After a disappointing injury-plagued 2014 campaign, the Hillsdale College football team has worked this offseason to build strength, gain experience, and stay healthy.
“Our guys have worked hard all winter in the weight room and have shown up with a get after it attitude this spring,” head coach Keith Otterbein said. The Chargers began spring practices in March and have been practicing on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, with film sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
To prepare his athletes for the regular season, Otterbein has been focusing on creating different game situations in practice, ranging from third-down plays to two-minute drills.
“There’s much more going on in practice to keep guys engaged and locked in than just lining up and running plays,” Otterbein said. “As a football team it’s very important for us to continue to improve by taking these situations and getting better at them so when it happens next fall we’re ready to react at full speed.”
The Chargers featured a young squad last year and youth combined with injuries resulted in a 4-7 season.
“We’re still pretty young but we’re all more experienced this year,” junior offensive lineman Justice Karmie said. “Throughout the whole offseason and definitely in spring ball there’s been an energy and a competitiveness that was lacking a little bit last year.”
Freshman linebacker Jay Rose was originally going to be redshirted last season, but injuries forced him onto the field.
“I’m still getting used to game speed but the spring has really helped me get a better understanding of everything because things came at me really fast in the fall,” Rose said.
Rose, like any other freshman, is competing for playing time.
“Spring practice is a good chance for a lot of us freshmen and younger guys to get a chance to prove ourselves,” Rose said. “In spring everybody gets a chance to practice and show what they’ve got and the freshmen get a good chance to learn by doing stuff instead of watching older guys do it.”
While freshmen especially are competing for playing time, no player is locked into his position according to Otterbein.
“Nobody is going in the hall of fame here based on anything they’ve done thus far in their careers. They all have to maintain and earn it,” Otterbein said. “All the guys that have had stellar careers have kept getting better not because someone was pushing them or they were fighting for the job but they were fighting for our football team to be the best it could be and that meant individually being the best that they could be.”
On Saturday, the Chargers will play their annual spring game at 10 a.m. at the Frank “Muddy” Waters Stadium. It is open to the public.
“We’ll show up two hours early to the locker room, we’ll wear our actual uniforms, we’ll do our normal pre-game routine and treat it like we would on a normal game day,” Karmie said.
The Chargers will split up into a blue team and a white team. One team will consist of the first-string offense and second-string defense, and the other will be the second-string offense and the first-string defense.
“It gets a little chippy out there,” Karmie said. “There’s a little bit of jawing back and forth but because we do have a respect for the defensive guys and they have a respect for us the competitive level that’s there has been really good.”
The spring game will feature no kickoffs and the coaching staff might set up specific game scenarios throughout the morning, but otherwise they will treat it like a normal football game.
Several recruits generally attend the spring game as well. This year, the Chargers have picked up 29 recruits and are likely to add two or three more according to Otterbein.
“It’s a bigger recruiting class than I had anticipated based on the amount of scholarship money we had,” Otterbein said. “We feel really good about the quality academically with this group and we think they’re some pretty good football players.”
“Some” of the 29 recruits will not redshirt but play their true freshman year according to Otterbein.
“We don’t like to do that but situations at certain positions may create that. Part of it is we’ve got to get everybody healthy,” Otterbein said. “I would say there’s a couple defensive backs that are going to be right in the mix, and maybe a defensive end or two might be in the mix. It just depends on how the rest of the guys that may have missed some snaps here this spring come back.”
The Chargers’ spring game on Saturday concludes spring practices. Official practices will resume on August 12.
