NFL News NFL News, Reports and Updates
Jul. 22—When Maine’s college football coaches gathered Monday at their annual kickoff luncheon, University of New England Coach Mike Lichten had one statistic that topped all of his peers.
The Nor’easters have 40 seniors returning from the seven-year program’s first winning season with an eye on climbing higher after they finished 6-4 overall, 2-3 in the Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) in 2023.
“That’s the hope. That’s the expectation,” Lichten said. “The (offensive) line is the only real position without a tremendous amount of experience right now. But staying healthy, getting that group in the right direction, and then being able to gel and buy in as a team even more than we have to take the next part in that process of the cultural cohesiveness.”
But UNE does have two large holes on its coaching staff with the season opener at Coast Guard on Sept. 7 just 46 days away. Kenny Treschitta, the only defensive coordinator the program has had, left in June to take the head coaching job at another start-up program, Shreiner University in Kerrville, Texas, which is scheduled to begin play in 2026.
“We were together 10 years. He was with me for a spell at Becker College,” Lichten said. “And then he was here from day one with me at UNE. It’s one thing to lose a coach in January and we lost him in June. But you know what? He had a great opportunity. It is a great opportunity. He’ll have incredible success there because he works so hard and he has a blueprint. He’ll probably do it better than we did the first time around.”
Also gone from the UNE staff is offensive line coach Eric Ruest who was one of the original Nor’easter players and had been on the coaching staff the past four seasons. Ruest took the offensive coordinator job at Rochester, which will host UNE in a non-conference game Sept. 28.
“Eric was one of our…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/maines-college-football-coaches-ready-230000761.html
Author : Portland Press Herald, Maine
Publish date : 2024-07-22 23:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
