There are __ athletes on UNE’s campus, and the football team Boasts approximately 100 of them. Still though, not much is known about this team, which started as a club team in 2017, considering how large its membership is. In general, having Football is new for the campus and students, and while I’m sure many of you heard a lot of buzz surrounding games during the Fall season, many students have no idea that the Football Spring season even existed. As a retired UNE Football player, I would Like to shine a spotlight on this aspect of this new program.
For the month of April, the Football team will be waking up before the sun is up, rolling out of bed, throwing on the correct, color coordinated clothing, and making the freezing walk from their dorm to the forum where they’ll try to get ready as quickly as possible to catch a few extra seconds of sleep while they can. All of a sudden, they hear the rustling, the door, their eyes shoot open, and there he is: Coach Lichten. This is it, this is why they’re here; this is why they dragged their butts out of bed.
No words are spoken. Everyone knows what they have to do. The organized herd of players begin walking to the blue court of the forum, where once they step foot on that blue rubber floor, they’re sprinting to position in their line.
UNE Spring football has begun.
Looking back at the Football programs history, the Spring Football Season, referred to as Spring Ball, has been something that the team has engaged in since its birth as a club program in 2017. Junior Defensive Lineman with the team Sean Schriever recounts his first year of Spring Ball:
“Yeah, it was a tough adjustment waking up at five am and walking to the forum for lifts and practices before classes. Once we started to get used to it though, it really wasn’t too bad, and it was kind of nice having some extra time in the day.”
Spring ball consisted of early morning practices and workouts that could range from actual practices on the field in the brisk spring morning air to mat drill practices, which took place on the blue basketball courts, and consisted of team based skill and strength competitions, culminating in the full team mat drill.
The full team mat drill is where the one becomes the whole, where one man’s mistake is the teams, where you learn to work as a complete unit to achieve perfection. This challenging drill had the entire team lined up in four lines waiting for their turn, as Coach Lichten himself would run it, blowing the first whistle signaling the front of the lines to begin foot fires. He would then blow the whistle again, causing the four players leading each line to launch onto their chest in pushup position, still “keeping their feet hot” (peddling them as their arms hold the rest of their body in place). Coach Lichten would proceed to yell commands and point in directions. You would either slam down onto your chest if he pointed and yelled “down” or roll to the right or left as he yelled the direction and pointed that way. If me or any of my 49 other teammates made a single mistake, we would run sprints on the wooden basketball court. On mat drill practice day, everyone mattered and we strived for nothing but perfection.
Now, looking at the 2020 Spring Ball season, we see impending changes to the way it has been done the past two years, which is as described above.
