Bill Groomes, an assistant coach at Oberlin who’s been with head coach Dave McFarland for years, calls out Hugh Thornton’s name dozens of times within a few minutes.
Practice is winding down and all that is left is conditioning.
Thornton leads the way.
The 35 players present at Oberlin’s two-a-day session break down and pop back up during one drill. Thornton is the first down and the first back up. They break 5 yards downfield for bear crawls and crab walk back. Again, Thornton is the first down and back.
His hustle and talent is unmatched, and Groomes uses him as an example.
Groomes and McFarland hope Thornton’s presence is contagious. He has Division I scholarship offers lined up and has returned to Oberlin, a town he once called home while in elementary school. Still, he doesn’t break in his effort, an effort that could have Oberlin do big things if continued by the entire team in 2008.
That’s Thornton’s mindset.
He played high school football last year in Idaho at the Class 5A level, which is the equivalent to Division I in Ohio. Oberlin is a Division V school, much smaller than anything he has been around since playing football.
With Thornton leading the way, a second wave of optimism has hit Oberlin. The first one was McFarland’s arrival from Elyria Catholic last year.
McFarland, though, hopes Thornton isn’t it. With an offseason weight lifting program that attracted up to 40 players at once, McFarland hopes his Oberlin team can go from having no offensive line to at least an average one. Without one last year, they were 4-6.
Just imagine how good they could be with one.