COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – Fifteen practices later and the Tennessee Tech football team is calling it a spring.

 

After starting their spring workouts in February, the Golden Eagles worked through the Tennessee conditions – warm days, cold mornings, rainy days, snow falling – and came through it stronger as a team as they head back into their offseason program.

 

"We've had a great spring," said Tech head football coach Marcus Satterfield. "We came out of it relatively healthy, which is our number one priority to make sure we have everybody here for fall camp. The coaches did a really nice job from day one on focusing on details and fundamentals. We didn't do a lot of X's and O's and the stuff we needed to get better at, we got better at it and improved on from last year. Hopefully, that will help us take a step forward in the conference.

 

"It's never going to be as pretty as you want it to be, but we sure as heck keep getting a lot better and that's all I can ask for."

 

And it was hard to pinpoint the players that really improved the most as Satterfield felt most of the Golden Eagles who took to the field this spring made great strides towards improvement.

 

"Dontez Byrd looked great," Satterfield said. "Josh Cunningham playing at corner looked really good, Nadir Barnwell looked good, Tim Collins has been good. I don't really want to start naming names, because I know I'm going to forget someone, but the guys who are supposed to play, they played. They didn't let us down. We had some young guys who have really started to step up, like Andre Sale in the last five practices as the starting quarterback. He's really built up his confidence and there's just something about him. He's shown good leadership with the team."

 

Of course, there's still things that have to be improved upon.

 

"We've got to play better football," Satterfield said. "We've got to play better situational football, sacks, not getting sacks in the red zone, creating more turnovers, so we've got a ton to work on, but I think we've at least established to our team our philosophy, our brand and our style of play. They know exactly what kind of fundamentals they need to work on in order to take that next step in the conference.

 

"We've got five weeks here to get back in the weight room and we still get two hours a week to work without a football before finals, so we have another chance here to take another big step in getting bigger and stronger in the weight room and keep improving our minds and our abilities on the field."

 

There's still a lot of newcomers who will come in during the summer, but during the spring, the current members of the Golden Eagle roster took advantage of the learning experience.

 

"There have been a ton of young kids who have gotten snaps," Satterfield said. "I'm really excited about our offensive line. Our young guys on the line, they're raw. But man, they got 9,000 reps. Norman Hand has got a chance to be a really, really, really good player. To watch him from day one to now – if you can remember day one, we could barely get off a snap, but now he's functioning at a high level. I'm really proud. That young offensive line is going to be a really good group moving forward and these five weeks coming up are going to be crucial for them."

 

While there are still over four months before the Golden Eagles report back for fall camp, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done and goals to accomplish.

 

"We have to stay healthy," Satterfield said. "We have to keep overachieving and keep working on academics, overachieving with our civic duty and just trying to be the best we can be every day. If we just do that and be an OK football player, we've got a chance to be a pretty good team. We're going to focus on finishing strong and sewing up all the loose ends off the field. I think our kids are locked into our standards of perfection and performance and they're going to do a great job with it."