After 20 practices, harsh weather conditions and aggressive recruiting, new head coach Michael Faulds had his first chance to show off his edition of the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks.
Sunday afternoon featured a spring game to wrap up the men’s football spring camp, which started just over two weeks ago.
“It’s come along. We’ve come along way,” Faulds said after Sunday’s controlled scrimmage. “We’ve finished our 20 out-of-season practices. It’s good to be done and I think the guys learned a lot and kind of know where they stand on this team and we competed really hard.”
The spring camp was an opportunity for the Hawks to move their practices from inside RIM Park to the field at University Stadium and run high-tempo drills under the new coaching staff.
Sunday’s game allowed the team to run various drills giving both the offensive line and defensive line different scenarios to expect in the upcoming season. The offensive line wore white, while the defensive line wore purple.
The drills ran like a normal game. Faulds complimented his players, saying that they kept up the tempo and worked hard despite the weather conditions.
“Today we were going against 60mph winds, which made it a little tricky, but it was fun. The defence was outstanding, Ronnie [Pfeffer] made some great kicks, and offensively, we were hit and miss but we made a couple big plays in there.”
Faulds mentioned that while most of the team was returning Hawks from the 2012 season, most of the signed recruits for the upcoming year were also on the sidelines. Nearly 30 to 40 new recruits will join the Hawks next season.
“We were fortunate today,” he said. “I was telling the guys in the locker room before [that] this is the 2013 Hawks. So with the veteran players that were out of the spring game today along with the 30 to 40 recruits we had here, that is the team we’re going to see in the fall.”
The spring game concludes training for the season. The Hawks won’t be back on the field as a whole until training camp in August in preparation for their season opener in Guelph on Aug. 25.
“I’m sad that it’s over with and we kind of don’t get on the field again until August, but it’s bittersweet,” Faulds said. “It’ll be nice for these guys to get a little break in the summer and just go back and train and some of them have summer school.”
While most of the players will be training during the summer months, Faulds said that he will already be starting to recruit for the 2014 year.
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