RIZZI leaves URI

Yesterday around 2p.m. I go a text from Coach Silva saying "meeting in keaney gym tonight at 7." When I first saw the text I thought "damn somebody probably got in trouble" which only meant the already hard winter workouts would only become harder. Then I called some of my homies on my team and asked them what they thought this meeting could possibly be about and i got a number of answers some people thought it was going to be about the Wide Receiver(WR) Coach because earlier in the week the old WR coach left to take a job at his Alma mater U. Penn. so a lot of people had that theory and the other theory was that we were going to get tested by the NCAA on Monday but this meeting was just a heads up. Quite frankly the whole team was bewildered as to why this team had been called to meet at 7p.m. in Keaney Gym.

Upon arrival at the gym everyone seemed to be in their normal moods. Certain people making scenes others cracking jokes, and some just sitting there like they always do. However when the Coaches walked in something was different . None were smiling they all had a serious face and that's when I said to my boy Steve "whatever they are about to say is not good" and sure enough it wasn't. The Head coach of only 14 months told us that he would no longer be our head coach. The room instantly grew cold. Peoples jaws drop. He begin to explain that he would always support us regardless of where he goes. Coach Rizzi accepted a spot as a special teams coordinator for the Miami Dolphins. He explained the professionally that move is definitely a no brainer but the only reason why the decision was hard for him is because he had to think about us, the team. Coach Rizzi stated "this is one of the hardest decision of my life." I wish Coach Darren Rizzi the best in his new endeavors. This goes to show you that on this level and the next football is more than just a game its a business.
The interim Head Coach will be Coach Pincince he was originally the offensive coordinator.

What is the world comming to?

The NCAA is a governing body over all athletics that take place in the colleges and Universities all over our great nation. With that being said every year the NCAA comes up with a list of banned substances in which college athletes are not allowed to ingest most of the substances are things one knows they should not do like steroids, marijuana, alcohol and,cocaine. Then there's other stuff like caffeine in large amounts, and nikethamide something you may have never even heard of. Anyway in a recent update of the list a substance that one would never think was impermissible was banned. The name of this substance is called Vitamin Water. Yes Vitamin Water. Certain flavors of this Coca-Cola brand name drink has been banned because of certain ingredients in them that the NCAA labels as banned.

A Day in the life of a URI player…Can u handle it?

Let us begin on Sunday first; we go to study hall from 5-7pm. Next, we wake up Monday morning at 5:00 am to be at winter workouts at 5:30 am. We finish workouts around 7:15 am and we have to go eat breakfeast and then make it to class for 8 am if you have it (I do) then you follow the rest of to your class schedule and then at either 1, 4, or 2:30 pm you go lift and then on top of that you have to find time to eat. Finally, at the end of the day we have study hall for two and a half hours 7-9:30 pm. We repeat this process for the rest of the week. Can you handle it?

Recruiting

Alright, the biggest part of the season just passed on Febuary 7, 2009, it’s called recruiting. If you are not familiar with this term in football, it is when teams are allowed to go and look at high school players who seem like a good fit for a teams program and give their program the best chance at winning games. URI takes recruiting very seriously and we just wrapped up recruiting last week. We added four linebackers, four defensive lineman, two offensive linemen, two running backs, and two wide recievers and four Rutgers transfers who all joined the URI family as we make our way into a championship season. The new transfers seem to be taking well to the team well and when asked if the dicipline and workouts are tougher than at Rutgers most of them said there is not much difference. This means our team is operating like Division 1 programs just like the Penn States and USCs of the college world. When one is recruited into URI, they should definetely get ready to play bigtime football.

Lift off!

As the URI football ball team begins the second semester and begin preparing for the 09’ season we are about to face one of our worst fears WINTER WORK OUTS! Some of you reading this blog are probobaly wondering what exactly winter workouts are anyway. Well first let me put it like this its something you would not want to experience. Now let me begin my rundown. Based on last years experience this is what one week of winter workouts look like. First on Sundays at 9 o’clock at night, we would meet in keaney gym and wait for futher intructions from the coach. Usually we would go through a series of drills and finish off with mat drills. Mat drills are focus drills. It is all about following directions and if you mess up, I feel sorry for you because you have to run up the stairs and around the horsehoe in keaney gym, which surely will tire you out. The more you run the harder it is to focus. When fatigue sets in all you are worried about is catching your breath. Then we would come back Monday night at 10:00pm and have to repeat Sunday’s workout. Finally Tuesday would come and your body would be on E (empty no fuel whatsoever) kids would be missing class but you didn’t want to do that or else, you getting into trouble would cut in on your resting time. We absolutely cherished our resting time. However before you knew it Wednesday morning would be here and we would be getting ready for another winter workout with drills and then on top of that a 2mile run it was devastating physically but well worth it in the long run. On Thursday, we would go again at 10 o’clock at night and do all physically draining drills. Kids would be dropping out left and right. Only the strong survived. And the weak parished---it was as if we were in a war movie or something the coches would be yelling and screaming and talking to us like the opening scene in Full Metal Jacket check it out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Nf1MK7lts). Anyway, the day wasn’t all-bad at least on Thursday we knew the battle was over and we could go off into our weekend feeling tired….but good. We repeated the process for about 4 more weeks by the end we begin to get use to the workout so things slowly but surely became easier and the war was over we became a better team for it. I expect this year to be similar to last year but maybe a lil easier because we know what to expect and kids are in much better shape this year. However, the ultimate outcome will be the same; We are going to only get better as a team.