Before the Beavers opened fall camp Thursday, Minot State University football coach Paul Rudolph said one of his main goals was to establish a quick practice pace.
"Coach always says we're not gonna condition at practice but he wants everybody running around in and out of huddles, running off the field," senior running back Blake Eggl said. "You get in the game and people don't wait for you in the game, it's on game time, so he wants us to be moving and have a quick speed."
After MSU's third practice Saturday, Rudolph said the workouts have hit inevitable lulls as new players get up to speed.
"You run into a lot of things when you try to keep everybody going," he said. "Some guys just got here, some guys have been here a long time so it's like we're running two sets of practices is what it looks like. But the tempo hasn't been bad."
The Beaver coaching staff's commitment to tempo often results in Rudolph and several of his assistants shouting instructions to different players simultaneously as they line up for drills. The players typically receive the proper message among the chaos, but the MSU offense broke the huddle four times with 12 men Saturday.
"I think our guys lock into who they're supposed to be listening to for the most part," Rudolph said. "Even though there's a lot of guys hollering instructions, we wanna coach our guys every play. There's a learning process on each and every play and we wanna make sure those guys are getting coached."
Rudolph said he's encouraged by the way each of his units are playing early in fall practice.
"I thought defensively we picked it up a notch here in practices two and three," he said. "Offensively we stayed right where we left off in the spring. I think we're gonna be a better offensive team."
The Beavers wore helmets and shoulder pads for the first time Saturday, allowing for some upper body contact during 11-on-11 drills. The Beavers go full pads for the first time on Monday and have the first of two scrimmages Thursday at 6 p.m.
"It'll be fun," junior linebacker Josh Weidler said. "We just gotta come out and play hard and get back (to) hittin' each other and just having fun, but remembering that we don't wanna hurt anyone. We got (Minnesota State University) Mankato on the 30th. That's our number one goal right now, what we've been thinking about. We gotta win that game but we gotta get better in the next 15, 20 days."