Eagles prepare for first scrimmage

CHENEY — As the first week of practice nears a close, the Eastern Washington University football team will scrimmage Wednesday.

Eastern Washington’s red synthetic turf project is an exciting addition for the Eagle program, but coach Beau Baldwin pointed out hard work is an even bigger factor toward victories.

“It’s an incredible situation with the turf going in — it’s a great surface for us to play on and it fits the skills of our team,” Baldwin said. “But our players need to focus on the fact it’s still just a different surface to play on.”

The Eagles are nearing the conclusion of their first week of fall practices, and that has taken second billing to the turf being installed on the other side of the EWU Sports and Recreation Center at soon-to-be-renamed Woodward Field. Eastern practiced through the weekend and will keep going into the first part of this week before its first scrimmage on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. on the team’s practice fields.

Eastern opens its season on Sept. 2 at Nevada.

“I’m not trying to take away from what a great thing it is for our university and program, but the bigger factor is the hard work it’s going to take to actually win on the Sprinturf,” Baldwin said. “That’s what we keep reiterating to our team — it’s going to take a great training camp to be able to go out there to do the things we want to do and win. We have to prepare that way the rest of camp.”

Baldwin’s team returns 43 letter winners from last year’s team that finished 8-4 and advanced to the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs for the fourth time in the last six seasons. But to repeat that success, the Eagles need to fill a few holes, most notably with a young secondary and wide receiver corp.

“We’ve seen some serious progress with things becoming more natural, especially for some of the players in new spots,” Baldwin said. “They aren’t having to think as much and I was happy to see that. The first couple of days you could see that mentality they were thinking too much and that didn’t enable them to play as fast as they needed.”

Southern Methodist transfer Bo Levi Mitchell won the quarterback job in spring practices, shifting the focus on offense to developing young talent at the right tackle position and wide receiver.

“On the offensive side, we have to keep developing and competing at the right tackle position where we lost (senior) Chris Thomas,” Baldwin said. “At the receiver positions there is good competition and we want to continue to build a great corp. We’re not worried about who’s in our starting three necessarily, but we want to know there are as many as seven guys who can rotate in and be ready to for our no-huddle, tempo offense.”