Back to work
’Canes players return to practice — in Orlando
LAKE BUENA VISTA — Zach McCloud says his diet of late has consisted mostly of Nutri-Grain bars and apples.
Teammates Kc McDermott and Jaquan Johnson, meanwhile, have relied on workouts that included boarding up windows and lifting broken tree branches, not weights. And Shaq Quarterman, one of the leaders of Miami’s defense, became a driver of sorts, helping get fellow Hurricanes Bradley Jennings Jr. and Derrick Smith out of South Florida and back home to Jacksonville before Hurricane Irma arrived.
For most Floridians, life hasn’t exactly been routine since Irma wreaked havoc on the state and the 14th-ranked Hurricanes haven’t been excluded from that reality.
Before the storm hit, their game against Arkansas State was canceled. Their annual rivalry game against Florida State, one of the most watched matchups in college football, was pushed back three weeks. And after Miami school officials released the team on Sept. 6 so players could either evacuate South Florida or ride out the storm with nearby family, there haven’t been consistent team workouts or practices.
Until Friday night, when for the first time in more than a week, the Hurricanes gathered on a football field not far from the Magic Kingdom at Disney World and ran. They ran sprint after sprint, trying to get back into some sort of a rhythm. A day later, they practiced together for the first time in 11 days.
Now that they had weathered the storm, that they’d started the process of cleaning up back at home, that power was being restored in their neighborhoods and that Irma was moving farther into their memories, it was time to start thinking about football again.
And it was a more than welcome experience for several of them, including running back Mark Walton, who on Sunday, sprinted from the bus that brought him and his teammates to ESPN’s Wide World of Sports onto the field.
For him, for all of the Hurricanes, football was back.
“It was exciting,” Hurricanes McDermott said of Miami’s first post-Irma conditioning session on Friday. “You [could] see that in the way we attacked that run. Not being with your brothers for a week and a half, almost two weeks, is a long time. To come back and to make sure everyone is okay, ask them how their families are doing, make sure their houses are alright, once you know everyone is okay, to come back as a team and enjoy each other’s company and do something like we did on Friday night was unbelievable. It made me really excited. I’m getting chills just thinking about it.”
While the Hurricanes dealt with Irma, their next opponent — Toledo, whom they’ll host on Saturday at Hard Rock Stadium — was gaining invaluable experience. The Rockets haven’t had their schedule disrupted and on Saturday, they won a 54-51 thriller over Tulsa in which they amassed 679 yards of offense and ran 66 plays.
The Rockets, unbeaten in three games, move quickly and as he starts going about the business of getting his team ready to face them, Hurricanes coach Mark Richt is wary.
As excited as his players are to return to action, Richt and his staff have tried to take things slowly. The team hasn’t played a game since its 41-13 win season-opening win over Bethune-Cookman on Sept. 2. Here in central Florida, there’s been a focus on fundamentals in recent days.
Despite not having played their last two games, the Hurricanes saw their stock rise in the most recent AP Top 25, which was released Sunday afternoon.
Miami moved up three spots to No. 14 and is just two spots behind No. 12 FSU and one spot behind No. 13 Virginia Tech.