The Hillsdale College football team has been working on becoming better, faster, stronger, and closer throughout its offseason, and those improvements were evident on Sunday when the Chargers wrapped up spring practices with their annual spring game.
The Chargers lost six of their first seven games last year before finishing the season on a four-game winning streak. Head coach Keith Otterbein said the momentum the team gained from their strong finish last year “really translated” through the winter and spring practices.
“We made great gains in the weight room, and our kids stayed very locked in and very focused. I haven’t had my individual meetings to this point but I feel like we’re going to have some very positive comments from the team about their closeness, their unity, and their brotherhood,” Otterbein said. “We really did do what you would hope to do, and that’s take the momentum from the finish of last year and build it into the winter. I thought that our spirits through spring practice were really good.”
All of this was evident on Sunday during Hillsdale’s spring game — an intrasquad scrimmage between offense and defense. Around 500 people, including approximately 180 recruits that are currently juniors in high school, watched the Chargers’ offense run 73 plays, scoring four touchdowns on drives led by three different quarterbacks.
“We made some plays on both sides,” Otterbein said. “Whenever you scrimmage yourself, as the head coach you’re 50 percent happy and 50 percent, ‘Oh crap, what are we going to do about that?’ You always have to deal with that.”
Otterbein also said he was happy with his team’s “mental and emotional approach” to the spring game.
“I really liked the way we finished,” Otterbein said. “You always want to have people react to your football team saying, ‘Wow, they love playing.’ We’ve talked about that before, just showing the passion, showing the enthusiasm, and I thought our kids were really flying around and getting things done.”
The Chargers finished their spring game without suffering any injuries.
“As positive as it could be, no one got hurt,” Otterbein said. “That’s always a big concern.”
A big reason the Chargers have been staying healthy and getting stronger is due to the work of head strength and conditioning coach Pat Gifford, who came to Hillsdale last summer. Gifford has brought a “freshness and a newness” to workouts, according to Otterbein.
“He’s doing a really good job. I think our kids have connected very well to him,” Otterbein said. “I also think that having him really bridges a gap between the training room and getting kids back on the field after injuries.”
Sophomore tailback Joe Reverman, who was voted team MVP by his teammates after last season, said Gifford has helped the Chargers grow stronger both physically and mentally.
“The first part of the offseason we were just lifting and I think we just got a lot stronger and more athletic individually,” Reverman said. “Guys had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to lift five days a week, so there was some tough stuff, but I think it brought us closer together as a team too because we’re all suffering through it together.”
The Chargers have grown closer together outside the weight room as well.
“We put a lot of emphasis on becoming a closer team,” sophomore quarterback Chance Stewart said. “We met once a week in the offseason to strictly learn more about each of our teammates and their lives.”
Stewart, who earned the starting quarterback job midway through last season and led the Chargers on their four-game winning streak to end the year, ran a majority of the plays in Sunday’s spring game, but split snaps with sophomore Brendan Rohlfs, redshirt-freshman Steven Ficyk, and junior David Ritchie.
“We obviously put them in as many situations as we can. Having the fact that Chance got on that win streak, whether it’s fair or not fair or whatever, he went in there and in game situations with him at quarterback we won four games. He didn’t do it himself, but that has a lot to bear on how that quarterback battle shook out,” Otterbein said. “But we try to get equal opportunities because he’s still a young quarterback. He’s got a ways to go. He did some good stuff and had some stuff that he needs to work on, as well as all those kids. So we had four kids really locked in and working hard, and made a lot of progress at the quarterback position.”
The Chargers will resume practice on Aug. 10 when players return to campus, including Hillsdale’s 32 incoming freshmen. Many members of the incoming class were on campus Sunday to watch the spring game.
“It’s a good class,” Otterbein said. “It’s always interesting to see them after a couple months. Some of them seem like they grew a couple inches and put on some weight. It’s a really good looking group, so we’re very excited to get them here in August and start working with them.”
The Chargers also hosted their annual youth football camp on Saturday to raise money for the Jason Foundation, an organization which is dedicated to youth-suicide prevention. Over 100 kids from the Hillsdale community participated in the camp, and the Chargers raised over $1000 for the Jason Foundation.
“I’m not sure who has more fun, the older kids or the young kids,” Otterbein said.
The Hillsdale College football team has been donating to the Jason Foundation for ten years.
“It was a great opportunity to give back to the community and use the money we made for a great cause,” Stewart said.