Lights continue preparation for upcoming season

With the season soon arriving, the Montana State University-Northern football team has been hard at work. Just this past Monday at Tilleman Field, the Lights participated in another practice of their fall camp. At the end of Monday's practice, MSU-N head coach Jerome Souers believes the Lights showed continued improvement.

"We progressed today. We got better today and that's our goal every day is to get better at what we're doing," Souers said. "We're fundamentally trying to improve so there's a lot of work going on right now and we're quite a bit further ahead than last year."

In regards to their overall progress through fall camp, Souers believes they are doing better at this point than they were last year. Souers credits that to having an additional 40 players on the roster this fall, which allows the Lights to do more things at practice.

"That depth will give us better practice opportunities and a better response to the length of the game and how many guys we have," Souers said. "That's enabled us to practice better and more aggressively and we're pleased with the development so far."

With a larger roster than last year's team, the Lights have continued to practice in order to improve. In Monday's practice, the Lights ran several drills to practice their fundamentals. They started the day with light drills involving running and blocking.

After some warm ups, the Lights ran more drills involving passing and blocking. During the passing plays, multiple young quarterbacks got snaps in the passing drills. While the Lights are looking to find their new man under center this season, they have not come to a decision yet on who will get the nod.

"We're still learning the system," Souers said about the quarterback position. "While you're learning the system, it's difficult to start separating ones and twos and who your starters are until everybody knows the system and you get the chance to evaluate them under the system. So that's a delicate process when we're trying to get a starter but we want to give everybody a chance to show what they can do."

The Lights capped off practice with 11-on-11 drills between the offense and the defense. With Monday's practice in the books, the Lights have less than two weeks before their season opener at the end of the month. As the Lights head into the season, Souers believes they have improved in several areas during fall camp.

"We've made great progress as a team with team chemistry, the way we communicate, the way we solve problems, our attitude and the way we look at the game," Souers said. "We've made improvements in the weight room in the offseason, which has helped us develop fundamentally on the football field. We're better at some work technique and we're seeing some guys emerge early in camp that might be part of what we're doing now and those are promising signs that we're getting more faces that look like they're going to be able to contribute."

While Souers has seen positives from his team this fall, he knows there is still room for improvement. With so many new players to certain position groups this fall, Souers knows these youngsters will need to grow with the season right around the corner.

"We got new guys in the offensive line and that always takes time to teach and get those guys working together," Souers said. "We got a lot of new defensive players in the linebacker and defensive back positions. I think they have talent, they'll be able to contribute but they have to go through learning to play in college football which is a tough transition in the secondary."

The MSU-N football team will begin the season at Tilleman Field with a non-conference game against Mayville State University Aug. 26 at 11 a.m.