After a season in which the UMD football team finished one team shy of the DII playoffs, the Bulldogs are back with vengeance, as they got out on the field for the first practice of 2024 on Monday.

“This is my 17th year back with UMD football, I’m excited to be back here and having a chance to see everybody check in last night and have a team meeting, the energy in the room, if that doesn’t get you going you shouldn’t be in this profession,” said Curt Wiese, UMD’s head coach. “A lot of these guys have not been in the national playoffs so that’s going to be a focus for us this fall, is getting our foot back in the door and not leaving it up somebody else to make that decision.”

The Bulldogs captains have been through it all, ready to lead their team into battle.

“Obviously it’s a big honor just to be voted because all the captains are voted by our team,” said Kyle Walljasper, the Bulldogs quarterback. “So it’s really huge especially coming from last year being a captain voted again this year. Our whole team is really tight-knit as far as our captain group goes and it’s a really good group of guys to lead this team this year.”

“We just go one day at a time” said Aiden Williams, an offensive lineman. “If we have a bad day, we come out the next day and we get even more than that so, we hammer down and get after it. Last year we kind of got snubbed, we got 29th and we missed the playoffs by one spot so this year we got a big chip on our shoulder.”

All eyes now turn to the regular season schedule, where the Bulldogs go to Marquette, Michigan to take on Northern Michigan on August 29th, and then open up their home slate at Malosky Stadium on September 4th against MSU Moorhead.