University of Richmond Athletics
Spider Football Kicks Off Spring Practice Friday
March 14, 2007
UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, Va. -
With back-to-back winning seasons as a backdrop, the Spider football team begins three weeks of spring practices Friday. The sessions conclude with the annual Spring Game Saturday April 7 at First Market Stadium on campus. The game is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Admission is free.
Head coach Dave Clawson, who begins his fourth season at Richmond this fall, welcomes nine returning starters on offense, and his front-line kicking specialists, but must replace eight defensive first-stringers who helped rewrite the Richmond record book during the past two seasons.
There will also be a new look on the sidelines with three first-year assistant coaches now in place, and a fourth to be added before the fall.
In the midst of preparing for spring practices, Coach Clawson spent some time answering a series of questions from RichmondSpiders.com to give fans an early preview of the 2007 Spiders...
RS.com: In looking back at '06 as a way of previewing '07, how important was it to get that win over W&M and finish 6-5, giving the Spiders back-to-back winning seasons and putting you in position for three straight winning seasons for the first time in more than 50 years?
DC: Our goals are certainly higher than to just have a winning season. But beating William & Mary and securing a winning season was very important to last year's team. But our goals are higher. We want to be in the playoffs, we want to win CAA championships, and it has to start with having a winning season. But, we'll begin this season with higher goals again.
RS.com: The part of football that fans don't see is off-season conditioning. What were your objectives this off-season and how did your returning players do?
DC: We're going to have a lot of young guys play for us this year, especially on defense. We lost eight starters whose body of work over the past two years was really good. So it was very important that those young guys had a good off-season. They physically have to get themselves ready for the rigors of an eleven game season. We're anxious to see them go through spring football, but what we're doing in the weight room right now is very important to our season.
RS.com: Speaking of returning players, you have more on offense than on defense this year. How will that effect what you are trying to accomplish this spring on both sides of the ball?
DC: I think we want to get our base stuff in. On offense, most of it is in. Maybe this year we have a chance to open up the offense a little bit more, and put a little bit more on the quarterback position. Last year, we tried to keep things simple for Eric (Ward). He was a freshman quarterback and we tried not to put too much on him. Part of playing quarterback for us this year will be having to handle more. I also think that we're finally going to have a lot of depth at wideout. We've recruited a lot of receivers and now we have good depth. I think we can commit ourselves to some more three receiver sets, and occasionally some four receiver sets.
RS.com: Last year, you had a close competition at the quarterback position. This year, it appears Eric Ward is clearly number one in spring camp. What will he be working on to be better than last year, when he was named Offensive Rookie of the Year in the league?
DC: Every position is a competition. Eric certainly will go into the spring as the number one, but he needs to perform well. Will Healy has worked very hard and has improved as a quarterback. No job is settled. Having said that, Eric got a lot of experience last year. How he uses that experience to make him a better quarterback is what's important. If he takes the things he learned a year ago, corrects some of the mistakes, grows as a football player, then he should be performing at a much higher level this spring and next season.
RS.com: As we said, there will be many familiar names on offense. What are your expectations for that group - and who are some new names we can expect to see contributing on offense?
DC: Number one, the expectations for the returning players is that they're better. One of the ways you get better is that the guys coming back are playing at a higher level and they raise the level for the younger guys coming in. We're really excited about some of the younger wideouts. Jordan Mitchell, Kevin Grayson, Scott Riddell, Jonathan Mayfield - all of those guys need to play a much bigger role in the offense. I really think that William Bischoff - with a year in the system - is a guy at tight end that can really step up. And I think some of the offensive linemen that we played a year ago - Matthew McCracken, Chris Kondorossy, Michael Silva - all those guys should be a year better, a year older and a year stronger. They'll need to play at a much higher level.
RS.com: How about defensively? Who steps up - both returning players and newcomers - to replace the likes of all conference performers such as Johnny Campbell, Adam Goloboski, Lance Gray and Damien McCallum?
DC: It's going to be a lot of young guys. It's going to be fun in the spring because we've really got some jobs wide open and we'll see who will go out every day and make plays. I'm just excited to see who steps up because they need to. The guys we lost were very productive football players for us for a number of years.
RS.com: Losing assistant coaches is part of the game, and when they go to schools like Virginia and Notre Dame, to name a couple, it's a compliment to this program and what they've done here. Can you speak about your current staff - especially the newcomers who will be part of spring ball?
DC: We've lost some very good coaches. We're happy that they got great opportunities. It's a compliment that programs like Virginia and Notre Dame are picking coaches from the Richmond program. We still maintain our offensive, defensive and special teams systems. Coach Russ Huesman is still here as our defensive coordinator, so we're going to run the same defense. I'll still handle play calling and the offense.
I think we've added at this point three very good coaches.
Dave Legg is joining us from Christopher Newport where he was defensive coordinator. He'll handle our defensive line. He's also been at Bucknell and William & Mary.
We also got two good younger coaches in Josh Lustig. Byron had a great career at Virginia and played in the NFL. He's been coaching at Virginia for a year and will join us on defense. Josh was a receiver at William & Mary, and also was coaching at Christopher Newport, He'll assist on offense.
Anytime you have coaches go, you have a chance to bring some new ideas into the program that will help us grow.
RS.com: Your older guys have been part of a championship. Your younger guys know they may be playing their home games in a new on-campus facility before they graduate. Can you tie all of that together to speak about the state of Spider football as you enter your fourth season as head coach?
I think it's an exciting time, although in some ways we're going through a transition. We've graduated a lot of good players the last two seasons and this will probably be the youngest team we've had since I've been here. But I think it's a talented team that needs to grow up in a hurry to be successful in the CAA. I think we have a lot of good players that will be here for two or three more seasons. So we're going through another cycle of younger players again, but they're talented. Certainly, with the stadium hopefully coming on campus within the next two or three years, it's a lot to sell from a recruiting standpoint. I think that will help us to continue to recruit really good student-athletes to come to the University of Richmond.