The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor football team celebrated its selection as the favorite to win another American Southwest Conference championship by going through the first full-team, full pads practice of fall camp on Friday morning (August 18th). It was actually the second day in full pads, but newcomers and returners had split practices on Thursday to provide time for more individual work. The two-hour workout and physical and spirited with lots of enthusiasm on both sides of the ball. After individual and team work, the team closed out practice with the traditional first-practice “Oklahoma” full-contract drill in the three-on-three version. A total of 216 players were on the field for Friday’s work out with at least five more expected to join the program on Monday. Several key returners were held out of practice as a precaution, and not all of the newcomers had as many repititions as the coaching staff would have liked, but overall, there were some good things to come out of practice.
“I think it went awesome with the young guys seeing the older guys and the way we do things,” Cru Head Coach Pete Fredenburg said. “I think it was really special for them to be able to see what it takes to compete at this level. We were not able to get everyone as many reps as we would like because of the numbers, but we will work on that over the next few days. I think we are real close to where we want to be at this time of camp and that’s good to see.”
The team will practice Saturday morning and Sunday evening before returning to its normal practice schedule with the start of classes on Monday, August 21st. The returners will scrimmage a team from Mexico at Crusader Stadium on Wednesday, August 23rd, at 6:00 PM at Crusader Stadium. That will be the team’s only chance to face outside competition before kicking off the 2017 season at home against Sul Ross State on September 9th.
