Coast Guard football hoping to annoy opposing defenses as it opens 'normal' 2021 season
Sep. 3—NEW LONDON — Tafari Wall, Coast Guard Academy's junior quarterback, can annoy his own teammates sometimes.
"He's very confident. He's very vocal," senior wide receiver and captain Damaso Jaime was saying this week of Wall, who has never taken a collegiate snap. "He likes to keep the energy up. He ticks you off. He loves to chirp."
"I would just say that he's always trying to get the offense going," Coast Guard coach C.C. Grant said. "If they make a good play, you'll hear it. He may run down and chest bump the guy. The first time (the offense) made a really good play, he's yelling, 'Let's go' and he's running down the field and the defense just kind of took it. ... I would say that he's very enthusiastic all the time, all the time."
The Bears are hoping that Wall is just as irksome to the opposing defense Saturday, as the Bears begin the 2021 season with a 1 p.m. start at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine.
Coast Guard was 5-5 in 2019, including a 27-17 win in Biddeford, before playing just one game last season due to COVID-19. Coast Guard fell to Merchant Marine on Nov. 14, 2020, by a 24-14 margin.
There was nothing normal about last season, leaving two classes of Coast Guard players with little to no college experience. The juniors were freshmen last time they played a full season. The senior captains are honing their own skills as well as having to lead their younger teammates.
"They don't really know what a full season or a regular year looks like," senior captain Adam-Jibril Barnes said. "They don't know what the locker room is supposed to be like. We're just leading by example, showing you care about your performance."
Jaime, who led the Bears in 2019 with 27 catches for 463 yards and a team-high seven touchdowns, said that being on the field felt like the most normal part of 2020.
The Bears were practicing sparingly a year ago before it was announced that Coast Guard would meet Merchant Marine, giving Grant, in his first season, a chance to build up the practice schedule gradually to six days a week.
"It was kind of weird going through last year thinking 'how the heck do you deal with this?' So this seems more normal," Grant said. It seems more seamless. We had a spring practice and everything and I knew we had a good group of kids coming back. This has felt normal for the most part."
Jaime labels the Bears' youthful enthusiasm as his favorite part of practicing with this team. There are 12 freshmen, including starter Ryan Laruy on the defensive line, listed on Coast Guard's depth chart headed to Maine this weekend.
"How young the guys are. How excited they are to get on the field," Jaime said. "Everybody's worked so hard to get on the field. Everyone on the team is going to play. Someone who hasn't played since middle school is going to play."
For Grant, who is the head coach but also the position coach for the linebackers, he's been impressed by the quickness of the offense.
"I like the fact that (running back) Jared Colletti, he gives our defense fits," Grant said. "They can beat you in a lot of aspects with the speed. Obviously (Jaime) can catch anything that's thrown near him. ... They've got some weapons over there. They'll put some stress on some teams just based on what they can do and the speed they possess."
Colletti, a junior, scored both touchdowns and accounted for 165 all-purpose yards in last season's game at Merchant Marine.
The University of New England, meanwhile, was 4-6 in 2019. The Nor'easters, who compete in the Commonwealth Coast Conference, did not play in 2020. They completed their inaugural season in 2018.
The Nor'easters are led by senior tight end Peyton Phillips, who caught 28 passes for 259 yards and two TDs in 2019, senior linebacker Keegan Stanton-Meas, who was second on the team with 73 tackles, and junior defensive end Will Peters, who led the team with four and a half sacks.
