Penguins wrap up second week

By Pete Mollica

The YSU football team is a little banged up after two weeks of spring practice.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown State football team completed its second week of spring practice and coach Jon Heacock feels that his team is still making progress.

“We’re progressing, we’re finding some guys on offense and our quarterbacks are getting better along with our centers,” Heacock said. “Defensively we are just young and we’re making young player mistakes.”

Heacock said the Penguins had their best scrimmage session of the spring Saturday.

“That was the best we’ve looked and there was some really good hitting going out there,” he added. “We’re a little banged up right now but other than Ely Ducatel, there is nothing that looks real serious, just some ankles and shoulders.

Ducatel, a redshirt freshman wide receiver from Naples, Fla., suffered a torn ACL last week and will probably be lost for the season.

“He’d been having a good spring, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to play this fall,” Heacock said.

A couple of other players hurting are senior linebacker Mike Barlak (ankle) and senior cornerback Everett Barney and junior cornerback Lenny Wicks (shoulders). Junior defensive tackle Jon Penick has practiced very little this spring with some back problems, while junior offensive lineman Brian Mellott will miss all of spring practice after having offseason surgery on his shoulder.

The Penguins scrimmaged for less than 30 minutes Sunday and it was mostly a passing scrimmage.

Junior quarterback Todd Rowan looked very sharp in the session with several nice passes to junior wide receiver Aaron Pitts and then threw a perfect touchdown pass to sophomore fullback Kyle Banna, a Canfield product, out of the backfield.

The Penguins will hold a practice Tuesday at 3 p.m. to make up for last Friday when they didn’t get out on the field. “It will be short, about an hour and a half, because most of the kids have classes,” Heacock said.

They will hold the kick scrimmage Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. at Stambaugh Stadium.

mollica@vindy.com