It’s still the first week of June and the snow recently melted off the nearby mountain tops, but Boise State’s football team is getting ready for the fall.
The Broncos began summer conditioning Monday and will lift and run four times a week until the Fourth of July holiday. They’ll get a few days off before returning to the schedule for three weeks, then will get about a week of rest before Fall Camp begins Aug. 4.
“Summer workouts are huge from a quarterback standpoint, everybody else too,”
senior quarterback Bush Hamdan said. “It’s easy for the first few weeks. Guys are fresh, guys are coming in, their minds are right. The true test comes in the first couple weeks of July.”
As a redshirt senior, summer conditioning is nothing new to Hamdan. For some other Broncos, it has been their first taste of what a full year worth of work goes into a football season.
With plenty of trips from sideline to sideline with strength coach Tim Socha orchestrating the drills at the Caven-Williams indoor complex, the sweat was put in for games still months away.
“These first two days have been very intense,”
said sophomore receiver Titus Young, who was not yet on campus this time last year. “The whole point is to get into tip-top shape before we even get into camp and work on getting that WAC championship back.”
Broncos of all shapes and sizes worked out side-by-side — no one was safe from running until almost out of breath. Kicker Kyle Brotzman opted to run next to receiver Tanyon Bissell, one of the fastest players on the team.
“I wanted to keep up, give myself a good challenge,”
Brotzman said.
In addition to the running drills, Brotzman said he was looking forward to the weight training — he said doing squats will help improve his length strength and give him more distance on kickoffs next season.
As a guy who played as a true freshman and learned the importance of conditioning, Young said he’s taking this summer seriously.
“For us receivers, it’s extremely important,”
Young said. “In our offense, we run up and down the field all day. I know from my experience that I got a bit tired last in the season or didn’t capitalize late in games. To me, I know now that this is the most important part of the year.”
Hamdan said work in the summer won’t just be limited to lifting weights and running with Socha — football coaches cannot hold practices until Fall Camp, so the players will organize their own practices about three times per week.
In each workout, Socha stresses starting strong and to keep pushing during the second half of the practice. After a break midway through Tuesday’s drills, he told the players to come out of the break strong as they would going into the third quarter.
“It’s a battle, it’s an aversive battle, just like a game,”
Hamdan said.
Childs back on team?
Junior receiver Jeremy Childs was supposed to be cleared to participate in summer conditioning. There are different sessions open to players each day, and Childs was not at either one which media were allowed to attend. Childs had 82 catches, 1,045 yards and nine touchdowns last season, but was suspended for the Hawaii Bowl and also the spring semester.
