Competition creating camaraderie for West Virginia football this summer

Camaraderie can’t be scientifically measured.

There is no GPS tracker that you can attach to it or number of times you can throw up a bench press to measure the impact it can have on a football team in the fall.

But head coach Neal Brown has made it clear that close football teams win close games in the fall and part of that is building connections on and off the field. That has been accomplished by a number of sweeping changes to the program by opening lines of communication and inviting players to ask questions which he gives detailed answers to and some of the other measures to build a team.

Trust the climb has been the off-season mantra for the program and Brown has introduced a number of activities to help build that team element such as meetings geared toward getting to know the person behind the helmet to activities at his house build around competition to foster it.

There has even been a BBQ cook off between the offense and the defense, which was another fun activity involving the football team this summer. But at the heart of it all is competition.

“It builds that fire under you. You want to be the best and if you want to be the best you have to win,” redshirt junior offensive lineman Josh Sills said.

Division one athletes are competitive by nature from a cook-off to throwing water bottles in a trash can so these events bring out that side and help to channel that energy.

Brown pays particularly keen attention during these activities in order to get a feel for his team and which players are prepared to compete in anything even as silly as a backyard basketball game might seem.

“He picks up on it and he picks up pretty quick,” Sills said. “You’re just standing there watching and you feel somebody come up behind you and he says ‘why aren’t you out there?’ ‘What are you doing?” Sills said. “He’s good at that stuff.”

A method to the approach as the goal is to foster that competitive edge and build the team outside of the confines of a football field. The focus becomes more on the person than simply what he brings as a football player and has helped to already develop some strong connections.

“It’s bringing us together and having us around each other more,” senior safety JoVanni Stewart said. “Just how much the coaches are around. They really push us to get better.”

Sophomore linebacker Josh Chandler believes that the activities have definitely done what they were intended to do and he personally is now close off the field with around ten players when that number was closer to three a season ago. A big chunk of that he credits to simply being around his teammates more and getting to know more of them outside of their roles on the team.

Brown walked into essentially a snow globe that has been shaken up given all the turnover with the staff, players exiting and other changes but he’s helping to settle things to the bottom over time.

Camaraderie plays a major role in that.

“It might help us win one game, it might help us win one down, it might help us win ten games. I don’t know but it helps,” senior defensive end Reese Donahue said.

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