Colonels wrap up season with momentum

After a long and grueling 11-game season, Nicholls State football coach Charlie Stubbs is officially no longer a “first-year” coach.

With the way his team ended the first go-round, the start of year two can’t come soon enough.

The Colonels finished the season 4-7, but stormed into the offseason with momentum on their side, closing out the year with two-straight wins, beating rivals Northwestern State and Southeastern Louisiana.

Those wins, combined with a slew of returning starters on both sides of the football have many people n including Stubbs believing year two might be fruitful for the Colonels’ faithful.

“You always try to preach about finishing strong,” Stubbs said. “I feel like they’re starting to get a grasp about how we need to play.”

The way the Colonels “needed to play,” was a big point of emphasis for the Colonels this season, but it wasn’t Stubbs’ first thing on his to-do list.

The coach said he worked all season to instill a winning tradition in his players. By doing that, he said he sometimes had to sacrifice winning on Saturday with the lesson being that the players have to be winners from Monday to Friday.

“I have my thumb on these guys. There’s times where I’ve had to do things to some of the players like not play them or to not dress them just to get some points across,” Stubbs said. “It might have put us a weak football team out there some during the year, but I got the point across, which is we’re going to attend class, we’re going to go to study hall, we’re going to do those things. And once they realized, ‘Hey, this guy backs up what he says,’ everybody started lining up.”

The way Nicholls “lined up,” this year was also part of the transition phase.

The coach implemented a brand new and more wide open offense to the team, replacing the triple option attack they used under former coach Jay Thomas.

For those unfamiliar with football X’s and O’s jargon, the transition is close to the same as asking an apple to become an orange.

“At the beginning of the season, we were a learning team and we were just trying to make progress each game that would go by,” junior wide receiver Kenyad Blair said.

That learning curve, combined with a difficult non-conference schedule that saw the team take on San Diego State, Western Michigan and South Alabama, had the team’s confidence rattled early in the season and the team jumped out to a 1-4 start.

“The biggest thing that just happens is when you open up with San Diego State, they knock the confidence right out of you. Then you go to the next one and it’s the same thing,” Stubbs said.

Add that with a depth chart that is choked full of underclassmen and Stubbs said he really had to keep his eye on the morale of his team throughout the season.

“We’re playing with freshmen and sophomores a whole lot on that team right now,” Stubbs said. “They’re fragile.”

But the Colonels were able to keep their chins up and finish strong after the slow start, gaining more offensive rhythm to finish the year 3-3 in the final six games of the season, including the two-straight wins.

“You’re kind of getting punched around for a while, then eventually you start to figure it out and you start to get some matchups that are better,” Stubbs said. “But I definitely feel like we’ve made progress.”

So the focus now for the Colonels is the offseason n Stubbs’ second with the team.

And while lifting weights in March is never something a football player looks forward to doing, both Stubbs and his players admit it’s a lot easier to get through when you have momentum on your side.

“Boy, they’ll come back here after exams and all that in January ready to go,” Stubbs said. “It’s amazing what happens [when you finish strong]. You always want to do that.”

Sophomore quarterback LaQuintin Caston agreed and said he’s already focused on turning the strong finish into a quick start to 2011.

“We have momentum for the offseason. We can build on these two wins and have a great offseason and a great summer and start off good next season and the beginning of the season and not the end. If we play together, we’ll be successful next year.”

Nicholls coach Charlie Stubbs gives his team a pep talk following the final game of the regular season. Stubbs and the Colonels have high hopes for 2011 after finishing this season strong. CASEY GISCLAIR