By Jeremy Schilling
WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. – The Monmouth University football team culminated their spring practice with its Blue-White scrimmage Saturday afternoon. For the most part the Hawks seemed to show improvement in all facets of the game compared to last week’s sloppy scrimmage performance. Afterward, head coach Kevin Callahan seemed pleased.
“I think we made a lot of progress over the 15 opportunities that we had this spring,” Callahan said. “We spring is about development, development of your younger guys. I feel that we had an opportunity to do that this spring. And we saw that happen. That’s going to make us a better team top to bottom. You’re never happy with not having your full lineup out there. Overall I’m happy with the progress that we made.”
Like last week’s scrimmage, no score was kept and the game was offense versus defense for sets of 20 plays followed by punting and/or field goal kicking sessions.
Offensively, starting quarterback Kyle Frazier was 6-for-11 passing for 56 yards. He did not throw for a touchdown, but he did lead the offense into field goal position in the two minute offense in only its third time being run this spring.
Second string quarterback Craig Peterson threw for the most yards of any Hawk QB Saturday, passing for 144 yards on 12-of-21 passing, including a beautiful 22-yard-pass to WR Neal Sterling down the sidelines. He did throw two costly interceptions, however, one of which looked to be a miscommunication with his receiver in the end zone.
With injuries forcing starting RB Balial Sloan-El to sit out once again, another young runner got to shine on the field. This time it was sophomore Kwabena Asante’s turn to show his skills. He ran the football eight times for 31 yards with a long of 16. After the game, he spoke of being extremely grateful just for having the opportunity.
“I just want to thank God for the opportunity to try out [and] play running back a little bit today. I was just trying to show [the coaches] that I can run the ball hard, make my cuts, know all the plays, and do what a running back is supposed to do.”
The leading Monmouth receiver was sophomore Josh Vallejos, who finished with four catches for 36 yards and showed what kind of speed he has when he has the room to turn it up inside.
Defensively, the Hawks were led by last year’s tackle leader safety Jose Gumbs who had eight total tackles. Lineman Mike Upham led Monmouth in sacks, with two takedowns in the backfield for a loss of nine yards. Upham, a sophomore, made becoming a better pass rusher one of his primary goals for the spring.
“I’ve grown real confident looking at the offensive line sets, so when I see what the offensive linemen are doing I can be confident in the move that I’m doing trying to get to the quarterback and get a sack. Personally, [my goal was] getting a little bit better at pass rushing. I personally could have a little better [last year] so I wanted to work a lot on double teams and pressuring the passer.”
Peterson’s two interceptions were picked off by two redshirt freshmen. The first was by Jameson Zacharias, and the second by Andrew Sutton who ran it back 10 yards.
Special teams play today was much improved over last Friday’s scrimmage. Eric Spillane was 10-for-14 on field goals, with two kicks blocks and two pushed wide right. His long was 42 yards. One of the blocks was by starting junior linebacker Chris Mastrangelo.
Spillane did the punting duties and was fairly impressive, with his long being 56 yards.
Monmouth will take three months off before reconvening in early August for training camp, where they hope their work over this past month will pay off when the games start for real on September 3 against Lehigh.
