East Carolina’s football team closed out its second week of practice for the start of the fall season on Saturday. To top it off, the Pirates held their first scrimmage.
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East Carolina conducted its first intra-squad scrimmage of fall camp Saturday morning inside Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium with all three levels of offense, defense and special teams in a controlled scrimmage under cloudy conditions with temperatures in the upper 70’s. The workout, which was the 11th of the fall, closed out the second week of preseason camp.
“Our first time in Dowdy-Ficklen this preseason camp for our first scrimmage”, fist year head coach Blake Harrell said. “We tried to get out here earlier in the week, but it was raining a little bit and didn’t want to tear up the grass. Anytime you can get out in Dowdy, you know how special this is and for our players to experience this is pretty special. Coach (Steve) Shankweiler went through the history of the stadium last night and our players got to hear about that and what makes this place special. What I told them today was it is a special place, that’s Greenville, that’s East Carolina, that’s Pirate Nation, but really what makes it special is your effort and how hard you play – you can make this place light up.”
Some key moments of the scrimmage were quarterback Katin Houser connecting with receiver Anthony Smith on an early offensive score, while defensive back Teagan Wilk had one of two defensive interceptions on the day. Quarterback Chaston Ditta registered one of three rushing scores with running backs Parker Jenkins and Josh Benton accounting for the others. Both the offense and defense had bright spots during the initial scrimmage.
“I thought we did a decent job with our effort and energy today, Harrell added. Obviously, the execution piece isn’t where isn’t quite where we need it to be, its scrimmage number one and that’s what you kind of expect. Now we got to go build on that. Today was more of a scrimmage back and forth a little bit, next week when we go back a it, it will be more like a game and game simulation, we will do a little bit more scenarios instead of just putting the ball down and go play. I thought the guys overall competed well, kind of proud of the offense doing some things well and you would expect that the offense being a little further ahead of the defense right now because of the continuity and some guys coming back. Overall, I thought we did some decent things.”
I felt comfortable for sure, Houser said. I felt like I was in rhythm. Just everything from fall camp, from the start of it, putting in the reps. This was our first scrimmage, so going out and being able to do it on the real practice field, being able to play. It felt like the offense was moving.
ECU closed out the scrimmage with a near seven-minute field goal session with all placekickers competing for the position.
That’s probably the one position we don’t have much separation at yet, Harrell said. We wanted to put them under a little pressure there under the attention of the whole football team. When you’re out here kicking by yourself, that’s pretty easy, but you put them under a little pressure there and they go at it, and I thought they hit the ball well. They give us a little range, a little different than last year. You felt like you had to get inside the 25 last year. Now I feel like you can back that thing up a little bit.
The scrimmage is the first of two for the Pirates under Harrell before the group turns their focus to the season opener on Aug. 28 at NC State in Raleigh, N.C. (Carter-Finely Stadium). ECU is scheduled to return to practice on Monday, Aug. 11 with another five workouts before Friday night’s second scrimmage followed by the Pirates Annual Media Day event on Saturday.