Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. YSU coach Doug Phillips watches a 7-on-7 drill during the Penguins first practice of spring on Friday morning inside the Watson and Tressel Center.

YOUNGSTOWN — Football never stops, and Youngstown State kicked off spring football with its first day of practice on Friday.

YSU will have 14 days of practice over the next few weeks, which culminates with the Red-White Spring Game at 11 a.m. on April 13.

“We want to be the best fundamentally technical team in the country,” head coach Doug Phillips said at the conclusion of Friday’s practice. “Each day we come out and stress fundamentals, whether it’s special teams, blocking, tackling, ball security, hand placement. This is year five, so for our kids, that’s what we hammered home and just being mentally tougher. What mental toughness is to me is demanding more of yourself. So we’re asking our kids to demand more of yourself when you step in this building every day when you come through those doors.”

The Penguins are coming off their best season under Phillips as he gets set to begin his fifth season in Youngstown. YSU went 8-5 overall in the fall and earned its first FCS playoff bid since 2016. The Penguins won their first-round matchup against Duquesne, before falling in the second round at Villanova.

Phillips said he liked what he saw after practice No. 1, but that the Penguins still have a ways to go to get to where they want to be.

“I’m excited — there’s some things we’ll go back on film and show them and improve upon,” Phillips said. “I want to take a huge jump in special teams and seeing some of the drills today, it gets me excited. We saw big guys running down and those big guys are pretty fast, those defensive ends, so they’ll be able to help us on special teams. I think today was a starting point, but tomorrow we gotta come and we gotta be a lot better.”

While there are many familiar returning faces on both sides of the ball, there’s plenty of new faces, as well. The bulk of YSU’s returners are on offense, particularly on the offensive line, at receiver and then Tyshon King in the backfield. But the Penguins retained most of their secondary on defense, as well.

Gone are several main contributors from last year’s team, including starting quarterback Mitch Davidson, running back Dra Rushton and receiver Bryce Oliver. But, as is commonplace nowadays in college football, YSU also lost several key starters to the transfer portal, including linebacker Alex Howard, defensive back D’Marco Augustin, defensive ends Dylan Wudke and Andres Lehrmann and others.

However, the Penguins coaches were active during the portal window, and brought in 14 new transfer additions to the program. Ten were transfers from FBS schools, while two were from other FCS programs and two were from the Division II level.

“Sometimes it’s like free agency, you gotta look at a position group and wherever you bring in more,” Phillips said. “We’ll go through spring practice and we got 14 practices to evaluate. This is the time — we’re preparing to play 12 games in the toughest conference in FCS. So we better make sure we have depth at every one of those positions. It’s nice on the offensive line that we got a lot of guys returning, so we’ll learn real quick on the defensive line with the guys that we brought in. It’s nonstop assessment and evaluation, and if decisions have to be made in May, we’ll make more decisions then.”

Other new faces include the coaching staff. Phillips had to replace several offensive coaches last offseason, but this year the coaching changes have come on the defensive side of the ball.

After serving as co-defensive coordinator last season, linebackers coach John Haneline was elevated to solo defensive coordinator this season. YSU also hired Pat Shepard as special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach and Trent Voss as safeties coach.

Phillips finalized his coaching staff this week with the hire of Ray Hunter from Colgate, who will be the defensive line coach. Hunter officially starts with the Penguins on Monday.

“The standard’s been set with the kids who have been in the program the last four years, and we gotta uphold that standard,” Phillips said. “It’s a competition daily, and we gotta win in that locker room. I really love this locker room that we have. To come in each day, compete and push each other to be better, I think we’ve got a group of young men that can do that.”

Have an interesting story? Contact Neel Madhavan by email at nmadhavan@tribtoday.com. Follow him/her on X, formerly Twitter, @NeelMadhavan.