Last season was a difficult one for the LaGrange College football team, which had a lineup stocked with about 50 underclassmen.
Its 3-7 record was its worst since the team went 0-20 through its first two seasons in 2006 and 2007, and its 219 total points was its lowest total in that same stretch.
But sometime in the spring, LaGrange coach Todd Mooney started to notice that the athletes, who a few months before were struggling against more experienced teams, started to look a little more like veterans.
Almost overnight, the team’s weakness had become one of its strengths.
“The spring was a time for us to kind of refocus,” Mooney said Tuesday at the Pigskin Preview media event in Macon, Ga. “I think we all knew what potential we had coming off last season having played so many young people. This allowed us to take a step backward, get back to the nuts and bolts of the game itself and build a lot of confidence on that experience.”
The nearly 20 rising seniors on 2011’s roster have taken steps to ensure that they leave on a strong note, preferably similar to the 9-2 performance in 2009 in which they won the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championship with a 7-0 record and reached the NCAA Division III playoffs.
“This year in the offseason we had an extremely big step by our senior class as far as leadership goes,” Mooney said. “I think we had a ton of enthusiasm from them through the weight program and through conditioning, and that led into a great spring practice. Our guys really see now what they’re capable of, and you know, that confidence will be a big part of what they do this year.”
That personal growth on the part of the rising seniors was a pivotal point for a class of athletes who were 14-7 heading into last season.
Panthers senior captain and defensive back Josh Clinton said he and his teammates thought back to that 9-2 season. What happened after that? How did the team fall so quickly into five- and three-win seasons?
Clinton said only what happens next matters.
“It was a big step for us seeing that and then not having that good of a season the next year,” said Clinton, who led the team in tackles last season.
“But this offseason we all decided we needed to step up our senior year. We want to make it back to the playoffs and go out with a winning season again.”
There was a shift, Clinton said, in the mindset of the team. No longer were they tied to their own inexperience. In the spring, the team realized it now had all the pieces to be successful and the experience to boot.
“The mentality out there was that we wanted to get stuff done,” Clinton said. “We wanted to work hard, make a lot of progress in the weight room, start having fun out there and start winning again.”
Chris White, 706-571-8571; follow Chris online at twitter.com/le_chriswhite and at facebook.com/lechriswhite.
