Chris Raimondi (Sports Editor)
Everything starts somewhere. For KSU’s football team, they started at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday morning at the Perch for the program’s first workout.
“It’s a great feeling being part of the first team and the first practice at Kennesaw State,” said Jaquez Parks, last year’s Georgia high school player of the year at Griffin High School. “Honestly I couldn’t even sleep last night. I was up all night excited about it.”
The team focused on speed and conditioning drills during the inaugural open workout. The coaches had no mercy for the mostly freshman roster which had the first day of classes Monday.
“During recruiting they [the coaches] are all lovey-lovey,” said Taylor Henkle, recruited as a defensive back from Kell High School in Marietta, Ga. “Then you get out here and it’s a whole new man. You’re like, who is this guy?”
The players took the field and began stretching while cries of “First day, let’s get it!” and “EAT!” rang out. “Effort, attitude and toughness, EAT,” Parks explained the team’s new motto. “That’s the main thing we’re focusing on this year; coming together as a team and building.”
With no upperclassmen to set the standard, the coaches’ first practice served as the initial measure for the program’s expectations. “It’s just us,” said head coach Brian Bohannon. “But that’s the great thing about it because we are going to create all good habits.
Bohannon admitted some of his players appeared to “enjoy their summer,” as they got tired halfway through the workout. However the coaching staff has devised a systematic workout regimen that will keep players driven and fit through kickoff in 2015.
The next two weeks will consist strictly of conditioning drills, followed by a week dedicated to the weight room, then three weeks of practice four days a week, a week off and then another three weeks of practice.
Competitions among the players have also already been set in motion by the coaches. Titled “Win the Day,” the competition is a point gathering affair in which players can earn accolades through community service, success in the classroom and on-the-field effort, attitude and toughness. The team will be broken up into four to five teams and compete to not only be the best on the field, but off it as well.
“We knew what to expect and it will just get harder and harder,” said Henkle. “But at the end of the day we’re all proud to be Kennesaw State Owls.”
With the first workout in the books, the next date for Owl fans to mark down will be the team’s Homecoming scrimmage Oct. 11.
