Northern football ready to get spring ball rolling

After being hired as the new head coach of the Montana State University-Northern football team, Jerome Souers is finally ready to begin his first spring ball with the program. As the Lights get back on the football field this April, Souers will be looking to continue evaluating his talent and helping the team get ready for the fall season.

"We're still in the assessment phase of the program but I think we've worked pretty hard the last couple months to get our guys in condition to begin executing the fundamentals of the game," Souers said.

Spring ball will begin next Tuesday at 4:15 p.m. The Lights will then hold another practice Thursday at the same time. The week will then wrap up with a practice Saturday at 11 a.m. Over the next month or so, Souers hopes to use that schedule for a total of 15 practices through the spring. The days between the practices will be lifting days for the players.

While the Lights will be getting their program running this spring, they still have a small roster to work with. At the moment, the Lights have 38 total players on the team with about 34 healthy players able to participate in football activities.

Because of the small roster, Souers and his coaching staff will focus on a lot of individual techniques this spring. They will work on the basic fundamentals of football such as blocking, tackling, throwing, catching. Souers also wants to work on the little things in order to get the Lights ready for football this fall.

"This is the time when you get in the right stance, learn about ball security, all the things that will beat you in a game if you don't spend enough time on it during the course of the year," Souers said. "Some of these things that occur because we're careless in our fundamentals, we're going to have to get those things right and we need to set a great foundation there first."

It will be hard for them to run 11 on 11 drills, so the focus will be working in small groups. If possible, they might run 7 on 7 drills that will mostly focus on the passing game.

With the small roster, Souers and his staff have been on the recruiting trail since his arrival. But they will have their work cut out for them since they missed most of the recruiting cycle for the class of 2022. They plan on doing some more outreach on the Hi-Line, starting with a visit to Big Sandy on May 5 and then a stop in Fort Benton on May 6. They will then head down to Great Falls on May 7 for a high school clinic. While they are behind, Souers believes he can find players that fit what he wants for the program.

"We've been digging through the brush and looking under rocks and finding who got left behind. We're finding a few guys and slowly but surely building a class out of it," Souers said. "We're finding the hidden gems that have a hard work ethic. Maybe not as tall, maybe not as fast but they have character, they have heart and I think our first class needs to reflect that."

Hopefully the Lights can recruit some players to build the roster in time for summer, when Souers plans on getting more into 11 on 11 drills. In his first offseason as the head of the program, Souers wants to go at the right pace with his roster and just wants to put the pieces in place to begin turning the program around.

"We've got to have a strong understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of our personnel and we're going to make sure that we're running things that highlight the strengths of our guys," Souers said. "I'm excited and I'm really thrilled with the way the young people in our program have responded. They're learning about being in a player driven program and following the lead of our staff and then taking it upon themselves to drive the team in that direction."