WESSON – With the start of classes Monday morning atCopiah-Lincoln Community College, the Co-Lin football team beganlearning more about life on a junior college campus. Twenty-eightmembers of Co-Lin’s roster are freshmen.

“It’s been hectic,” said first-year Co-Lin head coach DaveCross. “We are doing a lot of conditioning and teaching inpractice. We had 72 players report.”

Under the new Mississippi Association of Community/JuniorColleges rules, regular season schedules have been reduced to ninegames. That means preseason practice started a week later thanusual and two-a-day practices were greatly diminished.

Cross said the roster will be reduced to 65 players by the endof the week. The Wolfpack will practice each day at 3:30 p.m.

Cross and his staff only had three days to work with the teambefore school began. Twice-daily practices were cut in half onSaturday and Sunday because of heavy rainfall. Picture Day wasSunday afternoon.

The most noticeable absentee was redshirt sophomore quarterbackDenard Parks of Miami, Fla. Parks, all-state South Division as afreshman, sustained a season-ending knee injury in the second gamelast year and received a medical hardship, making him eligible foranother year.

Parks had enrolled at Florida A&M University in the springto continue his education but had indicated he would be returningto Co-Lin in August.

“Denard told us his mother wanted him to get on with his life,”said Cross. “Denard wanted to come back and play football but hismother disagreed.”

That left Co-Lin offensive coordinator David Armstrong withthree untested quarterbacks to work with before the Sept. 6, homeopener against Itawamba Community College. They are freshmen WillieJohnson of Jacksonville, Fla., and Jerry Smith of Monticello andsophomore Cleveland Smith of New Hope, a transfer from EastMississippi Community College.

“We are heavy at running back and we have some real goodwideouts,” said Cross. “We won’t put a lot of pressure on ourquarterbacks.”

Cross said this year’s crop of linemen had plenty of potential.”Our line looks good. We are pretty solid at every position.”

The largest linemen are freshmen Kelvin Lee (6-5, 325) ofSpartanburg, S.C.; Broderick Jones (6-4, 320) of Stone Mountain,Ga., Anthony Dampier (6-5, 315) of Mendenhall, Jahrad Faust (6-3,300) of Meadville, Alvin Young (6-3, 300) of Starke, Fla., LeonardCampbell (6-4, 300) of Natchez, Tyewan Brown (6-4, 300) ofSavannah, Ga., Greg Bates (6-4. 300) of Brandon and sophomoreTerrell Showers (6-1, 320) of Monticello,