Looking Back at the First Fall for Football

It was a situation the Vaqueros had worked on before.

Last Thursday, as the UTRGV football team wrapped up its fall practice season, the orange and white scrimmage came down to good clock management during the final two minutes on a long drive. The orange team kicked a field goal as time expired to win the game.

It was the culmination of a fall full of practices that started with offseason workouts in late August and early September before progressing to full practices throughout September, October, and November.

“It’s flown by,” UTRGV head coach Travis Bush said. “[That was] our final practice and the final week of the FCS regular season. We’re way better than we were in August, I’ll tell you that. We’ve done a lot of fundamentals – offense, defense, special teams stuff – really just installing all the concepts and all the playbooks of all three phases along with covering a lot of situations.”

The Vaqueros broke up their main practices into three 3-week sessions with bye weeks in-between. The Vaqueros capped each 3-week session with a scrimmage, adding additional scrimmages as the fall progressed.

“Every day we came to work as a team – offense, defense, special teams – everybody together,” freshman quarterback Aidan Jakobsohn said. “We’ve been really growing as a team, on and off the field, bonding, doing all that comes with, hopefully, a winning football team. That’s what we’re trying to get to.”

Beyond football practice, the Vaqueros spent considerable time developing in the weight room, spending four days each week on strength and conditioning. This was big for all of the Vaqueros, but especially the true freshman, who comprised 73 of the 87 players. Not only did the student-athletes get stronger, but some increased their vertical jumps by three to four inches.

“Hats off to our strength staff – Coach [Don] Sommer and Coach Reese [Vogel] have really done a phenomenal job,” Bush said. “Coming out of high school, most of these [players] are used to going from football to basketball and track and not just living in that weight room. Really, you could see these guys develop in a lot of ways on and off the field through this fall, turning from young men into men.”

The next time the Vaqueros take the field together, it will be the calendar year 2025, the year in which the program will play its first game. Despite that, the goals remain straight forward.

“Even if we have a little break, we still need to be working every day,” Jakobsohn said. “Our mindset, starting right now, we’ve got a season. That’s how we have to train in everything we do – on and off the field and in our lives. We’ve got to play college football now, so we’ve got to work.”

“We can’t be complacent,” freshman defensive back Kayden Cooper said. “We’ve got a couple of months left. We’ve got to keep driving and getting better.”

“We’re going to get better every day,” freshman Cah’lil Ward said. “The goal for next year is to win the SLC. That’s what we want to do.”