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Seattlest's new roving correspondent Roger van Oosten just sent us this report from the Husky sidelines.
“Finish! Finish!”
“FINISH THE DAMN PLAY!”
Head coach Steve Sarkisian inherited a demoralized, hulking mess when he took over the University of Washington football team. The hard work of cleaning it up is currently underway at Husky Stadium.
In a change from recent years, spring practices are free and open to the public. Weekday practices begin at 4 p.m. and Saturday practices start at 1 p.m. Enter through northeast corner gate. Check here for the schedule. The annual spring game is on April 25.
"Husky Fever!" courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool member sprizee, whose photography we all appear to love today.
These practices are heavy on the Xs and Os, but as theater, they're first rate. Nobody walks. Players sprint between two fields paced by their coaches. All drills are repeated, perfected, and mastered before racing on. Coaches offer constant comments, good and bad.
The players are no longer the sluggish, lumbering crew that thrashed around the muck during the Tyrone Willingham years. Everyone looks leaner, faster. Even starting QB Jake Locker has trimmed down.
True fans will want to check out the work of defensive coordinator Nick Holt, the hyper-animated coach whose vocabulary starts and ends with “awesome” and who likes to refer to players “rolling balls of knives.”
Holt on the field turns out to be a tough, focused leader. He spent the first week working with the defensive linemen. At every drill, on every rep, Holt coaches footwork, arm movement, speed.
“Faster, faster. I want runners here!” he shouts.
No mistake is left uncorrected; no one is allowed to take a drill off. Maximum effort is demanded at all times. Visiting on consecutive practices, it’s easy to see the improvement in the drills.
A sense of urgency is pervasive across the stadium. Yesterday, a small fight broke out among players following a play in a full-pad, full-contact scrimmage. Coach Sark immediately called all his players to one sideline and made them sprint across the field five times. He punctuated each sprint with some memorable lines:
“You think tough is getting a penalty that will cost us 15, 30 yards? Tough is blocking your man, making a play, communicating!”
It was a little like Kurt Russell in Miracle.
The team got the message. When Sark asked them if they want to quit, the response was, “No.” And off they went again.
Profanities fill the air like runway geese, but praise is heaped in equal amounts. The overall impression is one of fairness. Whether there is enough talent on the field to overcome recent failures remains to be seen. But you get the feeling that Sark and his crew will be on these guys until they get faster, get better, and finish each and every damn play.
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