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Senior leadership on and off the field can make or break a college football team with a new head coach. New head coaches look to seniors not only to be role models for the underclassmen, but also to serve as mentors and leaders to their younger counterparts as the team transitions to its new identity.
Seniors can also make the new coaches’ jobs easier or more difficult with their attitude and approach to different situations on and off the field. Positive attitudes can help teams and their morale while more negative attitudes amongst seniors can have a trickledown effect on the team.
Many underclassmen look up to seniors in college. They look to them for guidance and for help when they struggle on the field. Senior defensive linemen Shane Kelley on The College of New Jersey’s football team recalls when he was a freshman.
“When I came in, I looked to the seniors,” Kelley said. “I looked to see what they were doing at practice and in game preparations so that I could do the same things. I especially looked up the seniors that were doing well.”
The seniors on TCNJ’s football team are credited for helping with the team transition to a new head coach. The Lions hired head coach Casey Goff from Defiance College on July 3rd of this year. With such a short-time between him coming in and the first game, it was difficult to get the team on the same page early in the season.
“There was an adjustment for us as coaches,” said defensive line coach, Marcel Wynychuk. “The defense was a completely new system that we had to learn before we could teach it to the team. We were already changing the offense in the spring, so the adjustment there was not that bad, but the defense was completely new.”
Seniors on the team had to re-learn systems that had been in place for almost the entirety of their college careers. The adjustments were met with varying degrees of success, but the coaches needed the players to believe in the new systems for the team to see success.
The seniors and juniors on the team had experience on the field that the younger players on the team may not necessarily have had. Though they too had to learn the new systems like the rest of the team, they already know what is expected of them during in-game situations.
Football can be a more complicated and a faster-paced sport at the college level compared to the high school level. Sometimes the game can feel even more difficult when your head coach is in his first year and hasn’t quite established himself yet.
Freshmen coming to play college football for the first time at TCNJ had to not only learn the new systems in place, but also adjust to the different level of football.
“When you get to your senior year of high school, the game feels like it slows down for you,” freshman quarterback Andrew Donoghue said. “It’s more about playing with the friends you developed over the years and just having fun. When you get to college, the game speeds back up again. It’s just completely different. It’s so much more fast paced and the games feel a lot longer.”
Donoghue talked about learning to play at the college level and how Trevor Osler, the senior starting quarterback, made it easier for him to grasp.
“Trevor is a great mentor,” Donoghue said. “He’s always doing the right thing. He’s always paying attention and making sure that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I couldn’t be in a better spot with a player like Trevor in front of me. Watching him in the game and how he controls practice is something you want to strive to do, someone you want to strive to play as.”
Before homecoming, coaches felt that the seniors on the team, especially Osler, were helping the team trust and believe in the systems that were being installed as a result of the coaching change. Goff alluded to this in an interview before practice two days before the homecoming game.
“I think we’ve come a long way from week one,” Goff said. “I think we are playing a lot more confident than we did. We are starting to believe in each other. We are starting to see that on the field. We still have a long to go… As far as Trevor is concerned, he is a senior that works his balls off. He works hard in the film room and he has a great understanding of what’s going on.
The seniors are doing a phenomenal job teaching these young guys. They are doing an excellent job teaching these kids work ethic on top of also teaching them to enjoy the game of college football. I think our balance is pretty good in terms of what we have gotten from virtually every class. But the seniors had done an especially phenomenal job teaching these younger guys.”
The results for the Lions on the football field have been mixed to say the least. Freshmen like Liam Abujawdeh have excelled in their positions on the field and was named New Jersey Athletic Conference Defensive Rookie of the Week in week two of the season.
Some freshmen have unfortunately gotten exposed as weaknesses in the defense that other teams have exploited on the field. Goff talked about this immediately after the Homecoming game.
“We came out flat,” Goff said. “We played uninspired, unmotivated football today… We fell off today. We missed a ton of defensive opportunities. We had plenty of plays made in the backfield and we didn’t hold on. We have been stressing the fundamentals and for whatever reason, today they got progressively worse. I also think they took advantage of some mismatches. They pushed us around in the interior and created problems in the secondary. That gets solved through the weight room in the offseason for the young guys and through recruiting.”
The team has looked better this year than it did last year. It has shown the ability to score from anywhere on the field as well as the ability to make stops against very good offensive teams in key moments in the game. The Lions have just struggled with consistency.
They came out strong against Montclair State University and Rowan University, both New Jersey Athletic Conference rivals. Against Montclair, the Lions had their first halftime lead of the season. They moved the ball at will in the first half, but in the second, they were embarrassed. Osler threw three interceptions and the team systematically fell apart.
Against Rowan, the College played a more complete game. Though the offense for the second straight week tapered off at the end of the game, the defense was able to make the difference in the game, holding onto the Lions’ lead.
At Homecoming, the Lions played rival Kean University. They came out flat. They regressed horribly from the previous week. Goff felt his team played uninspired and unmotivated. He seemed disappointed, almost heartbroken with his team’s regression.
During the week, Goff felt like his team was going in the right direction, but against Kean, they showed him different.
Though the team has fallen to 1-6 on the year, the College has three games left to improve upon last year’s 2-8 final season record. The coaching staff and Goff have stayed positive the whole season. Goff talked about the program’s future after the Homecoming game.
“We had a ton of recruits come,” Goff said. “Kids are interested. They are interested in TCNJ. They are interested in what we can do with this program. Kids are going to see that there are opportunities here. There are a lot of opportunities here post-graduation. It’s simply a tremendous place to be. It’s a place we all feel we can build up. So yeah, there will be a lot of recruits. We are working our balls off making sure we are preparing for our future. Our seniors are helping us start a legacy.”