ALTOONA, Pa. -- At this point last year, the world was shutting down and so to had practices for college football programs all over the country, Penn State included. Now, a year removed, the Nittany Lions are embracing every opportunity they get whether it's in the weight room or on the practice field as what comes next is far from a guarantee.
Spring practice is one of the most important times each year for college teams as it's purely developmental in nature with each practice and workout building toward the fall with growth in mind. It might not seem like too much to an outside observer, but those 15 practices can make a world of difference for players whether they're All-Americans or walk-ons.
"It's already pretty clear how huge spring practice can be because you kind of lose the perspective of what it can do for some players," offensive lineman Mike Miranda said Monday.
Those practices are not something Penn State will be taking for granted this season as even through just three practices, there's been quite a bit of improvement, even with guys who haven't gone through spring practice before.
"Through those three practices, you can see so much growth through them in such a short period of time and we weren't given this opportunity last year," Miranda said. "It really puts it into perspective, what this period can do for not just the offensive line but it has to be everybody on the team."
Every play or repetition is an opportunity to get better and a multitude of people across the country lost out on those opportunities last season, but at the end of the day found how much each rep actually means in the long run. Even with that, a large portion of Penn State's roster are going through spring practices for the first time.
"There's new kids that just got here and they're still kid of getting their feet wet," kicker Jake Pinegar said. "They've been through winter workouts, which I think are going to be more of a shock and more of a what's going on to them moment than the spring ball and spring practices would be."
Those things add up when it comes to learning the intricacies of a play and both seeing and demonstrating how a route or play is supposed to be run rather than seeing it on a screen.
"We get to learn about those little details and say a route that is on a play that we wouldn't have learned in spring ball last year," tight end Brenton Strange said. "I definitely believe that these 15 practices are going to benefit us and in many ways."
The big thing moving forward for the Nittany Lions is taking advantage of the reps and opportunities they didn't get a chance to have last spring.
"It's just getting those reps, getting back to the fundamentals, getting back to the basics," Pinegar said. "Everybody in practice is pushing each other every single day."
It wasn't just practices the team missed out on with installation periods and meetings being lost or moved to Zoom which isn't quite the same as learning or seeing things in person.
"Another thing we lost that we kind of took for granted and didn't have that perspective was meeting time," Miranda said. "We've been meeting all throughout the spring and already had more meeting time during this spring ball period that we would have had in this period last year."
Those meetings are where the learning and studying happen and without those it's easy to see why things took longer than normal for Penn State to get back in the win column after an off-season with multiple new coaches last season. Now, with that in the rear-view, the Nittany Lions are well aware of how important those meetings can be.
"Every meeting is an opportunity for us to learn because we can see how much different it can be, how much better it can make us," Miranda said.
The meetings and practices will help the Penn State this season as the Nittany Lions learn their second offense in as many years, but so to will the motivation of last season's horrid start.
"As someone who hates to lose, that's definitely a motivator," Strange said. "Every day we would go in the weight room we would see 0-5 on the board."
Spring ball is far from over and more opportunities will arise throughout for coaches and players Motivation won't be hard to come by, but Penn State is already light years ahead of where it was last season as a result of getting shutdown. That in and of itself will go a long way in overcoming the lack of success and terrible start of the 2020 season.
