When Monday's first preseason practice began, coach John Pennington could feel a buzz around his West Virginia State football team unlike any he has witnessed in the handful of years he's been at the school.
With Pennington making the jump to head coach after two seasons as offensive coordinator - bringing together a new staff to work with a team featuring several key returning players - the Yellow Jackets were finally able to get back on the practice field and prepare for the 2017 season.
"I love the urgency they showed, everyone brought great energy across the board," Pennington said. "You can really tell everyone was excited to be out there. We're all ready for this new era to start.
"Between me and the other coaches, the players, the alumni and everyone else in the community, there's a buzz around this program and we're ready to get out there and see what we've got these next few weeks."
For the first few days of practice, WVSU is breaking up each day into two separate sessions. The staff splits the team in half, allowing for each player to get a little more hands-on time with the coaches while also taking plenty of reps due to their smaller individual groups during drills.
"A big part of it these first few days is conditioning. They have to take a bunch of reps and fight to get into football shape," Pennington said. "The other component is that we want to see who's ready to play. If it's a young guy, let's put him with the ones and twos and see if they're ready."
While sometimes coaches decide to split up the team that way to have one group be made up mostly of younger players so they can learn the ropes, the Yellow Jackets have been putting the freshmen mixed into groups with upperclassmen.
The idea there is that having the younger, inexperienced players working alongside of the veterans on the team can help aid the process of learning the schemes quicker.
"We want to align things for success in terms of how we can help our guys improve the most," Pennington said. "If you put all the young guys together, it might be a rough day out there for us coaches, but having them with fifth-year seniors in a group means I can coach up everyone on the whole offense and team while those guys can help to answer questions and coach up the younger guys if they have anything."
Putting those younger players into groups with the older ones also helps West Virginia State get a feel for which underclassmen are potentially ready to make the leap and earn more playing time. If a young player is in a group with several other starters and stands out, it helps the staff realize that they can trust that person to take on a bigger role once the season rolls around in a few weeks. The Yellow Jackets want to improve from a 3-8 campaign in 2016.
"We want to see that competition between those guys," Pennington said. "If it's a young guy who we want to make sure is ready for [Mountain East Conference] football, we're not going to give him a backup [in drills] - we're going to give him all the reps he can handle and see if he's showing the signs that he's ready to play in the MEC.
"This has been a great day. Guys are making plays, playing hard and trying to get better - and that's what it's all about. We're all just enjoying being back on the football field."