When reached on his cell phone Monday afternoon, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga wide receivers coach
Will Healy. Staff Photo by Dan HenryWill Healy was walking into Robins Stadium on the University of Richmond campus.
Other Mocs assistants will hit the road today, visiting other football programs around the Southeast, from South Carolina to Virginia Tech to Vanderbilt.
While the players are off on spring break, the coaches are out meeting with fellow coaches of their respective positions. Along with visiting his alma mater - he was the backup quarterback on Richmond's 2008 national championship team - Healy said he is visiting with the wideouts coaches of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Vanderbilt this week.
"If there's stuff that we have, as far as maybe a route that we're kind of struggling with, I'm trying to see what other people are doing, if they're maybe explaining it a little different," Healy said. "There's also drills, especially blocking drills, that I want to look at and see if maybe there's something we could be doing.
"It's not really schemes and concepts; it's more drills and fundamentals."
UTC head coach Russ Huesman spent part of Monday in his office working on insults and embarrassing stories to tell about some of his friends.
Huesman will be on the receiving end of a bunch of barbs tonight when he's roasted in the Classic 150 Club Roast/Toast at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The strategy for when he responds to the roasting, Huesman said, was essentially to not let facts get in the way of a good story.
Huesman's son Jacob, a UTC signee, will deliver the invocation, after which Huesman will be roasted by the likes of Mocs play-by-play announcer Jim Reynolds, UTC chancellor Roger Brown and two of Huesman's former Mocs teammates, John Murphy and Don Lepard.
Cocktails and a silent auction begin at 6 p.m., followed by dinner and the roast. For more information, contact Mickey McCamish at 423-756-2211.
Soccer grants back
Senior associate athletic director Laura Herron said Monday that the UTC women's soccer team will get all of its scholarships back when the NCAA releases the new Academic Progress Rate data later this year.
Player-retention problems caused the soccer team's four-year APR average to drop to 855 when the 2010 figures were released. The NCAA cut UTC's scholarships to 4.77 and also limited the team to 16 hours and five days of activity a week, rather than the maximum of 20 hours over six days.
The NCAA maximum for women's soccer scholarships is 14, but UTC funds only eight, which is what it will have available next year. UTC also got back its sixth day of activities but is still allowed only 16 hours.
Contact John Frierson at jfrierson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6268. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mocsbeatCTFP.