Fort Lewis College Football Eager for Improvement

The Fort Lewis College football team is preparing to kick off its season under second year head coach Johnny Cox. If there's one word echoing through the football facility this fall camp, it's excitement. You're watching the "Local News Network" brought to you by The Payroll Department and Serious Texas Bar-B-Q. I'm Connor Shreve. Improvement continues to be the name of the game in year two of the Skyhawks Football rebuild.

Excited, you always got to learn and you always got to build off what you've learned, you know what your path is and what you've seen and try not to make the same mistakes twice. So I feel like we've made some efforts towards really improving in every aspect of the game. So we're excited about that.

Despite a winless record last season, the team improved in passing, total offense, and turnovers. Coach Johnny Cox knows turning that momentum into wins will require a fundamentally sound team.

We're going to be much improved, play with a lot of effort, a lot of energy, and hopefully a lot of execution. Those are our major goals and if you come to our games, we want to have a team that is not killing ourselves with pre-snap penalties, playing the game, tackling, being physical, playing for each other. So it's a process to get to that point.

That team effort will continue into the season, and wide receiver Peyton Monson says signs are pointing in the right direction.

Us and the coaches are really excited about our progress thus far. We had a three-week camp in the summer and we had the best turnout they had in years. So we look forward to this year, we look forward to work to be put in.

After fielding a largely inexperienced team last season, Coach Cox says players worked hard over the summer and are primed for big improvements.

Some people are getting different opportunities. Some people like Wingle, our quarterback, he didn't have a season that he really wanted last year. But this year, he is on stride to really improve that. So I feel like everybody's taken the challenge of what we have and like said before, it's not a journey for the meek, it's a challenge.

Monson says he likes what he's seeing on the offensive side of the ball.

Excited. Yes, sir, excited. I think we got a lot of weapons. Quarterback Braden Wingle's coming in ready to play, Croix Burney's ready to step up, our offensive line is working their tails off every day and our receivers, we're going to take care of business so.

That business starts September 2nd with two non-conference road games to open the season. The Skyhawks Open Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play at home against New Mexico Highlands University, Saturday, September 16th at 2:00 PM. You can follow the football team season on the "Skyhawks Coaches Corner Show" from "Local News Network" this fall. The video show will be released every Thursday, beginning August 31st, while the podcast version will be available every other Tuesday, beginning August 29th, wherever you get your podcasts. You can learn more about this and other stories at durangolocal.news. Thank you for watching this edition of "The Local News Network." I'm Connor Shreve.