Football August 17, 2010 Monmouth Sports Information

FAN FEST PLANNED FOR FIRST MU SCRIMMAGE

Monmouth University's football squad will hold its first "Fan Fest" at Saturday's scrimmage held at Kessler Field.

The scrimmage is set to begin at 1 p.m., with the first 200 fans receiving 2010 Monmouth Football Schedule Posters. Select Monmouth players will be on hand after the scrimmage for an autograph session. Aramark will have concession stands open for the scrimmage, admission is free and open to everyone.

The Hawks recently completed their 10th preseason practice. Head Coach Kevin Callahan, who is his 18th season, recently spoke about preseason camp after Monday's session.

"We are right where I thought we would be and think we should be, our team came in, in very good condition and has led to a number of very productive practices," said Callahan.

Like all football teams during training camp, the Hawks have not been immune to the injury bug. However, the good news is that the majority of the injuries were not major and only had players sitting out one of the two-a-day sessions or on the sideline for just a few days.

"There are some positions where injuries are starting to pile up and that hurts your continuity in practice. When you are mixing and matching different groups it always seems to hit one or two positions more than others. It is still early enough in camp where I don't think it will have a critical effect on how ready we will be for the opening week of the season."

On Sunday morning's practice, the MU offense scored a number of touchdowns during the redzone period. Junior back Balial Sloan El (Pennsauken, N.J./Roman Catholic) squeaked through a hole in the left side of the line for a 15 yard TD, while fifth-year senior receiver Ryan Folsom (Somerdale, N.J./Triton Regional) snagged a couple of TD passes, including a one-handed grab over a defensive back. It wasn't all offense though, as the MU quarterbacks were sacked a number of times, with preseason All-NEC selection Dave Ogden (Wayne, N.J./Wayne Hills) and linebacker Chris Mastrangelo (Randolph, N.J./Randolph) among others getting to the signal callers. During Tuesday's situational period, the defense held a distinctive advantage with more healthy starters than the offensive unit.

"At this point in the preseason we are still installing a lot of our offense and defense and there is a
learning curve that is taking place, particularly among the young players. Things aren't always happening exactly as you would like, but I can see the improvement each day. With a roster that is over 50% freshman and
sophomores, there are a lot of young guys but on the other hand, we have a lot of 5th year guys who are helping the young guys with the transition in terms of learning what they need to for their positions.

Monmouth has 14 seniors that could be in starting positions by the end of camp and 13 total fifth-year seniors on the roster. A number of positions are still up in the air, including solidifying the starting quarterback position, replacing two starters on the defensive line, finding three starters among the often injured linebacking corps and figuring out which of MU's talented wide receivers will emerge as first teamers. Saturday's scrimmage will showcase some of that competition where younger players will push veterans for spots on the two-deep as we move closer to the September 4th opener against Colgate.

"Our goal this week is to get some live work in leading up to the scrimmage, most of it
will be situational type things, our hope is when we get to Saturday, we'll be ready to go," said Callahan.

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