Stockstill is looking forward to a football camp in the fall

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. Coach Rick Stockstill has been waiting through 2021 for a long time.

For months now, Stockstill has been ready to rise to the field at a camp in August, when his Blue Raider program has so many new faces both on the field and in coaches ’offices, and the sour taste of the challenging 2020 campaign.

With the camp’s start date on Aug. 5 sitting just three weeks away, GoBlueRaiders.com sat down with a coach who took the helm of Central Tennessee in his 16th year to discuss the final days of the summer rehearsals and who is already on campus.

This interview has been lightly modified for length and clarity.

How does it feel to be with your team all summer after the abbreviated pre-season brought by COVID last year?

It’s been good. We got out of school in May, and I always give them May so they can go home. And then everyone came back on June 6th, including the first students we signed.

Their work ethic, attitude, everything has been really good, very positive. I have been very happy with what they have done. Coach (Matt) Hickmann and his staff have done a good job. I like where we are right now, we have two and a half weeks left before we announce (to camp). The big thing is to continue to achieve the best possible condition in the last couple of weeks. And then you have to practice your way to the football season.

How does this process progress after the spring and summer on the mental side of the game, getting the systems in place?

Last year, we apparently didn’t have a spring workout. We went home for spring break and didn’t return until June, and then there were 25 guys coming this week, 25 guys coming next week, spread all summer. So you never had your whole team together until we started in August. And then we had quarantined guys.

But we had a really good spring. We obviously have new friends. And some real freshmen last year who didn’t have summer. I went back to last year’s schedule and did this year’s schedule. Last year, the first two days were supposed to be in shorts, then the next two days in shorts and shoulder pads, and then the next day in full length. Well, we didn’t put pads for the first nine days because there was a question “are we going to play?” And then an unknown team we play? Are you playing Duke? No, we don’t play Duke. Are you playing Troy? No, not playing Troy. Then he finally plays the army.

Just the continuity of everything at the moment, we are mentally in a much better place.

What is the focus in the pre-camp summer season?

Everything we do in the printing room is location specific. There are some moves where the quarterback goes to the same thing as defensive combat. But there are some things that defensive combat isn’t going to do, as the quarterback is going to do as an example.

All in all, we try to create as much power as we can. We don’t eat very well in the summer because nothing is open and we don’t have a training table. So we’re just trying to maintain and keep as much weight as we can, improve our overall strength and flexibility, and apparently improve our fitness.

But before you lean on a 300-pound body to another man’s 300-pound, and collide with each other, your body won’t develop the callus you need to practice. For the last couple of weeks, we’ve just been trying to get everyone healthy to that point.

There are a lot of standout freshmen and young people in the mines throughout the team. How do they survive the pre-camp process?

We have 48 scholarship players who are either either true freshmen or red-shirted freshmen. That’s half of your team! So we are young in some positions. But I like where we are. Offensively in the trenches there are really good players who are young. And we added a couple of transfer boys (Netori Johnson and Jamari Williams), which offer some maturity and are good players. And then defensively, most of them have played a little. Some have played more than others. But I like where we are in the wells on either side of the balls. We have good players, we are not only as experienced as some of the other teams we play.

You have had a lot of transfers to the program during the spring and summer. Which of the players standing in front of the camp?

Bailey Hockman (NC State) has done a really good job as a quarterback so far. Amir Rasul (State of Florida) and Pettaway hammer (West Virginia) successively joined both programs last season, but ended up out of COVID for legitimate reasons and now. So you kind of think they’re new Guys because they came in January 2020, so they didn’t have a spring workout, and then when the camp started, they weren’t here. So they’re almost like new guys because they haven’t been there until January. Izaiah Gathings, recipient from Gardner-Webb, I’m really excited about him. And two guards, Netori Johnson (Georgia) and Jamari Williams (Arizona) have done a great job.

These were the main offensive guys, and defensively we signed two junior colleges, Jurriente Davis and Deonte Stanley Hutchinson from CC and then transfer from Sam Houston, Between Fluellen. You have a couple of guys, and we signed the kicker, Alex Usry from Charleston Southern.

I feel like we filled in some holes. Because this earlier recruitment class was difficult to patrol. You base your evaluation outside of the film, and I never trust the film. I always trust my eyes. And if you don’t see them playing, if you don’t see them at camp, if you don’t see them in person, sometimes you watch a movie and you see something that isn’t there. That’s why we only signed eight high school students. But I like them, they have been here and I love their position. They are everything I hoped to be.

Finally, Blue Raider Blitzes is just around the corner when MTSU arrives on the road interacting with fans in the semi-state. How excited are you to get back there after playing last season without fans in attendance?

I can not wait! I spoke in Smyrna last week and am ready to leave. One, to get this taste out of my mouth, that I didn’t have a good year last year, and two, because even though we haven’t returned to normal, we’re hell much closer than we were this time last year. I like our team, I like our leadership wherever we are right now.

I always say that a football team has four stages. And every team is different. When we started here in January, Winter Training was the first step. We did a good job there. Spring training is the second stage. It was a good spring where we implemented some new things. The third phase is air conditioning this summer. And the fourth phase of team development is the August camp. So we are almost through phase 3 and start phase four.

So I can’t wait! We start on August 5th. I’m so freak ready to leave. I’m hungry and I have a huge dadgum chip on my shoulders. And I can’t wait to go there and get this team to go.