Hope trailed 22-7 at halftime, its first deficit of the season, after Adrian scored on two touchdown passes and a 100-yard kickoff return. Hope shut Adrian out in the second half and allowed 53 yards after the break.
How it turned. Safety Trenten Bolhouse recovered a fumble at midfield, and running back AJ Martel scored five plays later. Martel added a 2-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter, and quarterback Alex Thole hit Seth Luhmann for the tying two-point conversion. With 5:48 left, Adrian snapped a punt out of its own end zone for a safety, the winning points. Hope then ran out the final 1:42.
“Don’t panic, you can’t change the complexion of the game in one play right now,” coach Peter Stuursma said he told players at halftime. “Our guys had a will to win, and we did.” He called the second-half defense “phenomenal.”
Next up. Hope plays at Alma (2-4, 2-1 MIAA) on Saturday, Oct. 24, at 1 p.m., then returns home to face Kalamazoo on Oct. 31, according to the team’s schedule.
Sources:
Hope College Athletics, Alan Babbitt, “No. 11/12 Football Edges Adrian in an One Big Weekend Thriller,” Oct. 17, 2026 (score, attendance, plays, Stuursma quotes), https://athletics.hope.edu/news/2026/10/17/football-edges-adrian-in-an-one-big-weekend-thriller.aspx
Hope College Athletics, “Football Rises into the D3Football Top 10 for the First Time,” Oct. 19, 2026 (No. 9, 364 points), https://athletics.hope.edu/news/2026/10/19/football-rises-into-the-d3football-top-10-for-the-first-time.aspx
Hope College Athletics, 2026 football schedule (Alma Oct. 24, Kalamazoo Oct. 31), https://athletics.hope.edu/sports/football/schedule/2026
Photo: Michael Barera, “North Lamar vs. Commerce football 2015 10 (North Lamar on offense).jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_Lamar_vs._Commerce_football_2015_10_%28North_Lamar_on_offense%29.jpg
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