The Hillsdale College football team kicks off their season this Saturday at the University of Findlay, culminating several weeks of intense training and preparation for the upcoming season.
The Chargers will have plenty of fresh faces in their starting lineups on Saturday, including new starting quarterback Mark LaPrairie who will lead the young Charger team in his second year of eligibility and third year with the team.
“It’s always just a process and a matter of patience,” head coach Keith Otterbein said about preparing LaPrairie and the other new players for the season. “To get better as a football player you’ve got to take snaps, and so through spring practice and through early camp here [we’re] just trying to fill in as many snaps as we can for those guys.”
LaPrairie is grateful for the couple of years he has had to get used to Hillsdale’s system.
“The gradual ease into it really made it pretty easy,” LaPrairie said. “There wasn’t a whole lot of pressure.”
In addition to giving the younger players as many snaps as possible, Coach Otterbein has put an emphasis on recreating game situations in practice.
“We’ve been working a lot this year on situational stuff instead of just drills,” starting center Justice Karmie said. “That’s something we’ve been focusing on this year because, with such a young team as a whole, it’s really helped to get guys into those situations in order to prepare, because so many of the guys on the team haven’t been in those situations yet.”
Coach Otterbein said he is happy with his team’s preparation.
“They show up, they like being around each other, they love the game of football, so they’re excited about the opportunities that we have,” he said. “Ultimately you’ve got to make plays on game day to win games, but up to that point it’s all preparation and learning and getting better and our guys have done a good job with that.”
Coach Otterbein has also put a major emphasis on taking the season one game and one opponent at a time.
“There really is a sequence of 11 one-week challenges that we have with one goal and that is to beat those guys on that coming Saturday,” he remarked.
While each 11 one-week process is as important as any of the others, the players and coaching staff are especially excited for their opener and what it means for the team.
“It’s always exciting to get this first game under your belt,” Otterbein said. “If you ask me if we’re going to be a strong offense, strong defense, strong special teams, I’ve got some ideas but I don’t know. So by having a game then we’ll have some stuff we’ll have to work on.”
Rather than viewing the opener as just a tick in the win or the loss column, the Chargers will treat it as another step in the season-long process.
“This is not a destination thing. You don’t win a game and then you’ve arrived. You continue to go through the journey, so there will always be things throughout the rest of the year that we can work on,” Otterbein said. “There will be emotional peaks. We’ll be excited, we’ll do some great stuff, and we’ll face some adversity. That’s the reality of college football.”
While the team takes the season one week at a time, there’s no doubt as to where they want this process to take them.
“We want to make the playoffs. We want to win the GLIAC,” Karmie said.
The Hillsdale College Chargers will look to take a step in that direction at Findlay on Saturday.
