UCF opens preseason camp with Scott Frost back at the helm
UCF Football officially kicked off preseason camp with their first practice on Monday, ushering in a new era with the return of head coach Scott Frost. After a disappointing 4-8 campaign under Gus Malzahn last fall, Frost is back in Orlando with a mission to rebuild the program’s identity and culture while preparing for a challenging 2025 schedule.
Frost, who guided the Knights to a perfect season and Peach Bowl victory in 2017 before departing for Nebraska, is embracing the fresh start.
“Really exciting time of year. It seems like it came fast,” Frost said during his opening press conference. “We had a lot of work to put in from January until now, building a team, building camaraderie, building teammates, working on the kids physically.
“Really want to thank (strength coaches) Zach (Duval) and Andrew (Strop) and the boys for the work they’ve done to get the team looking like it does now. We look like a completely different team than we did in January. There’s a lot of new faces, guys getting to know each other, but physically the team looks a lot different than it did four or five months ago, and the culture of the team feels a lot better than it did four or five months ago.”
With more than 70 newcomers on the roster, Frost acknowledged that the 2025 team is essentially starting from scratch, something he views as an opportunity rather than a setback.
“It’s kind of cool, we’re kind of starting at go. Almost a completely new team, not a lot of expectations, and I really like taking off from that place,” Frost said. “I think our guys have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder and are anxious to get to work so they can prove to people that they’re better than what people are expecting. That’s going to be the challenge for us. It’s not going to be easy in this league, there’s a lot of parity, a lot of good teams and good coaches, but I’m looking forward to competing with this group of guys.”
Building Culture Through “The Program”
One of Frost’s top priorities this offseason has been building chemistry among a roster heavy on transfers and first-year players. To help forge that bond, UCF partnered with The Program, a team-building initiative led by Eric Kapitulik.
“We’ve done a lot of things. We’ve been very intentional with trying to build relationships and team,” Frost said. “The Program was a huge part of it. Eric Kapitulik that runs The Program is a good friend of mine, and I think that kind of jump-started us to push it in that direction.
“When you have 70 new players, there’s still guys in our meeting rooms that don’t know who somebody else in the room is. It’s really hard to build a team when you have a collection of new guys. I hate to call it this, but a collection of mercenaries to some degree because guys are getting paid now, and some of them are here for those reasons.
“I think the teams that are going to be able to rise above that and make team the most important and bring guys together are going to be even more successful. I think that’s even more important than it used to be. It’s even harder than it used to be, but even more important now.”
Fine-Tuning for Game One
Unlike the spring, which focused on installation and learning, Frost said this preseason camp will be geared toward sharpening fundamentals and preparing for UCF’s season opener.
“We spent a lot of time with guys as much as we could legally through spring and summer with our team. So we covered a lot of ground from an X’s and O’s standpoint, from technique standpoints with things that we were able to do,” Frost said. “We tried to get enough work in through winter, spring, and summer that we can just really focus on fine-tuning now.
“We’re going to go back through installs on both sides of the ball and make sure guys are really familiar, but we’ll turn our attention to Game One pretty quick. Really, it’s just sharpening the spear now. A lot of tackling drills to make sure we do that well, a lot of blocking drills to make sure we do that well, and we got to get a feel for actually operating as if it’s a game situation, not a practice situation.”
Setting the Tone
For Frost, urgency and intensity will be non-negotiable throughout camp.
“I think there’s always got to be a sense of urgency. This is a competitive sport. Everybody’s working hard so we need to have a sense of urgency,” he said. “I would rather have a team that goes 100 miles an hour and 100 percent all the time and let us pull the reins back than a team that gets used to doing things less than full speed. So if we get max effort out of everybody then we’ll be smart as coaches of when we need to push them and when we need to pull back a little bit.”
