After eight days of fall camp, head coach Adam Dorrel is pleased with how far his team has come, especially from his very first meeting with the team in January. The Wildcats saw the defense get an early jump in Thursday nights controlled scrimmage, but the offense did break through with some scoring output at the end.

Dorrel said the team has not only come far physically and on the field, but also emotionally and spiritually off the field.

“I feel good, I’ll take it a step farther. For me I always go back to that first team meeting in January and think about how far we’ve come as a team emotionally, spiritually, socially. Just what we’re doing as a football team, we’ve come a long, long way. Fall camp, obviously the first day was probably pretty disappointing, and I just feel like we haven’t had a bad day since. So it’s exciting, as long as we’re moving forward,” Dorrel said.

However, Dorrel said he believes the team realized there is still work to be done by the team to get into game shape.

“Overall I thought it was really good for the first night. What I always love about the first scrimmage and what I saw tonight is guys realizing we have to get in better shape, better game conditioning,” Dorrel said. “And I can sit there and talk about that and talk about that, and coaches can, but the guys have to feel it, and they really felt that tonight.”

Although the scrimmage and practice wasn’t advertised or open to the public, there was still a noticeable amount of fans, friends and family of the team. This is something Dorrel said he and the players have taken note off.

“It’s exciting, it’s exciting to see people being excited about ACU football again. People don’t realize, our guys feed off that. There have been a lot of people coming up to practice and watching, and it’s exciting for our players. When our players feel that, when they feel like it’s more then them that care, it just makes those guys work that much harder,” Dorrel said.

The Wildcats open their season on Sept. 2 against New Mexico. Following the season opener ACU will travel to Colorado State, who is opening a brand new stadium, before returning home on Sept. 16 to host Houston Baptist for the grand opening of Wildcat Stadium.