Tech football begins spring practice healthy

The Golden Eagle football team buckled their helmets and started spring practice earlier this week.
“They’re excited, they’ve been lifting weights for four months so they’re ready to touch a football again,” said Coach Watson Brown.
“It was different to get back into the mood of it,” said sophomore defensive linemen Avery Rollins. “Everybody was excited about it. Everybody was running and we’re really just ready to put these pads on.”
“We were excited to get out here,” Brown said. “We’ve got so many returning players, really this didn’t look like a first day to me.”
Spring practice is a time for teaching fundamentals. Brown stressed the importance of fundamentals, even for older players.  
Another important process during spring practice is keeping the players that are there healthy yet competing.
“Every now and then you get some people that don’t realize the importance not taking them to the ground,” said Rollins
The first two practices were helmet and shorts practices with full pads coming today and a scrimmage Saturday afternoon.
 “It will probably be a live scrimmage but it’ll be more of a butt them up and make sure you know what you’re doing not really a tackling,” Rollins said.
Though it seemed to be a late start to spring practice the team got a lot of players healthy.  
“That’s one of the reasons why we pushed spring practice back so far, so we can get some of our injured players back,” Rollins said.
Many players returned on the offensive side of the ball. The most notable returner was senior running back Bud Golden, the teams third leading rusher last season, who nicked up towards the end of the season but is back healthy and participating in spring practice. Golden looks to have another good season and senior Cody Forbes hopes to contribute in the backfield.
Seniors Marty Jones and Cory McDonald were back in the defensive secondary to start off the spring.  Senior Doug Page who played last season at tight end and served as a short yardage running back has been moved to inside linebacker and looks to make an impact at his new position.
The Golden Eagle football team is scheduled to have another practice today at 3 p.m. and inter squad scrimmage likely for Saturday at 1 p.m.  The Purple/Gold Spring Scrimmage is set for 1 p.m. April 20.