Cortland junior quarterback Zac Boyes (Buffalo/Kenmore West) has been named the 2023 D3football.com Region 2 Offensive Player of the Year and head coach Curt Fitzpatrick has been selected as the website's Region 2 Coach of the Year. 

Boyes is one of nine Cortland players named to D3football.com's All-Region 2 team. He's joined on the first team by junior running back Jaden AlfanoStJohn (Westhampton/Westhampton Beach) and senior wide receiver JJ Laap (Stony Brook/Ward Melville). Senior wide receiver Cole Burgess (Greenwich), junior offensive tackle Cody Aikey (Canandaigua/Canandaigua Academy), junior center Ryan Bitka (Amherst) and senior cornerback Mark Noel (Staten Island/Port Richmond) were named to the all-region second team and junior linebacker Jack Winey (Lindenhurst) and senior kickoff specialist Patrick Luby (Ridgewood, NJ) were third-team honorees. 
 
All nine players are eligible for selection to the D3football.com All-America team that will be announced Dec. 15 prior to the NCAA Division III championship game. Cortland's nine all-region selections are the most in Region 2. Grove City is second with eight selections. 
 
Region 2 includes Cortland's conference, the Empire 8, along with the Liberty League, Centennial Conference, New Jersey Athletic Conference, Landmark Conference and Presidents' Athletic Conference. 
 
Boyes earned all-region honors for the second straight year; he was a third-team honoree last fall. This season, he's completed 222-of-311 passes (71.4 percent) for 3,392 yards and 36 touchdowns with just five interceptions and has rushed for 616 yards and eight touchdowns in 13 games. He's set Cortland school records for TD passes in a career (65) and season (36) and tied the record for TD passes in a game (5 each vs. Susquehanna and Alma). Boyes also established records for single-season passing yards (3,392) and total offensive yards (4,008) and career total offense (7,561). 
 
AlfanoStJohn is a repeat selection on the all-region first team. He's rushed 231 times for 1,270 yards and 15 touchdowns and has caught 14 passes for 138 yards and a score. He became the second player in school history to surpass 3,000 career rushing yards (currently 3,051). AlfanoStJohn has rushed for more than 100 yards five times, including 193 in the NCAA quarterfinals at Alma. 
 
Laap leads Cortland this fall with 67 receptions for 1,202 yards and 13 touchdowns. He is Cortland's career leader with 3,036 receiving yards and 31 TD catches, and his 1,202 receiving yards rank second on the Red Dragons' single-season charts.

Burgess picked up his third all-region award; he was a third-team receiver last fall and a third-team kick returner in 2018. This season, he's caught 64 passes for 1,096 yards and 11 touchdowns. He ranks second, behind Laap, with 30 career TD receptions and 2,854 career receiving yards, and he's first at Cortland with 14 career 100-yard receiving games. 
 
Aikey and Bitka have helped lead a Cortland offense that has set school single-season records with 6,692 total offensive yards, 3,055 rushing yards, 3,637 passing yards and 606 points scored. Cortland is on pace to set school records for scoring average (currently 46.6 points/game) and total offense average (currently 514.8 yards/game). The Red Dragons have gained more than 600 yards in a game three times this fall (659 at Morrisville, 657 at Hartwick, 648 at Alma). 
 
Noel, despite missing the first four games of the season due to injury, has registered three interceptions and six pass breakups in nine games, eight as a starter. He intercepted passes versus Brockport, in a win that clinched Cortland's Empire 8 title, and versus Grove City in the NCAA second round. 
 
Winey leads the Red Dragons with 124 tackles through 13 games. He's posted double-figure tackles five times, including 18 versus Susquehanna, 16 each against Grove City and St. John Fisher, and 15 versus Utica. Winey's 124 tackles currently are tied for fourth most in a season in school history. 
 
Luby is an all-region selection for the second time; he was a first-team choice last season. This season he's registered 48 touchbacks among his 102 total kickoffs. He's also the team's punter, averaging 37.4 yards per punt on 17 punts. 
 
Fitzpatrick has led Cortland to a current record of 12-1 and the program's first-ever NCAA Division III tournament semifinal appearance. Cortland won the Empire 8 title for the third straight season with a 6-0 record and finished the regular season with a 9-1 overall record. The Red Dragons have defeated Endicott, Grove City and Alma in NCAA play and will travel to Randolph-Macon (Va.) for the semifinals on Saturday at noon. Fitzpatrick is 32-4 since taking over as Cortland's head coach in 2020 (the 2020 season was canceled; his first season on the field was 2021).