Dylan Laube didn’t go to Sachem, but he did spend his formative years winning championships with the Sachem Sports Club (SSC). He was also the latest Suffolk County product drafted by an NFL team when the Las Vegas Raiders selected him in the sixth round with the 208th overall pick.
“I’m so fired up to prove you RIGHT and the 31 teams who passed on me wrong!” he wrote on X. “Let’s work!!”
Laube, who played high school football at Westhampton Beach, was on SSC’s first Suffolk County PAL Championship team at 11 years old and helped SSC win two more when he was 12 and 13.
Dennis Wandle was Laube’s SSC coach and proudly posted photos on Facebook of him celebrating a youth football championship shortly after the Raiders made their pick.
“He was always a team player who had so much passion for the game,” said Wandle. “He always worked hard, and always had fun making everyone around him comfortable. He was a nightmare to coach against, a pleasure to coach, and a joy to watch in high school and college and I couldn’t be happier and prouder for him.”
A small school player both in high school and in college at the University of New Hampshire, Laube used the “no-star recruit” motto as ammo for his mentality and, ultimately, the results he produced.
In high school, he won the coveted Hansen Award given to the top player in Suffolk County and finished his career with more than 8,000 all-purpose yards and 120 touchdowns. He followed that with more than 7,100 all-purpose yards and 47 touchdowns at New Hampshire. An FCS All-American as a senior, he led the FSC in all-purpose yard average in 2022 and 2023.
“He worked so hard and deserves all the accolades he receives,” said Wandle.
His versatility differentiated his draft stock from other running backs this year. He is anything but a traditional running back since he is just as lethal catching passes or returning kicks and punts.
“Special teams is what separates me from every running back in this class,” he said in a press conference Zoom on Saturday afternoon. “I’m about to do so many different things. I’m super excited because it’s a bunch of gritty, hard-nosed dudes. It’s going to be so fun. I can’t wait. Coming from a small town in New York, it’s a surreal feeling. I was a no-star kid, and I only had one offer which was New Hampshire. I’ve always had that chip on my shoulder from peewee to now. I wanted to prove to everyone who I was.”
He just did, and the rest of the country will learn who Laube is on Sunday this fall.