Glenville State University braces for upcoming spring game
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GLENVILLE -- If Glenville State University head football coach Mike Kellar had his druthers, Saturday's 1 p.m. annual Blue versus White spring game inside Morris Stadium would just be the 15th and final regular practice of the spring.
"I talked to all my buddies around the country and no one likes the spring game," admitted Kellar. "The kids want to play and put on the uniform and it's good for the game situation. I think our kids are looking forward to it.
"It's really more for the players and the fans and the people who support your team and the program than it is for the coach. The coach would rather coach his team for two more hours to get them better for games that really matter."
The G-men had about 80 players out this spring and generally had around five dozen student-athletes practicing daily, but Kellar noted "that's kind of par for the course.
"Our big signing class was when I first got here and the kids with the COVID year, a lot of them are three-year starters going into their junior year as weird as that sounds."
The Pioneer head man, who noted first team all-Mountain East Conference defensive back and Parkersburg South graduate Brandon Penn will be a healthy scratch, believes it's been a solid spring.
"You can tell when we came back in January that we got a veteran team. We didn't even make an installation schedule for spring ball," said the coach. "We set the playbook on both sides open. The young kids and the transfers all caught up. Our culture does as much of the teaching as our coaches.
"Brandon practiced with us all spring. Anything with tackling this spring we've set him out. We've seen him tackle enough. With the injury he suffered in high school we're trying not to make it any worse in the spring game. He's been healthy and is running around and he's been Brandon Penn."
Kellar said the players will have another three weeks of school following the spring game and "then everyone is in their May recruiting and summer transfers and you are off to the next phase of the program. Technically, next week we can keep lifting and stuff, which we won't do. It will be optional for the players.
"We'll do some things in the weight room. Test them and get a baseline. We test them in January and again in April to see how much they've grown, and it gives you a baseline and you can test them over the summer. We'll do that next week. The following week is a dead week. Then you got finals coming up and end of year grades."
The coach said they started skill development as soon as the players returned in January.
"Weightlifting went pretty well," Kellar said.
"Basically you had seven practices then spring break and came back for eight practices and deal with the schedule and getting practices in around Easter and all that comes to the head tomorrow at 1 o'clock for the team."
"You worry once the season starts if we have enough kids. It's a different world we live in now. I think it's fine and we're in a good world. We'll get more kids out of the portal than we lose to it, but at the same time your roster is changing daily. It doesn't make it easy."
Admission to the spring game is free.
Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com