WORCESTER – For an hour and a half on Friday afternoon and into the early evening, the St. Ignatius Indoor Practice Facility on the campus of Holy Cross sounded like a packed Fitton Field in September.

The Crusaders brought their own noise before and during drills, hooting and hollering seemingly the entire time. There was also cranked up crowed noise at times to make life difficult on the offense, all for the purpose of making sure another spring practice was a productive one. With the spring game a week from Saturday (3 PM), every rep is crucial in building the foundation for a winning season.

The motto around the facilities in Worcester is “it takes a year to put a trophy in a trophy case.” Three straight Patriot League titles have put a gigantic bullseye on Holy Cross’ back, but Chesney is focused on situational football and fundamentals right now, not the big picture.

“We have a checklist we sort of want to go through situationally,” Chesney said following Friday’s practice. “Things we know we have to practice, but other situations we’ve already been in and either have succeeded in or failed in.

“A lot of these things we’ll do at the end of practice or middle of practice, the situation will just show up and they’ll have to try and figure out, ‘what game was that, was that the Colgate game, the Bucknell game, the Lehigh game, what game did that show up?’ Maybe we did a great job and we want to try and replicate and see if we can, or maybe it’s one we failed during and know we have to do a little better.”

After early positional drills, Chesney loudly blew his whistle several times to sort of signify the start of stretching. The team suddenly grew louder and louder until sophomore Christo Kelly yelled “give me two claps and a Ric Flair!” and the team loudly replied with the claps and a thunderous “Woo!”

Kelly enthusiastically and emphatically broke the team down as if it was Week 4 of the season. The players then went to different positional drills for a bit longer before running some two-minute offense for the first bit of team stuff. With the noise blasting, tight end Jacob Betersen hauled in a nice sliding catch along the right sideline at the beginning of the drive.

Moments later, Jack Norris booted a fairly lengthy field goal to end that portion of practice. The back-and-forth between positional drills and brief team periods lasted throughout the practice, making guys change up on the fly and get adjusted to various situations.

On the final play of the last two-minute period, Jack Pesansky hit Ayir Asante on a beautiful ball in the back of the end zone, with Asante leaping up to grab it, setting off a mini celebration amongst the guys in offense wearing white.

The biggest takeaway from an afternoon with the Crusaders was the fact that there was zero wasted movement or energy for almost two hours from everyone in the facility. Whether it was ball boys, film guys, or even the kid running the scoreboard, everyone was locked in.

“It’s been like this all spring, the energy’s always up,” said linebacker Liam Anderson. “Typically with these spring practices and spring scrimmages, you want to get the energy going, get the young guys going, help them out along the way, get them up to speed on the defense and everything. Bringing the energy is everything to us and this team. We’re an energy-based team at practice and it elevates everybody’s game, so it’s essential.”

“I think that we’ve had a great spring ball camp so far,” added Asante. “I think we’ve kind of built things in a seamless way, I think we’ve put together everything in a really good way…the biggest emphasis for us is just cleaning up the little details.”

Football players just want to play football, so it’s fair to think that some guys may get frustrated with how much work is being put in, despite the fruits of the labor not being seen for at least another five months.

This squad doesn’t have that problem, they just love to work.

“Coach Ches says all the time, it takes a year to put a trophy in a trophy case,” said defensive back John Smith. “After that last game, it all starts again. So, just working in the weight room, getting extra work out here on the field, start of spring ball and we’ll move our way into the summer. It’s a process and we understand that. We’ve just got to keep our head straight and make sure we’re all goal oriented and eventually, when the season gets here, we’ll be ready to rock.”

It’s only April, but the Crusaders are already looking good. There’s no reason to believe they can’t four-peat as Patriot League champions (just don’t mention it to them, they don’t want to hear it) and the confidence level is extremely high.

As it should be.

“Only better than last year,” added defensive back Terrell Prince when asked what people should expect from them this season. “We’re only going to continue to get better. We’ve got guys learning every position on the field…it’s going to be a scary sight.”