He’s always had the juice.
Senior running back/return specialist Julien “Juice” Stokes won his second-straight Ivy League Player of the Week award for special teams. He becomes the 11th player in Penn football history to collect the weekly honor in consecutive weeks and the first special teams player. Stokes currently is ranked No. 1 in the Football Championship Subdivision in both punt returns and all-purpose yards with 20.5 yards per attempt and 206.5 yards, respectively.
At last weekend’s loss to Lehigh, Stokes was a bright spot. In the third quarter, the Newbury Park, Calif. native returned a kick for 60 yards to set up a critical score for the Quakers. At the end of the matchup, Stokes returned a total of four kicks for 133 yards.
In the Quakers’ season opener, Stokes made a 63-yard punt return to the endzone to push the Red and Blue to a 14-0 lead with seven minutes left in the first in addition to two kickoff returns for a total of 131 return yards for the day.
“[Stokes] is a weapon. He was a weapon [from our] first game [when] he brought back that [return] for a touchdown.” Penn coach Ray Priore said of Stokes.
That touchdown marked the first punt return touchdown since 2019 and first return score of any kind since Stokes’ 97-yard kickoff return in a matchup at Brown in 2022.
Since the mid-point of the 2022 season, Stokes has been the Red and Blue’s main return specialist. That year, he collected Ivy League Special Teams Player of the Year. An injury kept Stokes on the bench during the 2023 season, but Stokes hit the ground running when he returned to the field next fall. In 2024, Penn was No.1 in the Ancient Eight in average yards per kickoff return.
With the transfer of running back and Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year Malachi Hosley, Stokes joined the backfield this season to add experience to a younger running back roster.
Stokes and company return to Franklin Field this Saturday to take on Dartmouth in their first Ivy League game of the season.
