Second-year Glenville State College head football coach David Hutchison is definitely staying busy.
The Pioneer gridiron boss and his squad are going through spring drills in preparation for next Thursday's annual scrimmage, which for the second consecutive year will have all proceeds go to the Gilmer County Volunteer Fire Department. The scrimmage will be free of charge and begins at 6 p.m.
Although recruiting for the G-men is far from finalized, coach Hutchison said he was impressed with what could end up being a pretty nice class.
"We've got a large class of guys coming in with a good mixture of high school kids from the state of West Virginia and Virginia and (Washington) D.C. and four or five kids from Florida are joining us and eight or 10 junior college transfers," said the coach, who also noted he had commitments from Division I transfers, but must wait to see who shows up.
A year after going 5-3 in the WVIAC and 5-6 overall, one of the biggest areas of concern for coach Hutchison in terms of recruiting this year were wide receivers, linebackers and bringing in a few new players on the defensive line.
"We lost our top eight wide receivers," noted Hutchison, who has a new assistant coach on staff this year in former four-year Northern Illinois letterman Alvah Hansbro. "We're just so young. We lost more than 25 seniors and we've really had to go at a slower pace as far as installing stuff we are doing.
"I do see a group that is working really hard and wants to do things the right way and how we want them to do it, but they are green and they need a lot of reps."
Area youth football players should take note of what coach Hutchison and his staff are doing from 2-4 p.m. both this Sunday and next Sunday at Morris Stadium.
GSC will be conducting free football camps for Mid-Ohio Valley football players in grade school or middle school. No high school players are allowed to attend.
"Our coaches and our players are going to put it on just to promote the game of football and to have fun with it," Hutchison added. "Last year we had a good amount and this year I think we'll have a lot more kids."
Coach Hutchison said the spring game raised nearly $700 for the GCVFD in 2011 and he's hoping, "we can do better than that this year. It's a good event. The neat thing is a lot of the guys on the VFD end up being on our chain gang during the season."
Locally, a quartet of former area players - Parkersburg's Seth Frederick (safety) and Parkersburg South's Jeff Kidder (spur), Kyle Cross (guard) and Beau Bertus (center) - are trying to make their way up the depth chart after being redshirted last year as freshmen.
Kidder is fighting to get into the two-deep at outside linebacker while Cross is a backup guard.
Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com
