Sports
First-years bring fresh look to football team
By Will Rasenberger ’19
September 3, 2015
The past few years have been difficult ones for the Hamilton football team. The 2013 and 2014 campaigns were both winless, and many of the team’s losses were landslides. As the losses stacked up on the gridiron, support for the Continentals dwindled on campus and attendance for home games was the poorest in the NESCAC.
The reasons that the Continentals lost are not hard to determine. On average, Hamilton committed far more penalties and turnovers than its opponents. The team also regularly failed to convert on third downs or gain significant yardage through rush attempts.
All that is about to change—or at least it will if Coach Dave Murray and the 31 first-years and new transfers on his roster have anything to say about it.
According to Ian Leveton ’19, a first-year running back from Vero Park, Florida, he and his teammates are expecting and working towards “an immediate turnaround in the program this year.”
Coach Murray is coming into his second season at the helm of the program and is intent on rebuilding the Continentals. He may be just the man to do it. In his former position at Alfred University, he managed to accumulate 151 wins, 20th among currently active Division III head coaches.
Coach Murray’s record and desire to create a winning program have played no small role in attracting two of the strongest of Hamilton’s recruiting classes in decades. Explaining his decision to play for Hamilton despite the Continentals’ poor record, Leveton, who turned down a number of other NESCAC schools, said, “I knew Murray came in two years ago and wanted to completely rebuild the team. I knew that in the upcoming years the team would be great and everyone would want to come to Hamilton.”
Indeed, Hamilton has already begun to attract a rather extraordinary group of players. The recruiting class is, in the words of offensive lineman Christian Anderson ’18, a “great group of real hard workers and talented guys.”
Last year, Murray and his staff installed a new offensive and defensive system and emphasized that players take ownership for both their individual and the team’s success. To this end, Murray has implemented an extensive playbook and intensive position meetings, mandatory team workouts, detailed practice schedules and focuses, according to Leveton, on the “fundamentals” and the “little things that make a team great.”
Murray’s effort has already begun to pay off. Last year, Hamilton’s point differential improved by 4.7 points per game from the 2013 season. The Continentals were competitive in some of their games, and a few contests came down to the wire. During the 2014 season, support from the student body was more noticeable at home games than it had been in recent years.
The players are genuinely excited to play for a coach who wants to, and can, win. Leveton described an unwavering work ethic amongst the football team. Players are fervently reviewing their playbooks and thinking about football both on and off the field. The threat of being cut from the team, which players didn’t have to worry about under Coach Cohen, has surely helped galvanize the team.
Murray made it clear that no players were guaranteed starting spots. There are “Thirty-three starting spots, if you include special teams,” Murray said, and first-years and returning players alike must earn those positions. In short, “it’s a wide open process right now.” Murray believes that the more competitive atmosphere has resulted in a “renewed commitment to the success of the program.”
Players have been spending more time in the weight room, and Murray says they have done a great job of learning the offensive and defensive sets. A strong core of returning players will complement, and impart their knowledge of the game unto, the new recruiting class.
The upshot is that, according to Coach Murray, the football team is “much further ahead at this point in the year compared to the same point last year.” As of Wednesday, practices with pads will have begun and the preseason will be in full swing. Whether or not the hard work of Coach Murray and the freshman recruiting class pay off in a winning season, Murray believes that as long as players “give 100 percent on the field” and remain selfless and invested, good things will “happen in the near future.” Moreover, the recruiting classes should only get stronger as Murray and his staff perfect their approach to recruiting. As Leveton put it, “Who wouldn’t want to come to Hamilton?”