BUTLER TWP — For the first time in 14 years, Jason Cherry is not on the sidelines at Art Bernardi Stadium helping the Butler place-kickers.

Next month, the 1998 Golden Tornado graduate will be honored for his own kicking on the football field.

Cherry, 38, who set a Division I-AA championship game record by scoring 13 points as a kicker, will be inducted into the University of Massachusetts Athletic Hall of Fame Oct. 5 with the rest of his teammates.

Cherry was the Minutemen's freshman placekicker in 1998, the year UMass surprised the playoff field in winning the national title.

“This is the 20th anniversary of that national championship and they decided to put us all in as a team,” Cherry said. “We're all pretty excited about it.”

That 1998 campaign was a wide range of emotions for Cherry. He began that season expecting to be red-shirted.

“I wasn't even sure if I was going there for a while,” he said. “I was being recruited by UMass, then they had a wholesale coaching change after that (1997) season, after they finished 2-9.

“With new coaches coming in, I didn't know if they still wanted me or not. In December of that year, they called and said they were still interested.”

Mark Whipple, who went on to become the Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback coach and earned a Super Bowl ring with the Steelers, took over as UMass head coach in 1998. After a number of coaching stops afterward, he is back as UMass head coach this season.

When the 1998 season began, Cherry was not a starter.

“Coach Whipple said he planned to red-shirt me and I was fine with that,” Cherry said. “We had a senior kicker at the time.”

That kicker, Matt Murphy, struggled and Cherry began kicking with the first team in practice in Week 7. He never lost the job after that.

He did get blamed for losing a game.

The Minutemen dropped their regular season finale to Connecticut, 28-27. Cherry missed a PAT after his team's final touchdown.

“It was a windy day and the kick was from the 35-yard line because of penalties,” Cherry recalled. “The wind blew the ball sideways.

“That was for the Atlantic 10 championship. The loss dropped us to 8-3 and we had to wait to see if we'd receive an at-large bid in the playoffs. The papers blamed me for the loss.”

UMass did receive an at-large bid and entered the I-AA playoffs as the No. 11 seed. It won three straight road postseason games — the first time a I-AA team had done that — before defeating Georgia Southern, 55-43, in the title game in Chattanooga, Tenn.

“I had a chip-shot field goal attempt late to ice the game and I remember Coach Whipple grabbing my arm before I went out there,” Cherry said. “He quietly told me to end this game right now.

“When I hit the kick, I jumped into my holder's arms — something we always did after a successful kick — and a picture of that wound up on the cover of the Boston Globe. When I returned to the sideline, Coach said 'just like a pro.' I've never forgotten that.

“Those were great memories. I graduated from Butler in June. Six months later, I'm kicking in a college football national championship game on ESPN,” he added.

Cherry's seven PATs in that game were also a I-AA title game record.

Today, Cherry and his wife, Emily, are parents to daughters Penny, 7, and Charlotte, 4. They live in Butler.

“That's why I decided I couldn't help coach kickers this year,” Cherry said. “My girls are getting older and I needed more family time with them.

“I did help Emery (Butler kicker Douthett) during the preseason and I'm still available if they need my help.”

Cherry's college career wound up at Slippery Rock, where he kicked for seven games before his career ended with a high ankle sprain. He went on to kick for arena football teams for seven years.

Once he returned to Butler, Cherry became a volunteer assistant coach for the Tornado. He helped develop Butler kickers for the aforementioned 14 years.

He said 51 players from the 1998 championship team will be returning to UMass for the Hall of Fame banquet.

“It will be fun catching up,” Cherry said. “About 30 of us get together once a year anyway. We are a pretty close-knit group.”