Eagles don the pads in practice

Fall camp for the Eastern Washington University football team got down to business last Saturday.

After two days of workouts to open practices in advance of their Sept. 5 season opener at the Pac-12's University of Oregon, the Eagles added pads and ramped up the effort last Saturday at the Sports and Recreation Center practice fields.

"They are sponges – that's a good term to use with this team," EWU head coach Beau Baldwin said. "They want to be coached and they want to get after it and be better the next day."

After practices today (Aug. 20) and two-a-days Friday at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Baldwin will have his first game-like look at his team Saturday (Aug. 22) at Roos Field for a scrimmage at 9:45 a.m. Following next week's practice schedule there will be one final scrimmage Saturday, Aug. 29.

A year ago this week Eastern was preparing for its first game versus Sam Houston State University.

"This was a unique summer," Baldwin said. "It just felt like, 'it's got to get here at some point.' Today would have been about practice 15 or 16 last year. It was good to finally get back at it and get back in rhythm."

Baldwin was most impressed by how hard the team worked as a group in the summer, when conditioning is essentially the only organized activity allowed until practices begin.

The Eagles ranked sixth in both the STATS preseason media poll and the coaches poll, which were announced recently. National magazines have the Eagles pegged fifth (Sporting News), sixth (Athlon) and eighth (Lindy's).