Football starts spring practice

It may be late March, but it looked and felt a lot like football season down at Franklin Field last night. The Penn football team began very early preparations for its Ivy League title defense, as the Quakers kicked off their spring practices with a 9:00 p.m. workout yesterday. The Red and Blue players stood around in T-shirts, sweatpants and helmets while coaches called out various offensive formations. NCAA regulations limit teams to a certain number of spring practices, so the drills are really only about the players re-wetting their feet after a nearly three-month layoff. "Right now, it's just about the basics, going over stuff," linebacker Dan Morris said. "You forget things in the last couple months, so it's just [about] getting it fresh in your head." As the spring progresses, the coaches will try to reteach those basics, as well as try out younger players for positions that have been vacated due to graduation. "Basically we just start over from scratch," said Gavin Hoffman, Penn's starting quarterback and the defending Ivy League Player of the Year. "It's a good chance to get the young guys a lot of reps that didn't get to play a lot during the fall, especially at the positions where we have holes to fill." The Quakers actually have very few holes to fill -- especially for defending league champions. "On the offensive line, everybody's back," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "Also, it's very unusual that you have the Player of the Year [Hoffman] coming back. That hasn't happened in the nine years that I've been here." But then again, Hoffman is an unusual player. Since transferring from Northwestern with three years of eligibility remaining, Hoffman has proceeded to rewrite the Penn and Ivy League record books. Now he's looking forward to another productive year. "I always think about [improving]," Hoffman said. "I try to set goals for myself all the time. I've got plenty of things to work on to be a better quarterback, so there's a few parts of my game that I'm going to concentrate on while I'm out here." Hoffman said he wants to develop a quicker release and improve his reading of certain receiving routes. In addition to retaining the bulk of their offense, the Quakers also lose relatively few players on the defensive side of the ball. "The secondary's our biggest concern," Bagnoli said. "We graduated [Joey] Alofaituli and Hasani White. Paul Savini was a backup linebacker for us and Chris Moen was a defensive lineman, but basically everybody else is back." Alofaituli, a defensive captain and first team All-Ivy League selection will probably be one of the toughest Quakers to replace. "Joey Alofaituli's huge," Morris said. "He made great plays on the field and he was a great leader, so we've got to account for that. "[The defensive seniors] left some big holes to fill, definitely. You've got to have people step up, but compared to other years we don't lose a whole lot." On special teams, the Quakers coaches face a real challenge in finding a replacement for the ever-consistent Jason Feinberg, who will graduate as the all-time leading scorer in both Penn and Ivy League history. "Well, that's what we're going to work on," Bagnoli said. "That's a big thing we've got to look at this spring."

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