If anybody was ever ready to be a head football coach, it would appear to be Bill O'Boyle, the new Chadron State College grid mentor. He's been on the Eagles' staff 14 years and has been the offensive coordinator the last six seasons. He already knows the players, didn't have to be introduced around the countryside and didn't need a road map when he went recruiting a few days after being tabbed last December to replace Brad Smith, who is now the college's full-time athletic director. After the recruiting was wrapped up, O'Boyle and his fellow coaches, all of whom also were on the staff last season, sent the Eagles through spring practice. So far the preliminaries have gone well. Some 35 high school seniors signed letters of intent to play at CSC and spring practice was a big success in everyone's estimation. The spring game even went into overtime. Now things are about to get serious. About 110 players will report for the start of practice on Saturday, Aug. 6 and the season will kick off on Aug. 27, when the Eagles host Minnesota-Duluth. The Bill O'Boyle era will truly be under way then. The new coach admittedly has some jitters. He sees plenty of potential in his team, but also knows that the Eagles must overcome a lack of experience, particularly on defense. "I'd love to say that we'll win the conference and go to the playoffs, but the main thing we'll have to do when camp opens is get ready for Duluth," O'Boyle said. "We'll take one game at a time and see what happens. I know we've got some great young kids, but we're inexperienced in a lot of places."O'Boyle, 41, said one of the first things he'll try to accomplish is developing leadership. With just 10 seniors on the roster and only three of them full-time starters last year, he said the leadership may have to come from underclassmen. After winning 92 of their last 118 games and never losing more than three games in any of the last 11 seasons, the Eagles have a winning attitude, but they haven't been as dominate on defense the past two years as they once were. The Eagles have given up an average of 27 points a game the last two seasons after yielding no more than 18 per game in any of the previous nine. "It's our goal to outwork every team we play," O'Boyle said. "We want a blue collar team that both works hard in practice and plays hard in games. "We also tried to solidify the team," the coach continued. "The last couple of years we've had a little separation between the defense and the offense. I don't know why it happened and it wasn't anyone's fault, but we want everyone on the team to be close. Working extremely hard together is the best way we know to make that happen." O'Boyle has had a busy summer. Besides taking a lead in the four team camps that brought about 1,500 high school players to the campus in June, O'Boyle worked at camps in Alaska and at McCook, Grand Island and Gering. This weekend, he'll speak to the Wyoming Coaches Association in Casper. In evaluating the 2005 Eagles, O'Boyle said he'll be disappointed if they don't have a potent offense. Five players with starting experience and several others with what appears to be outstanding potential are available to man the line. Then there's tailback Danny Woodhead, the nation's leading rusher and scorer in NCAA Division II last fall as a true freshman. "Everyone knows how fortunate we are to have Danny in our program," the coach said. "He was bigger and faster and practiced even harder this spring than he did last fall. He's got ability that I've never seen at this level or even at the Division I-AA level that we had a Western Illinois when I was there. Besides that, he's got a great competitive spirit and never boasts or separates himself from the other players. Everybody on the team loves him." O'Boyle also said he's anxious to add another youngster, redshirt freshman Dale Poole, to the offense. "He's a lot like Danny. He's also a great kid and every time either one of them touches the ball, there's a chance to have a big play. Both of them are really good in an open field. We'll try to get the ball into their hands a lot." The Eagles will be breaking in a new quarterback after graduating Shawn Eisenreich, the starter the past three seasons. Junior letterman Erik Osborne is the heir apparent and played well during the spring, although transfer Tyler Hidrogo seems to have the talent to make it an interesting two-man battle for the starting nod. Osborne remained in Chadron this summer and has been conditioning with about a dozen teammates and keeping his arm in shape by throwing the ball several times a week. "Erik has worked his butt off this summer to get ready," the coach said. "I'm sure Tyler has been, too. We've been fortunate to have good quarterbacks over the years. I hope we come up with another one. We expect our quarterbacks to make a lot of decisions, so it's a really important position for us. I know both Erik and Tyler will give it their best." O'Boyle also speaks highly of the potential possessed by the Eagles' receivers, although he notes that most of them aren't household names. "We have a lot of talent there," he said. "Only two of them, Ben Woodhead and Brady Hollaway, have much experience, but I'm confident the others will do a good job." O'Boyle calls the Eagles' defense "very talented and very young." Defensive Coordinator Todd Auer, another veteran of the CSC staff, has indicated that only three or four defenders are even penciled in as starters for this fall while at least more 30 players have a chance to crack the starting lineup depending on how they perform during fall camp. "The defensive staff did a great job of getting them ready this spring, O'Boyle said. "Now, they'll have to put the pieces together during fall camp. We have some great young talent over there. It's kind of the same situation that we had when Kevin Homer, Kory Richardson, Ryan Turman and that group were coming up about 10 years ago. They didn't have much experience when they became starters, but they helped us make the playoffs a couple of times. "We've just got to be aggressive and get after people on both sides of the ball. I'm optimistic about our season, but scared to death that I'll jinx us by saying too much. We won't have to wait much longer to find out how things really work out."--By Con Marshall, Sports Information Director - See more at: http://www.csc.edu/modules/news/public_news/view/1275#sthash.gkMYTWPk.dpuf