Elliott Giles made a huge impact on the YSU football program, and he continues to make an influence in the Mahoning Valley long after his playing days.
Giles had a spectacular senior season in 1999 while helping lead the Penguins to the National Championship Game. An honorable-mention All-Gateway selection, Giles caught 62 passes for 1,301 yards and nine touchdowns while averaging 21.0 yards a reception during his 15 games. His yardage total ranks just behind fellow Hall-of-Fame inductee Herb Williams' total of 1,306.
He had six 100-yard receiving games, five of which came in the regular season. He had a career-high nine receptions for 144 yards at Western Michigan. In the regular season he eclipsed the 100-yard mark against WMU, Slippery Rock, Western Illinois, Cal Poly and UNI. At Villanova, he caught two touchdown passes.
In the postseason, Giles caught 13 passes for 403 yards and two touchdowns. Highlighting his postseason was a memorable six-catch, 214-yard performance in the first-round win at Montana. Giles had an 82-yard touchdown reception against the Grizzlies in the third quarter. He also had catches of 39, 37, 26, 22 and eight yards in the contest.
As a junior in 1998, Giles caught 11 passes for 176 yards and a touchdown in nine games played. He had two receptions each against Southern Illinois and Central Florida. Against the Salukis, he caught a 47-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter.
In his two-year Youngstown State career, he had 73 receptions for 1,477 yards and caught nine touchdown passes in 24 games played. Giles averaged 20.2 yards per reception and had at least one catch in every game he played in for the Penguins.
At Idaho State, he redshirted in 1995 before coming on to catch 24 passes for 486 yards and five touchdowns as a redshirt freshman in 1996. He transferred to YSU following that campaign and had to sit out the 1997 campaign.
In his collegiate career, Giles caught 97 passes for 1,963 yards and 14 touchdowns.
He graduated from Killian High School in Miami, Fla.
Recently, a Scholarship Endowment, the Elliott L. Giles Scholarship, was created for a YSU student-athlete. This scholarship will be awarded annually to a minority student-athlete with a GPA of 2.5 or above.
After his collegiate career, Giles impacted the youth of the community by starting Y2 Sports, a non-profit organization centered on the youth of Youngstown to help battle the worldwide dilemma of childhood obesity while building young men and women of character. Giles also founded The Youngstown Youth Flag Football Association, an NFL-sanctioned flag football league that has impacted over 2,000 children from the Tri-County area since its inaugural season in 2007.
He is employed by the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT).
Elliott and his wife, Amy, have three children, Alexis, Elliott Jr., and Aliyah. The family lives in Youngstown.
