FSU opens spring football drills

By Duane Cochran
For the Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT March 18, 2008 12:28 am

— Spring football practice for Fairmont State University began Monday with a couple of new twists.
First, this is the initial spring for the Falcons under the direction of head coach Mike Lopez, who took over the program at the beginning of last season when former coach Rusty Elliott was promoted to Director of Athletics at the school.
FSU finished 6-5 last season under Lopez, the team’s former defensive coordinator. It was the first winning season for the Falcons since 2001.
“Today was just a lot of basic stuff for us,” said Lopez following Monday’s opening session. “As a coaching staff we spent a lot of time this winter getting smarter. We feel like we’ve got a young, talented team and it’s our obligation to them to be the best coaches we can be to allow them to be successful in terms of fundamentals first and foremost. We’ve got some creative ways to teach those fundamentals this spring and that’s what we’re going to focus on in the early portion of spring practice.”
Second, the Falcons will be exclusively practicing on campus for the first time in two years. After spending much of the last two springs at East-West Stadium, the new FieldTurf surface installed at FSU’s Duvall-Rosier Field last summer will allow the Falcons to practice all spring long on their own field without any longer risking damage to it.
“We pulled last year’s first spring practice and the year before’s first spring practice to look at and we were only able to go an hour last year at East-West Stadium because we were squeezed in there and the year before that we went for about 90 minutes, but that was at 7:30 or eight in the evening,” said Lopez. “From a consistency standpoint things are going to be a lot better for us this spring. At 3:30 p.m. our kids know they’re going to be on our field on our campus and they like that. You could tell today given the environment that we had the best first practice of the spring that we’ve had in a long time.
“Still, it was very gracious of the Marion County Board of Education and people like James Phares and Frank Moore to allow us to use East-West Stadium the past two years when we needed it. We’re very thankful for all of their help the past two years.”
The Falcons have 65 players on their spring roster. Two projected starters next fall, cornerbacks Matt Vujaklya and Andre Pope, are sitting out this spring recovering from injuries suffered last season, Vujaklya, a 6-2, 215-pound senior-to-be, suffered a knee injury in the Falcons’ final game of the season against Concord, while Pope, a 6-1, 215-pound junior-to-be, suffered a fractured hip socket in practice during the fourth week of the season just prior to FSU’s meeting with Shepherd.
The Falcons suffered some key losses to graduation on both sides of the football, but particularly on defense. Thus, Lopez wants to see some of his young talent on defense develop this spring, while his offense concentrates on becoming more consistent and more potent.
“Defensively we want to develop our young talent more than anything,” said Lopez. “We’re not going to do too much this spring. I told my defensive staff and our entire defense that we’re going back to 2002 when I first got the defensive coordinator’s job here. The main difference is now I’ve got six years of defensive experience. That’s the mentality we’re using. We’ll play stack defensive and cover three most of this week and into next week. Our install will be very minimal on defense.
“Offensively our main objective is to get the football into the hands of our playmakers. We want to have success and consistency with that. We going to be focused on spreading the ball out more, not only in terms of formations, but in terms of getting it into the hands of a lot of different people. We’ve got some good, young talent on offense and we want and need to take advantage of those guys.”
The Falcons will practice on the field Tuesday and Thursday this week before breaking for the three-day Easter weekend.