Injury bug bites YSU

By Pete Mollica

QB Rowan among 7 players missing first contact

YOUNGSTOWN — Saturday, the 2008 Youngstown State football team put on the pads for the first time, but for a while there was more attention on the sidelines than on the playing field.

The main reason was that junior quarterback Todd Rowan, heir apparent to the starting quarterback position, was on the sidelines getting attention from the YSU trainers.

Although Rowan didn’t take part in any of the team’s contact drills, YSU head coach Jon Heacock said he thinks there is nothing seriously wrong with his quarterback.

“He had a lower leg bruise, something that he got while he was trying to block on a reverse play in early drills today,” Heacock said. “We don’t think it was anything serious, but we took caution and held him out of the scrimmages.”

Rowan wasn’t the only Penguin who missed the first contact of the season. Six others were working the sidelines with the team’s new strength and conditioning coach John Patrick, trying to get back to the playing field.

Those injuries, none believed to be serious, all happened in the past two sessions before contact even began. They included senior starting tight end Derrick Bush, along with hopefuls Kyle Banna, Josh Lee, Tyler Figueroa, Dana Brown and Warren Felton.

Most of the injuries were hamstring pulls while Bush injured his shoulder and Felton a leg injury.

“We’ve got some bumps and bruises, but nothing looks very serious,” Heacock said.

Heacock was pleased with the first contact work of the fall camp.

“I thought it was very competitive out there today,” he said. “There was a lot of good physical contact going on and as usual when you scrimmage against yourself one side looks good and the other doesn’t.”

“After five practices I’m pretty pleased with the progress this group has made,” Heacock said. “We still have a long way to go, but if they keep working as hard as they’ve been working we’ll get there by Aug. 30.”

The Penguins held their first scrimmage Saturday for about 45 minutes, and Heacock got a look at his team under game-like conditions.

Of course he didn’t have Rowan in the scrimmage, but redshirt freshman Paul Corsaro and junior transfer Brandon Summers performed very well,

Summers led the offense to a touchdown with a 50-yard touchdown pass to junior college transfer Donald Jones, who has been very impressive in the early workouts.

Summers completed four straight passes in another drive that ended with sophomore place kicker Stephen Blose missing a 40-yard field goal.

The only other player used at quarterback was senior Ferlando Williams, the team’s starting wide receiver, who ran a couple of plays out of the shotgun and showed he hasn’t lost a step from last season.

Defensively, sophomore free safety Brandian Ross came up with an interception of a pass thrown by Corsaro and returned it for a touchdown.

Redshirt freshman defensive end Josh Myers came up with a tackle for a loss that forced the offense to go for the field goal that Blose missed.

Senior tailback Kevin Smith appears to be the leader in the backfield, and had several nice runs in the scrimmage. So did junior Jabari Scott.

The Penguins came out of the scrimmage with only one injury — senior linebacker Nate Ward suffered a shoulder bruise.

The Penguins have today off, but will hold their first two-a-day session on Monday at 8:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. at Stambaugh Stadium.

The Penguins will go twice-a-day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday with single sessions on Tuesday and Thursday.

The team’s annual photo day will be Thursday at 3 p.m. at Stambaugh.

mollica@vindy.com