Wake Forest Traditions


Wilson Hoyle Still Holds the Record

His 230 points scored as a kicker stand high today.

By Sam Walker

It is almost embarrassing for Wilson Hoyle when he is introduced as the leading scorer in Wake Forest football history, but it seems that distinction has followed him ever since he graduated in 1989. Not quite a decade ago, Hoyle walked onto the Demon Deacon football team as a kicker, and over his next four years he amassed 230 points, a mark that still holds today.

After playing just one year of high school football on a highly successful Vance Senior High football squad, Hoyle got some attention from Division I institutions. However, none of them wanted to offer him a scholarship. The best offers were to come aboard as a walk-on and try to earn a scholarship, which in Hoyle's opinion was more than fair at the time. Little did they know that what he had accomplished in one season at Vance High had only scratched the surface of his full potential.

Wake Forest had not had a tradition of a strong kicking game, and Al Groh recruited Hoyle from the beginning of his senior season despite his lack of experience. As a redshirt freshman, Hoyle scored 59 points on a team that finished 5-6. In 1987, Hoyle earned his scholarship and followed with his best season, converting 21 extra point attempts and 16 field goals totaling 69 points.

As a junior Hoyle added 58 points and as a senior he scored 44 points to set Wake Forest's all-time record with 230 points. That record, of which his grandfather, Wilson Hoyle Sr., was very proud, along with the game when he hit five field goals in a victory over North Carolina, defines Hoyle's career. What's embarrassing about the record for Hoyle was the way he remembers thinking about his opportunity as an incoming freshman.

"My only goal when I went to Wake was to get on the field one time," Hoyle said. "I thought maybe my last game my senior year they might let me on the field to kick an extra point. I just wanted to say I played. But after I got in the mix I started to think maybe I could play, really play."

After his 1989 graduation Hoyle tried to continue to his football career in the NFL. His first stop was in Detroit with the Lions, a team he twice tried to latch on with. He played some football in the World League, and his last attempt at a professional career was in 1994 when he tried to make the roster with the San Francisco 49ers. "I guess you might call it a long list of failed tryouts," Hoyle said. "I actually got to play in a number of preseason games when things went well in Detroit."