Practice

​Today was the second day of fall camp for the Polar Bears. I went out to the second practice of the day to observe how the practice was set up and ran. It was a rainy day for the Polar Bears to practice in but the intensity level was high and filled with excitement as the student-athletes were excited to be back out on the field learning and practicing hard. The practice is broken down into units. By this I mean the offensive line works by themselves, TE, QB, RB’s, WR and then the same goes for the defensive units. The entire practice is divided up into 30 periods of 4 minutes. However, every few periods, the break out of the units to go into team practice and run the offense and defense in live situational practice. They will run a couple of periods like this and then break back down into units. At some points certain units will get together to do some work, such as the offensive line and TE’s and work on fundamental double team blocking. Once the 30 periods are up they break up into three team units where they do their conditioning drills. At this point, communication and listening are emphasized in order to get into the correct formations yelled out by the coaches. If they are not followed, it is followed up with more conditioning in order to get them all on the same page. At the end of practice, it is an overview of what the coach saw and liked and what they need to improve upon. Overall, the team practiced well and it was exciting to see how a practice was detailed out to the minute in order to make sure each position got in the work needed.