NEW BRITAIN — Dan Toatley was in his dorm at Central Connecticut, a new semester just underway, when he got the kind of phone call no college student should ever have to take. Unimaginable tragedy was visiting him a second time.
He had lost his older brother, who died in a work accident, in May of 2021. Now, eight months later, Toatley learned his father was gone.
“We finished school in May,” Toatley said. “My mother came to pick me up, she actually asked me if I wanted to go see my brother. I knew he worked night time, l was like, ‘no, I’ll just see him tomorrow,’ and I actually never got to see him again. I live with that regret every day. Then eight months later, my father got into a dispute with somebody and he was killed, and then left on the street like trash.”
Samuel Toatley Jr., 23, was killed operating machinery in a warehouse in Cranston, N.J., leaving behind a two-year-old son. His father, Samuel Toatley, 58, was killed on a Trenton boulevard.
“I had gotten a phone call form one of my friends,” he said. “My family didn’t know yet, he said, ‘you’re father just passed away,’” Toatley said. “I kind of just dropped in my dorm room and I broke down. I called my D-line coach (Dave) Stedman and told him I was going home. He ran to my dorm, I don’t even know how he got in the building or knew my room number. And he just hugged me for 30, 40 minutes.”
Toatley’s sister, a student at UHart, joined him for the long drive back to Trenton, his Central football and academic family beginning to rallying around as he struggled with staying in school, staying the course.
“At times, I thought I wanted to go home,” he said. “I’m over school, I’m over football, I just want to be with my family. Every time I come back to school I’m losing people that I love, and I don’t want to do that any more. My teammates, they were like, ‘we’re not going to let you do that, you’re our brother, you need this degree, we need you for football.’”
Toatley carried on. He had been academically ineligible for Division I when he was in high school, but he has completed his degree in criminology at Central, is now in the master’s program for criminal justice and aspires to go to law school. He has won several academic awards and become a mainstay for the Blue Devils’ defensive line.
Last Saturday, Central defeated Duquesne to win the NEC championship, and next Saturday at noon will play at Rhode Island in the first round of the 16-team FCS playoffs.
“I feel great for all the kids,” coach Adam Lechtenberg said, “but Dan, specifically, has been through so much. The thing we talk about here, no matter what your adversity, you have to overcome it. People can help you through it, but you have to decide to overcome it. And Dan is a prime example of someone who overcame his adversities, made the choice to be successful.”
Toatley, 6 feet 1 and 250 pounds, was an undersized lineman at Lawrence High. To get his grades up and put weight on, he joined a prep program, the New Jersey Warriors, when Central offered a walk-on opportunity.
“I knew I didn’t want to go JuCo, I wanted to find a four-year home,” Toatley said. “So I said, ‘I’m going to take a bet and gamble on myself,’ and the rest was history. It just felt like home from the beginning, nobody cared that I was a walk-on, everybody embraced me with open arms.”
Toatley didn’t get on the field for the 2019 team, which finished 11-3 and reached the playoffs, nor did he play in 2020, the pandemic year, and he played in only three games in 2021. As the program changed coaches twice, Toatley entered the transfer portal, but turned back and eventually became a starter, playing 34 games over the last three seasons. An All-NEC first-teamer in 2023 Toatley has been in on 143 tackles with 17 sacks in his career, six last season, eight this season.
“He’s really tough,” Lechtenberg said. “He gets banged up, but you just know he’s going to get back up and make the next play. He’s one of the toughest kids I’ve seen, on and off the field.”
As he developed and excelled in football, Toatley’s academic performance a far cry from his high school days; he graduated with a 3.56 GPA. He is a finalist for the Doris Robinson Award, which recognizes an FCS player for academic and athletic performance and community service. Toatley has been active in the National Marrow Donor Program drive on campus, and has won the Jerry Nason Award, given each year by the New England Football Writers, presented to a senior who has “succeeded in football against all odds.”
“I really buckled down,” Toatley said. “Where I grew up, a lot of things outside alter the way you go about things. I wasn’t always locked in on school, it was always football, football, football. It didn’t come until my junior year when I had big schools like Rutgers, Temple ready to offer me and they look at your transcripts and it’s, ‘oh, we can’t offer you.’ Reality sinks in. What are you doing? I got all A’s and B’s my senior year but it was a little too late. So I promised myself my senior year, I’d never do that again to myself.”
Last May, two years after the loss of his brother and 16 months after losing his dad, Dan Toatley became the first in his family to earn a college degree. He plans to give pro football a shot, but eventually wants to apply to law schools.
“Every day, I wear a pendant with my Dad and my brother on it,” Toatley said. “I walked with it on senior night, so that they walked with me. Every time I put it on, I know I’m playing for them, trying to make them proud, and hope I get a chance to play beyond college so I can support my mom (Susan), my sister (Gabrielle) and I do it for my nephew (Samuel Joseph) as well, because if roles were reversed and I passed away and had a son, I know my brother would do everything in his power to be set for life.”
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Central (7-5), was picked seventh, last, in the NEC preseason poll and lost its opener at FBS Central Michigan 66-10. The Devils lost heartbreakers at UMass, Yale and Dartmouth, but were primed for conference play. They won their last four in a row, coming from two touchdowns behind to beat Robert Morris in double overtime and, in Toatley’s final home game, took down preseason favorite Duquesne, 21-14, the defense holding the lead with three stops down the stretch.
“From the beginning, I believed we were going to win,” Toatley said. “So I wasn’t really shocked. It was an overwhelming feeling of joy and accomplishment. We protected Arute (Field) all year, we went undefeated at home. To come in with a championship, and then to leave with one, it was a great feeling.”
