Wednesday December 19, 2018
Three Santa Monica College (SMC) football players will transfer after the fall semester and will begin their careers at the four-year universities in January. Christoph Hirota will join UC Davis of the Big Sky Conference, James Alles will enroll at Eastern New Mexico of the Lone Star Conference and Nicholas Thompson will transfer to Kansas Wesleyan University of the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference.
All three Corsairs are transferring after taking different routes to complete their two years of Junior College football. Hirota, a running back from Bellevue High School in Washington, originally started at Arizona State before transferring to SMC to play. Alles moved to California after attending high school in New York to begin working and decided to go back to school after a few years last spring. Thompson attended high school locally in Southern California at Valencia High School before enrolling at SMC.
Hirota and Thompson are joining programs that are both made the playoffs this fall and Alles is joining an Eastern team that finished in the Top 25 in 2017. After all three had signed their respective paperwork to finalize their transfers, Interim Head Coach Kelly Ledwith said "It was great to see these guys get rewarded for their hard work and dedication to this team. Christoph, Nick and James are among 11 guys that played together for two years and helped us build a foundation for this program and I could not be more proud of them."
Check in with www.smccorsairs.com this winter for more updates on where more of our players are transferring.