April 23
On Saturday April 21 the football team hosted our annual spring game/scrimmage. During the springtime practices, the football coaches had evaluated each player on our performances and how we meshed with the rest of the team. It all came to fruition on Saturday however; all those early 5 am mornings and early bedtimes are now over, just in time to enjoy….finals. The game Saturday went really well and was an enjoyable experience. All of us got to get in and play our own respective parts. With the game being a success, I am also happy to finally be able to sleep in until 9 am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays!! I never thought I would be saying 9 in the morning would be an opportunity to sleep in, and of all places, in college!!
I know that I am not the only person that is excited to get to summer, but definitely don’t want to go through the next month of classes to get to it! It seems as if there is a sea of papers to complete, and seems as though I might be closer to going to sleep at 5 in the morning these next few weeks as opposed to waking up then. I am sure you all know what I mean and I think it’s safe to say that summer is what we all keep thinking of as we go through this last stretch. Hopefully it gets here soon!!
April 13
Over the last month or so, the football team has been going through our spring practices. Next week will mark the end of the practice schedule, and will also feature our annual spring game between the offensive and defensive units. The spring game is a time where we have the ability to showcase what we have worked for and accomplished throughout the off-season. It is the culmination of months of hard work and many early mornings. When I say early mornings, I really mean early mornings too!
I had said before in the blog how I would let you all know how it feels to wake up at 5:00 in the morning to go practice. I will say the waking up is nothing enjoyable. Once I get to practice and we start it doesn’t really bother me, because I have to many other responsibilities to worry about other than what time it might be. However, that waking up part really isn’t fun.
Normally our practices last around an hour and forty-five minutes or so, and are over around quarter till 8. This really isn’t a bad schedule either, since it gets everything out of the way early and really frees up the rest of the day.
It will be nice to be able to sleep in, which for me is now anytime after eight in the morning, after next week. Although it won’t be long before finals are upon us and sleeping in will be replaced by staying up to study or write papers. I don’t mind that though because finals only mean one thing, survive that week and we have summer just around the corner!
April 1
Spring break for me is a time of relaxation and hanging out with friends and family. Every year I enjoy going home to visit with my friends that are also on spring break, and many times it is the only chance I get to see them. You might think, “well what about summer?” The thing with summer is that a lot of people will be doing internships throughout the summer months and so this one-week is the short time we all have the chance to hangout. I always heard adults say how hard it is to keep in touch with friends from high school, but I never really understood why until now. People are just so busy, and I think I’ve hung out with around five or six of my friends in high school since graduating two years ago.
Along with the friends that I got to see this past week, I also spent some quality time with my family. My brother is a couple years older than I am, but if I come home on weekends our schedules don’t normally match up that well. A week of nothing to do really fit me well in order to spend time with him and that was great. The same goes with my parents, whose busy schedules alongside mine are pretty hard to get mesh together well.
Even though some people think of spring break as a time of vacation, parties, or a time to make money working. My perfect version is just going home and spending time with the people I love with no other responsibilities. It doesn’t get much better than that!
March 22
Over the past two weeks, the football team has been going through spring practice and workouts. Usually three times a week, we have practice in the morning starting at 5:45, and will be done with that around 7:30.
On Monday and Wednesday, each player will have designated lifting time during his free hours to go lift with teammates. After classes and lifting, each position group will meet with our respective coaches and watch the film of that day’s practice.
When going over the film, our coaches will discuss with us what we did right, as well as what we did wrong and how to make it better or fix it. Along with the film, the meetings will introduce the new schemes or plays that will be implemented in the following practice. Unlike many high school programs where there are sometimes no position meetings, the position meetings in college are a very important part of the progression of skills. Without the meetings and watching film, most players would have little knowledge of what we are doing wrong, or what we do particularly well. The art of watching film, and yes it is art in a certain sense, is crucial to our development as players.
The springtime is known most often as a time to improve and compete for positions. One of the greatest things it does, however, is helping to build the camaraderie of the team by allowing us all to be together.
In my opinion, there is no greater way to build relationships than by competing on a team together. Even though it really sucks to wake up at 5 a.m. three times a week, it makes it all worth it when we take the field in the fall knowing that we have all worked together for that opportunity to play.
March 12
This coming week, the football team is starting spring practices in preparation for the coming 2012 season. Spring practice is something that most college programs do in order to rearrange their depth charts, which rank players at each position basically. This year, our weekly practices are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with one on Saturday as well. Most of the time on Saturdays, we will have a scrimmage type of period, along with a little individual work with each position group before hand.
The practices during the week will be starting at 5:45 in the morning, so I for one will be sleeping extremely early for the next few weeks. Our average practice will start with a team-stretching period, and then move onto individual time called Indy. In my Indy time with the offensive line, we will do drills specifically designed for the benefits of the O-line and anything else we need to work on.
Once we are done with our Indy time, the team comes together and we will have a small scrimmage type drill called team time. During team, which is best described as a controlled version of scrimmage; the Offense will run drills facing our Defense. This consists of most of our spring practices, but when in season we will spend different times doing special teams drills, like field goal, punt, and kickoff drills. I will be sure to update you all on how it feels to wake up at 5:00 and how the team is improving throughout the spring! Stay tuned for more info and updates!
February 22
As you have walked, or driven, around campus I’m sure that we have all seen the new student-athlete center being built onto the north side of Hunter Stadium. It has seemed to grow visibly each day and this amazing weather hasn’t hurt matters at all. Unusually, this winter hasn’t given us much of any bad weather compared to previous years. This time last February we had already had around three days canceled from the snow and ice! However, even though I haven’t been able to shut myself up in my room and be lazy because of canceled classes, at least there is a trade off.
The new building is going to have new locker room for football, which will be great, and the whole team is really excited about that. The locker room is going to include some couches to sit on in a kind of lounging area, and the new lockers are almost identical to the same ones found in the pros! They have big wooden lockers that are wide enough to sit in, and also plenty of airflow to dry things out and keep it sanitary. Along with that there will be new meeting rooms and offices for various sports. At first, I honestly didn’t think it was going to be done by the projected start time, I think it is August of this year, but it feels more and more do-able each day I go by it! Its not really a surprise I guess to say that I am really excited to get into the new building as soon as possible, but I know everyone is looking forward to it!
February 13
This past week, the football team started a full spring workout program including weights, the HIT Center, and morning running. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have to wake up at 6:15 a.m. to lift weights, usually for a little over an hour. Then, I have to hurry back to my dorm, drink my protein shake, and get ready for class at nine!
The actual weights I enjoy, but it is the waking up part that is the hardest thing to get over. I do this routine every MWF each week, and that is just the start. On every Tuesday the football team goes to the HIT Center at the St. Peters RecPlex for High Intensity Training workouts. These include anything from running in the sand pit, to doing kettle ball workouts and sometimes we run on a giant treadmill, which is never fun.
After these workouts, and weights on Wednesday, I usually go to bed at about nine o’clock on Wednesday night. The reason for this is that on Thursdays I have to wake up at 5:15 a.m. in order to be awake enough for our team running at 6 on the football field. Oh yeah, and it’s really cold at 6 in the morning during February!
I love playing football. And even though it is a lot of work all year long, it is definitely worth it when we see the scoreboard and it shows we have at least one more point on our side than our opponents. That makes all the off-season workouts and running worth it.
Feb. 6
This past Wednesday, February 1st, was the national signing day for college football. The hard work and hours put in by coaches across the country to get the recruits to their own schools all came down to what each recruit wanted on that day. Coverage was all over ESPN, and it was also an important day for us here at Lindenwood.
Over the month of January, some of us on the football team were asked to host recruits that would be coming on visits. I hosted mostly offensive linemen since that is what I myself play. Overall, the recruits are an awesome group of guys and we all seemed to click well.
On the day that they each got here with their families, they start out with a tour of the campus, dorms, and the surrounding areas close to campus. Usually these tours are given by a group of coaches. After the group is done with their tours, a selected number of players are made available to all the recruits and their families for any questions they want to ask us.
Some of the more popular questions were “Why did we choose LU?” and “How is the atmosphere around campus?” Personally, I loved answering the questions because I know how confused I was when I was going through the same process just a couple years ago.
To be totally honest, I thought hosting was going to be boring and kind of chore. But each group of recruits coming in gave us a chance to meet new members of our future family. Through our college years, we all spend more time with teammates than with our own families. Helping answer questions and assist with hosting new members of our Lindenwood football family was a great time. With the recruits that have chosen to join us at LU, it should be a great next few years!
January 31
Hey everybody, my name is Jacob Heneisen and I am a History major here at Lindenwood. I am currently a sophomore and I’ll be blogging periodically throughout this semester to let you in on life as a Lindenwood Lion football player.
First, I want to do a little background on myself. I am from a small town of about 600 people outside of Jacksonville, Ill. It is about a half hour from Springfield, IL and probably around an hour and a half from our St. Charles campus.
My Brother and I played football, basketball, baseball, and dodge ball since as long as I can remember in our yard, and sometimes in our rooms. We actually broke a couch by playing tackle football and using it as the end zone when we were younger, but that story is for another time.
It wasn’t until I got into middle school that I had a team to play football on, and that was short lived since I broke my arm two weeks into practices. It was right about that time that I started to get involved in one of my local churches and that has helped to shape me into the person I am today, and will continue to shape me into the future.
When I got to high school, it started to really fly by, and it all feels like a blur until now. Although school went fast and I enjoyed most of it, I caught some senioritis my senior year and it went from flying by to an agonizingly slow pace. Eventually, however, I survived and got out of there.
Last year I came to LU and have loved every bit of it since. Like I said I’ll be letting you in on some of the things that happen in my everyday life and what it is like to be a football player here. Some of the things I will be writing about in particular are what it’s like to get up at 6 a.m. to lift weights, how the HIT center is, the life in Flowers Hall, and definitely a comparison of the new Evans commons and Spellmann cafeteria. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you this semester and don’t forget to look me up on Facebook and Twitter!
