Independent file photo SMSU’s Luke Narveson (12) runs a route during a receiving drill during the Mustangs’ Spring Game on Friday.

MARSHALL - The first step in building for the 2019 football season was completed this past Friday for Southwest Minnesota State University with their annual Spring Game featuring numerous offensive and defensive drills on display for fans at Mattke Field.

For coach Cory Sauter, the annual event was a fitting way to cap off a successful spring season that featured 14 practices including the spring game.

“I thought overall we had a very productive spring. We were able to get a total of 14 practices in, including the spring game,” said Sauter. “So (it was) much better than years past where we’ve had anywhere from 5 to 10 practices because of weather. So we’re really happy about the fact that we were able to get a lot of work done.”

On top of the progress made, Sauter was happy that the team was able to make it through the spring ball season without any injuries to report.

“We were able to have a very healthy spring as well,” said Sauter. “There were just a handful of very small nicks, bumps and bruises. Other than that we stayed in a very safe environment, which allowed us to obviously not have any issues going into the offseason, which is critical.”

Here are a few storylines from the spring season for the Mustangs:

New defensive

coordinator

Shay McClure

The Mustang defense may look a little bit different than in years past and that stems from the addition of the team’s new defensive coordinator, Shay McClure. McClure spent the last four seasons at Dixie State University in Utah and was head coach in his final season with the program.

Sauter calls McClure a bright defensive mind and points to his ability to identify how offenses will try to attack as one of his many strengths.

“I think he’s a bright mind defensively. He’s able to diagnose what other offenses are trying to do against him and he has a lot of different tools to make things difficult,” said Sauter. “Whatever your strengths are on offense, he’s certainly going to do his best to take those away and make things a lot more difficult.”

In spring practices, Sauter has come away especially impressed with McClure’s way of translating the new information to the players.

“I think he does just an awesome job being able to diagnose that information and translate that to the players,” said Sauter. “There’s a lot of different schemes, there’s a lot of different ways of doing things but I think he’s able to teach it in a way that makes sense to our players. They definitely responded really well over the course of these 14 practice opportunities.”

A new era at

quarterback

The Blake Gimbel era of SMSU football was a historic one, but now that it has passed, the search for next year’s signal caller has already gotten underway with three players vying for the starting job. Among those candidates is senior Boyer Bouman, as well as junior college quarterbacks Paul Herrera of East Los Angeles College in California and Steven Nava of Mt. San Antonio College in Texas.

Having played in the offensive system for five years now, Sauter points to Bouman’s familiarity with what they’re trying to accomplish as a major asset.

“Boyer Bouman is obviously the most experienced in our system,” said Sauter. “This is his fifth year coming up that he’ll be in our offense so he knows it extremely well. He had a very solid spring, made plays and minimized turnovers so he certainly had a really good outing.”

Entering the mix in January, the main focus for Herrera and Nava has been getting up to speed with terminology, but Sauter sees great potential in both quarterbacks given their unique skillsets.

“They’re still in the processs of learning, but I felt like they made some major strides in terms of understanding our terminology and our expectations, and they each do certain things well,” said Sauter. “Paul Herrerra is probably our most athletic quarterback of the three. Steven Nava has an excellent blend of understanding the position and can make some big plays down the field throwing the football.”

Sauter doesn’t anticipate a decision on who will take the reigns at quarterback until game week, and will be looking for one of the three to step up and take the job with a strong performance in fall camp.

“It’s still a what I would consider a competition and that will continue into fall camp,” said Sauter. “We won’t know until game week really who’s going to be starting and that’s how it should be. You want your players to be hungry, you want them working hard during the summer months and leading into training camp. So it’s certainly remains to be seen who’s going to be starting, but I felt like really all three of them came in with a great attitude and put a lot of good work in and now we have to find out who’s willing to take that next step and try to separate from the other two.”

Early statements

in the offseason

While progress can be hard to gauge this time of year, Sauter has seen great strides made by numerous players on the team. One of those players is sophomore linebacker Onte Burns, whom Sauter lauded as one of, if not the strongest players pound-for-pound on the roster who’s continued to grow throughout the offseason.

“I think in the offseason there’s a lot of kids that have elevated themselves and have gotten stronger and developed,” said Sauter. “A guy like Onte Burns is one of the strongest players on our team pound-for-pound, if not the strongest kid pound-for-pound, and he had a really good offseason in terms of development.”

Fellow linebacker Evan Oetter, a redshirt-freshman linebacker out of Chaska, was another player Sauter praised following a dynamic performance in the Spring Game in which he collected a key turnover.

“Evan Oetter is a linebacker that redshirted last year that had a really good spring,” said Sauter. “He certainly had an awesome Spring Game in terms of creating a major turnover in a game and was just really noticeable and that’s what you want to see. Kids taking that opportunity and running with it.”

On the other side of the football, senior running back Max Simmons had the best spring outing of his career with the Mustangs.

“Max Simmons is a senior but he had probably his best spring since being here, which is always refreshing because sometimes as you get older you become complacent,” said Sauter. “Max really had his best overall spring in his entire carer and that’s saying something to be able to do that.”

The rise of Simmons bodes well for the Mustangs, who will be looking to take a step up in production in the ground-game this season after failing to reach the 1,000-yard mark in rushing for the first time since 2008. Sauter has made improvement in the run-game one of many focal points in the offseason.

“It certainly is a point of emphasis. You take a look at any successful program, and I take a look back at our best seasons here, those seasons you were able to run the football,” said Sauter. “So it certainly was something that we looked at and part of it is personnel, part of it is scheme, part of it is just the mentality and I certainly felt like we invested a good chunk of our team reps on run type of plays. “So I think we’ve added some scheme that should help us as well.”