By Mandy Housenick
GoLeopards.com Featured Columnist

It's Sunday evening – a time when many football players are relaxing and recovering after a busy weekend.

Many are playing video games. Others are making phone calls to their parents summarizing their game on Saturday and telling them what they have coming up for the next week. Some are winding down in preparation for another busy week of classes.

Not Ahmir Crawley.

The junior defensive lineman lives in the prestigious McKelvy House, a mansion that is a seven-minute walk from main campus designated for 20-25 intellectually curious students who are part of the McKelvy Scholars Program. These co-ed students have different academic interests and varying cultural and personal backgrounds, yet they live together and gather every Sunday evening for dinner and a student-led discussion.

The whole event lasts two hours.

The admission process to qualify to live at the McKelvy House is a grueling one.

Students need to be nominated by a professor on campus, and then they receive information about the interview process that leads to the selection of the members by a committee of faculty and current scholars. It's a process that begins during the spring semester.

Only sophomores, juniors and seniors can live there.

"It sounded like an interesting opportunity," Crawley said. "My mom always wants me to try new things, and I'm always wanting to. So I interviewed and got in.

"I'm not a very social person, so it takes me a little while to warm up to people and be a part of things. But it's been good so far."

Lafayette College head football coach John Troxell is impressed with Crawley's decision to live there and stray from the norm.

"It speaks to his academic adventures and who he is as a person," Troxell said. "I am proud of who he is as a person. That takes up a considerable amount of time. When we were here in August, I think he was living there totally by himself, and it's like a big castle. He said he would go into his room and lock the door. But he survived. He was good."

The mansion has four floors, including the basement, and 12 rooms. The basement is used as storage space and has a kitchen as well as a washer/dryer. The first floor has a quiet study, comfortable parlor and spacious living room, which is where the Sunday night dinners and discussions are. Residents live on the second and third floors in either singles, doubles or triples.

Although there is a kitchen right there for Crawley, cooking isn't his thing.

"I'm not much of a cook myself. I won't lie," he admitted. "I feel the work is not worth the reward and the food is gone too fast. I take advantage of the meal plan. But people cook down there all the time."

Fellow lineman Phil Peiffer echoed those thoughts. He said Crawley gave him and other teammates a tour of the house, which the college acquired in 1960. But he wouldn't be making his way to the kitchen either.

"It was big and there were a lot of rooms and it was really confusing, but also really pretty," Peiffer said. "I would never want to live there because the kitchen is so far from the room, but I think it's a great experience for a lot of people for sure. But it wouldn't work out so well for me for what I need as a football player. You have to walk down two flights of stairs just to get to the kitchen."

Crawley certainly does his share of walking, whether it's in the house or to and from campus to the McKelvy House.

But it does serve as a time for him to think – and that's perfect for him as a English major who wants to be a writer of some sort. He's not sure exactly what direction he wants to take his writing skills, but he's thinking about working on writing a screenplay or a book.

"For me personally, I like writing, but I'm very specific about what I like to write," Crawley said. "I don't like being boxed in. I don't love academic writing. I like being in a space where I can create whatever comes to my mind and that's how I was when I was younger and that has followed me up to this point."

His passion for words started at a young age when he was being home-schooled by his aunt.

"I had vocab sessions, and we learned a new word every day," he recalled. "On Fridays, I had to take all the different words I learned on the days of the week and put them all into one sentence, and I had to be creative and grammatically correct."

Crawley has put his skills to use in class, particularly in his 'Writing for Television' class with Mikael Awake.

Awake noticed and admired his talent and not only nominated him for McKelvy House, but also offered him a summer job with a publishing company he started.

"He was teaching me the business side," Crawley said. "I feel like people don't really know the business side. I was learning that piece too – not just the writing and creating, but contracts and the splits between the writer and creator and how do you negotiate and how do you get the book out to the public and how do you figure things out from the e-commerce side of things. I helped him with setting up a TikTok shop. I also got the opportunity to help with some of the promotion of the actual book.

"I had a lot of fun doing it."

When Crawley isn't having fun at McKelvy House or writing for his classes, he punishes opponents on the football field.

He has six solo tackles for the season, including a season-high three for loss against Stonehill on Sept. 6.

Crawley is part of a defense, which has returned just one starter, that is doing a great job limiting the run game. The Leopards have given up just 102 yards per game in 2025 and only 84 yards against FCS opponents.

"He has reshaped his body and helped himself in his level of conditioning and movement the last two years and really taken ownership of it," said defensive coordinator coach Mike Saint Germain, who is also coaching the defensive line this year.

As much as he's making a statement with the way he's playing, his statements are even louder with the way he leads his teammates. Few can compare to him, Troxell said.

"There isn't a guy on this team who doesn't love him," Troxell said. "He always has a smile on his face. He's really humble. As much as he's probably thinking he's grateful, we need to be grateful that he is here. It's a two-way street. He has done a lot for our program. He has battled through injuries.

"I said that we have two 'Seans' who are freshmen and you need to take them under your wing. He said, 'You don't have to worry about it coach. I am so grateful for the guys who did that for me that I will do that for them. He's thinking about them and their struggles. He won't be the guy who just shows up and says, 'Good luck.' He will be a great mentor to kids."

It sounds like Crawley will be great at a lot of things.