Photo illustration by Travis Rosenau Ashton Toll was named the 2023 All-Journal Defensive Player of the Year on Thursday.

SPRINGFIELD — After long weeks of practice and taking in ample game film of his next opponent, Springfield High School’s Ashton Toll took the football field each game day this season without personal accomplishments in mind.

While he had a worthy list of accomplishments worth bragging about, Toll’s mission on the field was simply to do whatever he could to help his Tigers win and get back to the state tournament.

After getting into position at middle linebacker, the 220-pound senior made a number of plays and made his team better in the process as the Tigers returned to the state tournament and Class A state title game for the second year in a row.

While Minneota defeated the Tigers in the state championship game last year and won the rematch this year, Toll’s play and leadership can’t be overlooked.

After all, not many teams reach the state tournament in consecutive seasons, let alone the state title game.

Toll, a four-year starter, racked up 138 tackles this season to finish with a career total of 514. He also had an interception, six tackles for a loss and three pass deflections as he finished the season as the South District, West Subdistrict, South Division MVP.

Adding one more feather in his cap, Toll was unanimously chosen as this year’s All-Journal Defensive Player of the Year as voted on by The Journal’s sports staff.

“It’s just nice to see that my work has paid off and all of the work my teammates and coaches have put in have helped me to get here,” Toll said. “It’s really awesome.”

Toll said he’s played linebacker since he started playing football in fourth grade and has always enjoyed manning the middle.

Springfield Defensive Coordinator Brandon Wilhelmi said Toll was easy to coach and called him a special player that learned quickly.

“Every year that I’ve coached, he’s worked to just improve his skill, improve his craft,” Wilhelmi said. “Super coachable. Last year I remember, defensively, he was already doing well, but I said, ‘We can nitpick, because we want you that much better.’ And we were talking about attacking the line of scrimmage and within a week, he was doing that so much better. So being coachable has been a big part of his success. He obviously wants to be successful, and his leadership skills on and off the field is a huge attribute to his character.

“Weight room, I don’t know how many pounds he put on his last year, but I know he put on a lot of muscle because he’s in the weight room a lot. He got other guys to go in there with him. He never missed anything. He was dinged up since I think Week 5 of this year and hurting pretty bad and he never wanted to miss a rep. Kids like that don’t come around often, and when they do, you know it’s special. He wanted to be a special player and he was a special player.”

Toll credited his coaches and teammates for his success at middle linebacker throughout his career.

“My coaching has helped me and told me what I’m supposed to do and what my keys are,” Toll said. “And then my teammates around me, being able to do their job so I can do what I need to do.”

Toll was a prototype middle linebacker for the Tigers, especially during his senior year. But despite the fact he was a big body in the middle of the field that disrupted plays and made tackles, a lot of prep work went into that success at the high school level.

“[The biggest thing I learned was] watching film and being able to know what the other team is going to do, and then having the next-play mentality,” Toll said.

Wilhelmi echoed Toll’s time spent watching game film.

“He watched so much film,” Wilhelmi said. “He knew what the other team — formation-wise, he knew their tendencies. And we talk a lot about that, but that was a lot on him, too. He watched a ton of film, he knew what they were going to do, he knew how to attack gaps and all those little things.

“A lot of times he would beat the other team to the punch because he was so ready for what was going to happen in front of him. … He did a lot of things to fix things up front for our defense, get guys in position. All those little things that you don’t see, he did all those things.”

Toll also was chosen to play in the 50th annual Minnesota High School All-Star Football Game, which took place this past Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“It’s a good thing that I got to do to represent the town that has helped me get there and it was a really fun experience,” Toll said.

Toll was the first Springfield player chosen for the All-Star Game since Lance Briard in 2013.

As Toll continues his prep athletic career on the high school basketball court, his football career isn’t over as he will continue at the collegiate level in 2024 at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

“There was a few other schools around, but I kind of knew that Augustana was kind of a leader right from the get-go,” Toll said.

“It was kind of last spring, so my junior year of spring, they reached out and it just went from there. You recruit a little bit, talk to them, get a relationship, and then they offered.”