Sorry it has been a while gentlemen and ladies, but with football starting, expect a lot more updates and live blogging of all of the CMU games for the 2009 season.

Here are some assorted notes and observations from the opening day of practice for the Chippewas:

- Bryan Schroeder and Paris Cotton took most of the carries with the first team offense at running back, which is no surprise, while Carly Volny and the freshmen took snaps with the second team.

-Speaking of running backs, I thought Zurlon Tipton had a nice explosive stride to his running. He looks to be a "down hill" runner that can cover a lot of ground in a short time.

-Ronnie Kennedy is about 130 pounds soaking wet. The kid looks like a middle schooler on the field with all of these big guys around him. Hopefully he can put on some weight quickly, because he clearly has a lot of talent.

-When CMU had four-wide sets during drills, Sean Skergen was getting a lot of snaps with the first team in the other slot, joining Anderson, Brown, and Poblah.

-On the O-Line, no real surprises as it looks like Olson, Maddux, Miller, Ollenburger, and Weaver will be the starting five from left-to-right. Freshman Eric Fisher stands out for his height as a freshman at 6-7. I think if he can put on some weight in the next year, he could be a real asset to the O-line.

-Defensively, Dannie Bolden and John Carr were getting the first team snaps at safety, while Kirkston Edwards and Josh Gordy were at cornerback.

-LaVarus Williams was still in a green jersey, but took snaps with the second team with D.J. Scott. Lorenzo White appears to be fully healthy and participated in the full practice.

-Frank Zombo didn't take part in much contact for precautionary reasons, but John Williams and Chris Reeves were taking most of the first team snaps at defensive tackle. I was quite impressed with the size of most of the freshmen at defensive tackle. Guys like Adam Schneid, Aaron Kaczmarski, and Aaron McCord all looked to be in good size and shape for true freshmen.

-John Williams had a very strong practice and maybe looked as good as anyone on the defense, which did very well as a whole.

I will continue to update the blog as I attend more practices. As always, thanks for reading.

(Thanks to Lisa Yanick-Jonaitis for the photo)