Aug. 13, 2006
NORMAL, Ill. -
After a physical, hard-fought scrimmage on Saturday night, the Illinois State football team took the field on Sunday night looking to heal, both physically and mentally. The Redbirds practiced in helmets and shorts for 16, five-minute periods under the lights at Hancock Stadium, before heading into their last two-a-day session on Monday.
With some bumps and bruises beginning to add up, head coach Denver Johnson knew his team needed a night off from physical contact, but needed work on its mental toughness.
"The players had treatments this morning and wanted to give some guys a chance to heal up a little," said Johnson. "However, we spent a lot of time this afternoon watching the film from last night's scrimmage and needed to come out on the field tonight and talk about some of the flaws we saw on the film."
The squad began practice running through each special teams unit one-by-one. Assistant coach and special teams coordinator Chris Patton worked with each group, making sure each player knew what their respective duties were in each situation. Players on kickoff and punt coverage teams took reps running downfield and staying within their contain areas, while teammates such as Jason Horton, Dan Passarelli and Kelvyn Hemphill fielded kicks and punts to give would-be tacklers something to chase after.
Following the special teams work through the first 10 periods of evening, the offense and defense took opposite sides of the field to correct mistakes that were found in the scrimmage film from the night before. Coach Johnson knows that each of his players corrects their mistakes in different ways, so he wanted to give them every opportunity to learn.
"Everybody learns differently. Some guys can watch the film and understand it. For other guys, you have to write them a diagram on the board for them to get it. There are also guys that need to see it on the field in three dimensions to get the whole picture. Because of that, we wanted to cover all of our bases with our talks in the meetings, by watching the film and walking through plays on the field to see where our deficiencies on the field in order to correct them. I expect to see significant improvements in all areas in the next few days."
The Redbirds return to practice Monday morning for the last two-a-day practice of the fall. The first practice is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. and the team will return to the field a 7:30 p.m. for its second practice of the day.
