SPOKANE, Wash. – High energy and spirits dominate the Whitworth Pirates’ fall camp as they put their last touches on the preseason.
“Always step up when the moment’s big,” cornerback Omari Williams said. “There’s always going to be a big moment for a play to be made, and we just made those plays today, that’s why the energy came with it.”
“We just have a great group of guys here, they’re really passionate about the game of football, they love playing it, they love each other, so it’s really, really fun to be out here,” head coach Rod Sandberg said. “We have a lot of work to do, but they’re coachable. They want to be coached, they want to be challenged.”
Whitworth comes off a 10-2 season, but they dropped their Northwest Conference title chance at home to rival Linfield.
They now recover and come back in part through a vastly changed roster: 32 players including 18 starters gone.
“Man, as a coach, that’s really challenging, man,” Sandberg said. “Can we get this group to play at the standard that past groups have?”
The Pirates welcome a new starting quarterback in Hawaiian Logan Lacio, the junior ready for his first shot at the role.
“On the offense, we preach a lot about mastering your 1/11th, so just doing your job out of the 11 guys on the field, and if I can do my job, I trust the other 10 guys on the field they will do their job, and if we all click together, the offense is going to run really well,” Lacio said.
“It’s getting him the experience,” Sandberg said. “It’s one thing to know it, it’s another thing to be able to do it when it’s live, so just getting as many live reps as we can, we have a lot of confidence in him.”
Whitworth opens the 2025 season against the Gustavus Adolphus Gusties, a squad the Pirates trashed 40-7.
“Obviously, game one, you just get to go hit somebody besides yourself,” Sandberg said.
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