Thursday afternoon marked the beginning of the University of Minnesota Duluth football team’s spring season. After months of weight training and conditioning in the offseason, the Bulldogs hit the turf once more in preparation for their first-ever spring game on the road against Northern Michigan University.

“Probably the first 10, 11, 12 practices here are going to be about us, as we start to prepare for Northern Michigan towards the end of spring practice. At that point, it’ll give our team, really not our older or young guys, but really our team, an opportunity to see a different team, to be able to find out what we’re going to be about next fall and probably find out, more importantly, will be areas that we’re going to need to address here as we head into summer and into next fall,” said head coach Curt Weise.

While every season sees new players come in, and veteran players hang their jerseys up for the last time, redshirt senior quarterback Kyle Walljasper says the spring season is a great time to build relationships on the field.

“I think, you know, like any group, we’re really close, closely knit, we spend a lot of time together, so it’ll be the same story as a lot of other years. It’s just time to start building that on the field, and we’ve built it off the field pretty well in the weight room,” said Walljasper.

“We’ve had big freshman classes the last couple of years. And we’ve had big graduating classes. So, when you do that, you have a lot of seniors leave. Two years in a row, you’re going to be a little bit younger. And we’re a little bit younger this fall, this spring. But that’s to be expected. But I also think we’re talented right now. We’ve had a very good off season,” said Weise.

For Walljasper, staying healthy and in good shape physically is of the utmost importance after injuries plagued past seasons.

“It’s been a couple years since I’ve actually been able to make it through a full spring ball, so I’m hoping I can make it through healthy, just develop a little bit and have the whole team get better and kind of work with our new group since we lost a lot of guys from last year. It’ll be fun to see what we’ve got.”

The Bulldogs will battle Northern Michigan University in Marquette Michigan on Saturday, April 12th at 2:30 ET. They will have 14 full squad practice sessions before the scrimmage.