Coastal Carolina football focuses on development during spring practices

CONWAY, S.C. (WMBF) - The Coastal Carolina football team is limited on its veteran players for the 2024 season, so part of the focus in spring ball is on developing new players.

The Chants are a few weeks into spring ball practices. Offensive line coach Derek Warehime said they’ve had to slow down teaching the offense to make sure new players can implement it correctly.

“Normally when you have veteran players that know a system you can be pretty quick to install and run new plays and the guys know exactly what to do and how to do it,” said Warehime. “With younger players and newer faces we’ve had to be a lot slower just so they have an opportunity to develop and learn, and they’ve done a really good job, the process is working.”

Senior offensive lineman, Zac Elam, transferred into the football program at the start of last season following two seasons at a D2 school. He said a lot of development has happened among the team, even before spring ball started.

“We’ve really spent a lot of time in winter workouts kind of starting over and building from the base up as a team, and really coming together as a team, and going through adversity and problems and getting it figured out,” said Elam.

On the other side of the ball, Cornerback Coach Curtis Fuller said the beginning of spring ball is the time for young players to make mistakes and improve.

“It’s been positive, it’s been rough because some of these guys have relationships, they understand the scheme, they understand the landscape of Conway and what to do,” said Fuller. “And now we’re putting new guys in Conway, in our system and asking them to do things that they haven’t done before, so it’s a little bit of a transition period, what I call a grace period.”

Coastal Carolina opens the season on the road on August 31 against Jacksonville State.

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