 Welcome into the Coach's Corner. I'm Joe Wombo, joined now with Ed Hoddle, head coach of the football team. And Coach, you guys make some history this year, not only in individual records and returning the first punt for a touchdown this year. You guys make it into the NCAA tournament and travel up to Wesley. Yeah, it was a fun experience for the guys. I think it opened some eyes in our program as to what it takes to compete at the national level, the year-round commitment that we have to have in the weight room and things like that. But it was a fun trip. The guys enjoyed themselves. Obviously, the outcome of the game wasn't what we wanted. But to go up and play a perennial national power at their place in the first round of the playoffs was a great experience for me, great experience for the staff, and I think a great experience for the university as a whole. Now, let's talk about some of those players, mainly the seniors. They finished their career record at Stevenson 30 and 13. It's awfully impressive. Yeah, I mean, you'd look at that and know that six of those losses came in their freshman seasons. And 26 and what is it? 26 and 7, since they were sophomores, is quite remarkable. I know they're very proud of it. I keep telling them. I've said it to them probably six or seven times since after the last game. And I think it's one of those things when they're my age, they'll look back and it'll probably mean a lot more to them than it does probably today. But very proud of that group. It's going to be a tough group to replace. Billy Lewis, Jimmy Lauer, Austin, Tennessee in the secondary. Austin, his career is certainly not over. We've had all 32 NFL teams through to see him over the course of the season, spent a great deal of time with him this morning and another representative from the NFL. So he's got some opportunities. Billy Lewis, his leadership will be greatly missed. Jimmy Lauer's work ethic is a really, really strong group of seniors, McCann, Sube on the O-line. Those guys, they mean so much to us as far as you look back to what they were recruited into. There wasn't a whole lot. Of course, we had the stadium in the facility and such, but we weren't winning. The whole concept of winning the Mac, it's always been there. But it was conceptual at that point. And those guys bought in and really did a nice job. And I'm really, really happy for them to have them walk away with the first conference championship. Buying into any sort of program, the one that's not winning yet, is tough to get out of a youthful group of players. And they definitely did that and brought a winning tradition to your program. Absolutely. And you think back to when you first meet those guys in high schools. They were 18, 17, 18 years old. And hey, we're going to do this. And they're looking at you with the glazed eyes like, yeah, right. But they believed in what we were doing. I think they believed in the university as a whole, which I think is probably the most important piece. Yeah, they wanted to play football. And yes, they wanted to be part of building a great football program. But I think they bought in the university as a whole, which we tell recruits that all the time. We want you to love Stevenson, not just Stevenson football. And I think those guys really embody that spirit and embody what we want from a student athlete here. And talking over the course of the student athletes as a whole, Stevenson promotes a sense of community and family. There's one of our main core reasons of coming here. And they definitely did that with their teammates on the field and then off the field as well. Absolutely. The amount of community service work that gets done out of our office is remarkable. And it's interesting because, and I think I've talked about this before, I always feel like we do community service. We take so much more than we give. And the lessons that our guys have learned. And guys come to us now, hey, when are we going to do the reading? When are we going to go do the Special Olympics? They want to get it on their calendar because they really enjoy giving back to the community. So it's a quite remarkable group from a number of perspectives. And I think for us, they've really set the standard high for our program moving forward. They definitely do set the standard high off the field, as well as on the field. You guys had a really strong defensive core. You touched on some of those guys too, but also in the wide receiver core this year. Yeah. That's a young group, too, with Devin and Preston coming back as just juniors. They're going to be fun to watch. The only guy we lose out of that group is Tyler Cherigo. Tyler had a really interesting career, probably one of the hardest working players I've ever coached. And if you go back, and I haven't done it yet, I'll get to it at some point this spring, I think almost all of his catches were on third and eight plus when we needed a big play. And they used to see Randy Moss all he did was catch touchdowns. And I joked with Tyler in his X interview yesterday. I said, all you did was catch first downs. And again, I don't know that he realizes how big some of those catches were to sustain drives in big football games. He's not the flashy guy. He's not the super explosive guy. Just the worker that would find a way to get open in big spots. And he'll be missed, but looking at what's coming back, it's a very dynamic core of guys. And we've got a really solid group of freshmen and sophomores that are behind them that we're really excited to see them grow through the spring, as well. And strong in the quarterback unit, as well. Yeah, and I think we talked about this after the game up in Chester. I think three of the most critical plays that we had this year came from a backup quarterback. And those three completions were so huge to sustain a drive. Steve did a great job coming off the bench. Dan was remarkable all year. And I think the thing with Dan that's probably the most exciting for us as a staff is he's only going to get better. He's just a sophomore. And so for us to look at him and say, he's still got the best part of his football career ahead of him is very, very exciting for us. And he did a remarkable job. It was interesting to watch him. I caught him a couple times gesturing to the press box and communicating with the offensive coordinator who's 100 yards away, knowing that they know exactly what each other were thinking in particular situations, is very exciting to watch. He's now started to include himself in game plan meetings and things like that, which is quite remarkable for a young man that's just a sophomore. So again, he's going to have to go compete. Steve wants that spot too. And I think it's one of those things where that healthy competition is going to make them both very, very good. And competition is always healthy. And one place that competition is never short on is the Mac. And you guys were able to win that this year. How do you move forward going into spring ball and the winter offseason and get ready to come back and defend that title? Well, I think it's like anything else. The Mac, anybody can beat anybody as we learned. That was a hard lesson for us in a week 10 to have Wilkes come here and beat us. And I think it kind of opened some eyes of some guys. And we can talk about it all you want to. But it's kind of one of those things. You hate to experience it, but you're so much better coming out of the other side. So for us, it's going to be hard work. We've not been on the other side of it yet. And how we handle the success and how we handle our business in the off seasons going to directly impact how we perform in the fall. And we're going to get things started off. Our opener this year is against the team that finished 10-1. And likely we'll finish in the top 25. And we're going to have to come out of the gate ready to go. And again, not to discount what North Carolina Wesleyans done. They're a building and growing program. Well, now we're going to go test ourself against an established program, a program that we're going to directly recruit against over the next couple years. And so there's a lot of familiarity between the two programs. So it's going to be a challenge for us. We've got to replicate and improve upon all of the things that we did this past year. Well, Coach, we wish you the best of luck moving into this post-season or off-season as it would be. And I appreciate you coming up and meeting with us every week and congratulations on a really strong season this year. Thank you very much. Again, thank you and the rest of our staff. The support staff is awesome here. And everybody was behind us 100%. It makes it a really fun place to be. It is a fun place to be. Stevenson as a whole and watching the football team being ranked out on the field was really special for us. Thank you. He's Ed Hoddle. I'm Joe Waman. This has been the Coach's Corner.