CEDAR CITY, Utah, March 12 – Southern Utah University will hold its first spring football session of 2010 Friday, with afternoon meetings and the team scheduled to take the field for a workout at 5:00 p.m.

Following Friday's workout the team will take a week off for spring break before resuming workouts on a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday basis beginning March 22 and carrying on to the spring game, which is scheduled for April 24 at 4:30 p.m. at Eccles Coliseum.

Once the regular schedule begins on March 22, the Thunderbirds are scheduled to be on the field at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with Saturday practices scheduled for 11:30 a.m. The team will break for Easter weekend April 2 with no scrimmage on April 3.

In addition to the spring game, the team will scrimmage on April 10 and April 17.

“We're looking forward to getting back out on the field,” SUU Coach Ed Lamb said. “I'm anxious to see where we are. We have a lot of new faces and we will be taking steps to find replacements for the players we lost from last year's team.

“We are going to find a new quarterback and we need to find out who will replace the starters we lost on the offensive line,” he pointed out. “We also have some new coaches, we have a new offensive line coach, we have a new running backs and tight ends coach and we have a new defensive coordinator, so we have work to do as a staff.”

SUU lost assistant head coach Al Pupunu, who also coached running backs and tight ends, to the University of Idaho. He has been replaced by former Dixie High School Head Coach Blaine Monkres. The Thunderbirds also lost offensive line coach Jason Anderson and have replaced him with Teag Whiting, who was a graduate assistant on the staff last season. The final change is that Lamb will relinquish his duties as defensive coordinator this year and linebackers coach Justin Ena will take over those responsibilities.

Lamb said the staff will have goals during the spring to work to the team's strength as well as to improve the running game on both sides of the ball.

“Our team is much bigger and stronger than we have been and I would like to play to that strength,” he noted. “I also want the team to be able to run the ball more effectively and to play better run defense. Those are things we can work on in the spring.”

The Thunderbirds will have 18 returning starters in camp, including eight on the offensive side of the ball, nine on defense and one specialist, in addition to both return specialists who are also returning starters on offense. in addition to the starters SUU has 25 lettermen and 16 redshirts back from last season. Six transfers will join the team for spring workouts, and they will be joined by 17 additional players who were either squad members last year or will be joining the team this spring for the first time.   

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